If you've ever wondered what it was like to use the operating systems released by Apple (and NeXT) over the past 40-plus years, the Virtual OS Museum is here to get you covered.
See also: Apple releases Safari Technology Preview 244
The Virtual OS Museum is a project by developer Andrew Warkentin, which offers a way to run over 1,700 pre-installed operating systems and standalone applications through emulation, covering more than 250 platforms and around 600 different operating systems from 1948 to the present.
The project is available in two versions: a full 121GB download (174GB unzipped), with everything pre-downloaded for offline use, and a lighter 14GB download (21GB unzipped), which downloads the virtual machine images the first time they are run.
See also: Anker's new headphones are the first with an AI chip for noise reduction
Both versions support automatic and manual updates, allowing new installations without requiring a re-download of the entire virtual machine.
Warkentin states that the Virtual OS Museum “is the result of over 20 years of collecting,” which began in 2003 when he began collecting emulator images, at a time when there were only a few small archives of software images and documentation available.
It is not guaranteed that every emulated system will work perfectly, as the project is still described as a preliminary release, with some operating systems only working on specific emulator versions.
See also: Apple intensifies war against fraud in the App Store
Additionally, the hosted virtual machine is currently x86-only, meaning performance on ARM or any other non-x86 platform will be limited. This suggests that performance on Macs with Apple silicon may not be optimal. Nevertheless, this project remains endlessly interesting.
