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Apple Easter Egg

Posted by Zonk on from the arrr-pirates dept.

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."

30 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here is a picture, from this site

    2. Re:Nice... by lost_tribe_of_fort_w · · Score: 3, Informative

      Some of the early versions of the Mac Plus had this case as well. I guess they were trying to use up the old 128/512 cases. I don't know how rare the plus version is. Hopefully very rare as I have one collecting dust in the closet.

    3. 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. Ohhhh =) by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Pirate flag + bit torrent = hidden message?

    Tin foil hat goes ON

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
    1. Re:Ohhhh =) by wootest · · Score: 3, Funny

      Not to mention it being *easter* now.

  3. Slow news day? by DraconPern · · Score: 4, Funny

    You know the PSP launch is a failure when you need year old news to fill the Slashdot front page.

  4. 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. ;)

    1. Re:That's one big ass easter egg by grahams · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, the MOV was the easter egg. It was a hidden file on a System CD.

    2. Re:That's one big ass easter egg by xanadu-xtroot.com · · Score: 3, Funny

      I wonder if the Exchange Server Drones did.

      --
      I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
      I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
  5. omg pirate flag... by omicronish · · Score: 5, Funny

    !! Notify the MPAA!

  6. Don't mean to be a dick... by Lisandro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... because i usually love this stuff, but how exactly does a 91MB video file on an CD counts as "easter egg"? And how came no one noticed it before - sheeze, it cant't be that easy to miss.

    PS, the video is cool, and the recompressed version is most welcome!

    1. Re:Don't mean to be a dick... by Compact+Dick · · Score: 3, Funny
      And how came no one noticed it before - sheeze, it cant't be that easy to miss.
      We're talking Mac users. What were you expecting?
      --
      Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
    2. Re:Don't mean to be a dick... by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      it WAS noticed before.

      YEARS AGO..

      when 7.1 was fresh.

      you know, maybe someone thought that because such 'hidden' stuff in software is called easter eggs that it would be a proper thing to post during easter. well it's not.

      slashdot: add a "DUST FROM THE ARCHIVES" section to put this kind of stuff under...

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:Don't mean to be a dick... by artifex2004 · · Score: 3, Funny
      slashdot: add a "DUST FROM THE ARCHIVES" section to put this kind of stuff under...


      Shouldn't that be dust bunnies from the archives? For Easter, of course.
    4. Re:Don't mean to be a dick... by dcclark · · Score: 3, Informative

      It was, among other things, hidden in an invisible folder deep inside the Installer disk, where nobody who wasn't looking for it would ever be looking.

      In addition, the news is that it's available online (specifically as a Torrent) now, not that somebody found it for the first time. I remember reading this on the (long defunct) appleeastereggs.com site about 7 years ago.

  7. Slow Speeds by rickst13 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it really right to submit a story to slashdot, just because you are getting slow speeds on a download?

  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. *Shudders* by CypherXero · · Score: 5, Funny

    Early 1990's....*shudders*

  11. System 7.1 cd?? by lilricky · · Score: 4, Funny

    "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." Cool, where is the System 7.1 CD then? :)

  12. Velcro! by Wysz · · Score: 3, Funny

    I love the guy who has the Velcro shoes. So much more convenient than laces, I wonder why they're not popular anymore.

  13. The link title is a little misleading. by RenaissanceGeek · · Score: 4, Funny
    I was rather excited about the Macintosh System 7.1 CD finally becoming available online, and similarly disappointed that the only bit now available is the easter-egg movie.

    As nice as that is, that's not what the title of the link says.

    Although Macintosh System 6.0.x, System 7.0.1, and System 7.5.3 are both available for download for free from Apple (in "convenient" floppy-disk-sized pieces for those systems that have no CD-drive), System 7.1 remains unavailable (except via eBay, of course) due to, I believe, some liscencing issues with PowerTalk, or something. It's vaguely rediculous that software that is useful only for computers that are basically free/garbage at this point should still be subject to that kind of restriction when the newer 7.5.3 isn't.

    There's a high probability that issues like that in Apple's history is what leads their management to either aquire technologies outright (like NeXT) or develop an equivilant in-house (like Dashboard instead of Confabulator) instead of liscencing them (like Be wanted Apple to do with BeOS.)

    It means that the only force to consult in the future when deciding what happens to a given bit of code is Apple itself. MUCH simpler.

    --
    What is the difference between a small revolutionary change and a large evolutionary change?
  14. Re:POS: format isn't recognized. by aristotle-dude · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now you know how mac users feel when we can't play WMV 9 files that use some new windows only codec.

    --
    Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
  15. Original file may ONLY play on Macs... by Billy_D_Goat · · Score: 5, Informative

    I noticed some people complaining about being unable to play the bittorrent original movie file. I suspect this is because of the age of the file. It was probably made using QT 1 or 2 and is in the ancient "Video" compression. Also, the file uses the classic mac resource identifiers and lacks a file extension. Anyone having trouble might try adding .MOV to the end of the Our Gang! file. The file DOES work on Macs though using QT.

  16. My only easter egg by fm6 · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you can find the easter egg in Delphi 7, I'm the guy holding the giant plastic rat.

  17. Re:POS: format isn't recognized. by No+Panic · · Score: 3, Informative

    Had to add extensions to the filename to make it play in WinXP.

    Added ".mp4" to the filename, and it plays in WMP, but sound was missing.

    Added ".mov" to the filename, and it plays OK in Quicktime (and sound works). ...

  18. 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
    /)
  19. Re:oh come on, be fair by SewersOfRivendell · · Score: 4, Informative
    Sony is also the inventor of the 3.5" floppy. Just thought I'd mention it.

    Hmm... I doubted this statement, but I was wrong:

    In 1980, the 3.5 inch floppy drive and diskette was introduced by Sony.

  20. Looks great! (screenshot) by uibi · · Score: 3, Funny

    hey guys! I made a screenshot of it. http://www.albert-feller.de/temp/screenshot_of_Our _Gang.png