Macsurf, "modern" web browser for macOS 9 (opens in new tab)

This is fantastic. To me, this is one of the greatest side-effects of agentic coding; adding new functionality to vintage, abandoned or obsolete hardware. It gives me hope for a solarpunk future where e-waste gets a more functional second life.

When I owned a iMac G3, the Classilla browser was surprisingly good. Looks like development ended in 2021.

Also, the branding was "Mac OS 9".

Cool! I've been wondering for some time if a good low-distraction but pleasant environment could be an old Mac OS on a (good looking) Hackintosh. The UI was baked with UX research at least.

Anyone had luck running it under infinitemac? I can't boot anything beyond 9.0 and it throws some error upon launch - seems it needs at least 9.1.

Hey everyone! This is my project, I've been working really hard (yes using AI to help) for about two months straight now. I am not just letting it be, I am going to keep tooling with it every day to make it better and better.

The latest version uses real, third-party verified, TLS 1.3 so I am pushing all the limits that I can. Thanks for sharing!

That's impressive, too bad modern web requires more than 2000x the transistor density to run JS at decent speed. We really f*** up.

Freaking love it! Gonna put this on my 1998 Bondi Blue iMac G3 today.

This is what the Amiga is missing!

That would be "Mac OS 9"

Somewhere in Korea there's an industrial overhead crane tracked across an entire 5-story warehouse, operated from a G3 in a network that is about to implement web-based zero trust. It has a twin in Japan. You have just extended the life of these two perfectly functional $100M investments.

Do I know this to be true? No. But I do not know it to be false, either.

Very cool, congrats on the release. Looks fantastic, wish I had a G4 to test it on!

I've just added it to the Web Browser Directory (Corrections and additions welcome)

https://www.webbrowserdirectory.com/browsers/macsurf/

I was expecting to see PowerPlant with C++, given Codewarrior, or even better MacApp with Object Pascal being used.

Time to fire up the ol PowerMac G4 MDD (last native support for Mac OS 9)

I always enjoy it when someone makes "obsolete" hardware natively talk to modern network services that it was never meant to talk to. And bringing an entire browser to a system this old is a serious achievement. I don't own any hardware that can run classic Mac OS, but I'm gonna try it on an emulator later, really curious how it handles several of my own websites.

Though the fact that the author uses AI is kinda meh.

Absolutely love it.