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In MacinCord Feature Requests · Started by Jatoba · April 02, 2026
| Jatoba · 2026-04-02 08:48 · #1 |
| Hi! First of all, I just got to see your self-hosted offline LLM AI project, and was BEYOND pleased about it. I'm glad someone got this working on the OG Mac OS, and that too offline, because honestly Mac OS 9 is still THE operating systems of choice for many, myself included, and their actual daily drivers. Major props to you, I particularly love also how we can take HuggingFace models and convert them to something usable on Mac. So I wanted to start off with saying thank you very much for making Mac OS even more awesome! Likewise, I then peeked at your post on YouTube and your downloads section hgere and then saw MacinCord... And, what can I say? Hotline and IIRC are great, but it always felt a shame some other platforms like Discord weren't directly accessible. And there you go making things more awesome again, so thank you! Now, as for the things I wanted to ask as per thread title... - I didn't try using it yet, but it seems MacinCord requires an intermediary machine using another OS so that it can work? This seems to be suggested by those "relay" downloads available for OS X, GNU/Linux and Windows... Even if true, I think MacinCord is already very helpful as is, but my question here is: do you plan to make a fully self-contained OG-Mac-OS-only client later on? Just like how you took MacinAI and later made a fully offline, self-hosted version. If the answer is "yes", I think it might be worth mentioning you can use something called Crypto Ancienne for TLS 1.2 (and 1.3?) proxying as per this thread: https://macintoshgarden.org/forum/tips-debugging-crypto-ancienne-machten-414 There's also TLSBomber at: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/tls-bomber But right now, it's not as reliable/useful an option. Crypto Ancienne is, currently, the better way. GUSI might also help with this sort of thing, in fact, there's a port of Crypto Ancienne so that it runs as an MPW tool instead of Power MachTen, and that was made more feasible thanks to GUSI: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/gusi https://oldvcr.blogspot.com/2023/04/crypto-ancienne-22-now-supported-on.html - My second question is... will you eventually be considering releasing the source code, as well? It seems you are handling things alone incredibly well as is, but some other folks might be willing to help, as well. Some people who have seen the project are also wondering about source availability. No pressure, though, feel free to do whatever you enjoy doing the most. (I was also wondering the same for MacinAI offline and online versions both, too.) And, that's it. Thanks again for doing all this stuff, and for keeping Mac OS fresh in 2026! |
| Alex Hoopes · 2026-04-02 11:11 · #2 |
| Hey Jatoba, thanks for the post! First off, I'm very happy to hear the kind words you have to say about my programs and appreciate it a lot :) These are the first public programs I've ever made and I'm really happy to see an overall positive reception from them, it honestly means the world to me. And thank YOU for being an awesome MacOS 9 user! Without the community that exists around this OS, I would have never found it. I was born in 2002 and grew up with Windows XP and Intel Mac so I never had a chance to experience it until I got my first Macintosh (the Color Classic) last year. Good catch on the MacinCord downloads... it's in a private beta right now so there's a reason there hasn't been an announcement for it yet haha. I hope this doesn't kill your excitement, but MacinCord will be a paid product ($15 digital, $35 floppy) - purely due to the sheer amount of work that went into it, especially the new DAVE voice encryption that Discord made mandatory last month. I genuinely think $15 is fair for what you get: text, voice, DMs, image viewing, forums, and more - all native on your classic Mac with a lifetime license. There's also a free 3-day trial so you can try it before buying. And yes, it does require a relay server running on a modern computer on your local network. This is necessary for a few reasons: the HTTPS/TLS requirement for Discord's APIs and WebSocket gateway, the DAVE end-to-end encryption and decryption of voice streams, conversion of Opus audio to PCM so the Macintosh Sound Manager can play it natively, and image conversion from PNG/JPEG to 8-bit PICT format for QuickDraw rendering. I considered hosting the relay publicly so users wouldn't have to run it themselves, but the legality of charging for it gets murky, and storing users' Discord tokens on my server is a security risk I'm not willing to take. Self-hosted was the right call. Could it ever be made fully standalone on the Mac? Theoretically possible, but probably not practical. Voice is already challenging on 68k (half-duplex/walkie-talkie style - if your mic is unmuted, you can't hear others) even with everything offloaded to the relay. PPC handles it better, but the TLS and encryption overhead alone would be brutal on classic hardware. The TLS projects you linked are great - I actually wasn't aware of Crypto Ancienne or TLS Bomber, so thank you for sharing those. I'm actually already working on two related things: (1) a software-based HTTPS/TLS relay allowing classic Macs to connect to modern services through a modern computer, and (2) a hardware-based HTTPS/TLS co-processor that would communicate with the Mac over either PDS/PCI or SCSI/Serial. The hardware side is a multi-year project I haven't told anyone but my notes app about, but I plan to go full-force into it once I have enough funding. If HTTPS is to be implemented on classic Mac, it has to be done right - and with a dedicated co-processor, we could literally have your classic Macintosh browsing modern HTTPS sites, buying stuff off Amazon. You name it. As for open-sourcing: the answer is yes for all free software I release. MacinAI (both the local and internet versions) will be open-sourced. MacinCord, being paid software, will not be open-sourced. Paid software represents the programs I pour the most time, troubleshooting, and effort into, and I want to see if people think my work is worth supporting. I do want to make this a business, and I believe it's fair to charge a small amount for lifetime licenses when I'll also be offering free software (and development kits eventually) to the community. To be completely honest, and I hope this isn't too honest, I deal with a lot of anxiety about judgment, and to put it simply, I don't want to get attacked for using AI to assist with development, or have people tear apart the code, etc. May sound silly, but that's what's been preventing me from preparing MacinAI's code for public release. But within the next month or two, I'm going to suck it up and just do it. MacinAI Local got way more attention than I expected and I feel obligated to release the source soon, but I also want to polish it and get it to a proper v1.0 first. As for working with others? Open to it for open-source stuff, and possibly for new projects too, though I've never collaborated with anyone on code before so I'm not sure how well I'd do. Definitely open to trying with someone I trust though. Got a lot of ideas I'm protective of haha. Old Apple Stuff was created with one goal: modernize classic Macintosh and make them as usable as a daily machine as possible. I'm tired of bloatware, ads, and subscriptions. I want simplicity, and OS 9 offers that at a level I've never seen before. People like you validating that vision makes me want to keep going and never give up on it. Anyway, sorry if I typed too much or got off topic. I appreciate you and your kind words, and I'm happy to answer anything else. If you ever want to chat, my Discord is alexhoopes. Have a great day! Alex Hoopes |
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