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Apple Easter Egg

AnamanFan writes "Many years ago an easter egg was uncovered on the MacOS System 7.1 CD included with the Quadra 660av and 840av machines. A 91mb MOV file shows the Cyclone/Tempest team celebrating with a nice pirate flag in the background. Don't have your old System 7.1 CD from your Quadra? It's now available online, or if you'd like to you're welcome to use the Torrent."

20 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Nice... by Tuxedo+Jack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But not as good as cracking open a Mac 128K and finding the signatures of the design team in raised lettering on it.

    --

    Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
    1. Re:Nice... by tim_mathews · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Check out Folklore. The story Signing Party is about the signatures. The last paragraph talks about how they slowly disappeared throughout the Mac versions.

    2. Re:Nice... by Nerull · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The Sidewinder Precision Pro joystick I have has similar signatures on the inside.

  2. That's one big ass easter egg by wootest · · Score: 3, Interesting

    91MB. I wonder if the team had permission to get it in there or if it "mysteriously appeared" all of a sudden. ;)

  3. seeders! by Moester · · Score: 2, Interesting

    man, with this on slashdot, there will be hundreds of seeds. It is 52 Mb.

  4. Lizard flag in early PPC machines by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My favorite was a real-time rendered flag with a lizard that was shown against the backdrop of the Apple campus. It came on the Powermac 8500 and OS 7.5, IIRC. It was meant to be a fun little demo of the machine's power. The mouse location controlled the angle and strength of the wind and the flag would flutter and move appropriately. If you were aggressive enough with changing the direction of the wind, the flag would break off the pole and flutter to the ground.

    The earliest Mac easter egg that I remember was one that got the dog-cow to say Moof on the Page Setup dialogs circa early system 7 and a hidden break-out game that also dates from the early system 7 era.

    --
    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  5. Re:Don't mean to be a dick... RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It is a hidden file, sure, it doesn't involve a weird random keystroke or a full version of a flight sim, but it's still a hidden "treat."

    PS, i think this video is kinda lame. The coolest thing is maybe seeing the awesome fashion sense of those days.

  6. Champagne in Dixie Cups by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's kind of cool seeing how even during some of the dark days under shitty management, creative people were doing cool things at Apple, and pretty much keeping it alive.

    I do video on the Mac, and I've done it, off and on, since 1992. The AV models were a big step forward in terms of making the technology available at a cheap price. (I still have a Nubus TruVista+ card that I can't bear to part with because it cost so much back in the day. Probably worthless now.)

    --
    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  7. Apple II egg by MiKM · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I still like the egg on the old Apple II (I forget which kind) that played back the devteam saying "Apple II".

  8. Re:Original file may ONLY play on Macs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Well it might play if there was something that could uncompress it. StuffIt expander sticks the resource fork into the __MACOSX directory. Adding .mov to the filename does not fix this problem. Copying the "__MACOSX/._Our Gang!" file to "Our Gang!/rsrc" doesn't work either.

  9. That's nothing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    I remember one easter egg where the guy programmed a person in a VW bug who mooned you! Can't remember what the program was but I think it was a graphics program of some sort.

    Anyhoo the guy was going to get sacked for putting the easter egg in the program but when sales took off all was forgiven....

  10. Bah by nmb3000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    C'mon, Apple has got to have something better than this "easter egg". It's nothing compared to previous Excel eggs.

    Say what you will about Microsoft, but they (did) have some cool people working on Office :)

    --
    "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
    /)
  11. Your sig by Dwonis · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]

    IIRC, ISO 8601 allows a whole bunch of optional syntax that can confuse things. Also, the text of ISO 8601 isn't freely available. Why not campaign for RFC 3339 full-date format dates instead?

  12. Re:I have three older Apples... by symbolic · · Score: 2, Interesting


    I still have a clone (which I still use regularly), an 840AV, and another model that's sitting behind my desk. I think the 840AV purchase was about the time that Apple started losing favor with me. I know it had some cool features, but for the price (and all the hype we heard from local reps), I was disappointed with the overall performance. I bought the clone after that because it was available at a good price (compared to Apple's prices). So far, that has been my last Apple purchase- afterward, I began acquainting myself with PCs so I could run Linux.

  13. Re:My only easter egg by fm6 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I left Borland a couple years ago, and anything relating to the company is subject to traumatic amnesia. So I can't tell your how to shut off Delphi Direct. Or find the Easter Egg. But both are possible. GIYF.

    You're right, it is suprising that 3 people even know what Delphi is. But then Delphi has always had the pervase, but poorly publicized following in the developer community.

  14. No Eggs in OSX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    There was a recent entry on The Unofficial Apple Weblog asking about this. So far no eggs posted by anyone, at least none in the OS itself. Those noted are either for specific apps, or stuff carried over from OSX's UNIX roots (LOTR dates in the calendar files, games in emacs.)

    I recall reading somewhere that Easter Eggs in the Mac OS were so prevalent at one time that Apple actually had a group overseeing them! But at some point (I'm guessing Jobs' return,) a no-egg policy began.

    Even the trusty old, option-selecting "About Finder" egg is gone.
    -gko

  15. If you're ever handed a Macintosh Classic... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ...but the harddrive is hosed and don't have any boot discs, you can still start up the machine. Hold down command-option-x-o after you power it up.

    There was enough leftover space in the ROMs that they put a System(6) Folder in there, accessed by the above key combination.

  16. Re:I have three older Apples... by justforaday · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...afterward, I began acquainting myself with PCs so I could run Linux.

    Rather than running linux on the machines you already had?

    --
    I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
  17. Commodore 128 by selfabuse · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My boss was one of the guys who worked on the Commodore 128 - there's a key sequence you can press (I don't recall what it is off the top of my head - I'm sure a quick googling will turn it up) that will bring up all the engineers names, and an anti-war message. I never had a 128, but I found someone on IRC a couple years back that had one right next to him. I googled up the key sequence, and relayed it back to him, and he read back everything it said to me. It was pretty neat that I work in a pretty small (under 20 employees) company, and my bosses name pops up on a C128.

  18. Re:Velcro! by Thing+1 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    At first I read this as "Velcro soles" and thought, "Cool! He can walk on carpeted ceilings!"

    Me, I have shoes (Reebok) that have both laces and velcro. Very nice, because you tie the laces, then strap them down with the velcro so they don't come untied.

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.