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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 |
| Jatoba · 2026-04-04 17:13 · #3 |
| Thanks for all the answers and sharing all the ideas and plans, Alex. I finally found some free time to properly write back, so here I am! It's great to see quite a number of people noticing Mac OS, as in, the real deal, meaning the OS that isn't the UNIX-derived "Mac OS X", "OS X" or "macOS", for the value it uniquely brings to the desktop and even overall computing experience. Yes, you're absolutely right, it stands out even more so today than ever before, maybe accidentally, because it contrasts with all the "modern" options that only serve to reveal just how astray computing really went. It's also a snappy-fast OS, so snappy in fact that I honestly don't feel there's anything else like it, even for contemporary '80s, '90s and early 2000s rival systems. Even more so when we consider how modular, simple and easy it is, yet extremely powerful. At the same time, some conveniences came with time, and exist mostly only in "modern" computing, so you want to bring the few GOOD things of it BACK to the Mac OS, having thus the best of both worlds of computing. That's the way! And if you can make a business out of it? Even better. I think your MacinCord plans are good. I cannot speak in terms of profitability prospects, though, but it certainly will help you get your feet wet with what and how some things can and can't be done. So one way or another, it will put you in the right track. Personally? I like the project, but I'm one of those strict purist users that really (!) use Mac OS, particularly 9.2.2 (with a soft spot for System 7.5.5 and 6.x, too) as a genuine daily driver whenever at home. As such, I also try to acquire the best hardware I can get, and humbly carry on with a Mac mini G4 1.5 GHz model, since I think a daily driver should be well-equipped hardware-wise. (Which means I'm more of a PPC Mac guy than 68k, G4s in particular, though I have nothing but respect for G3 and earlier Macs, 68k included!) (Note: Some PowerMacs that originally did not support Mac OS and only supported OS X are for some years now able to natively boot the OS! This includes all 4 G4 Mini models. The minis even get full GPU acceleration with their built-in ATI 9250!) If one day things advance so much that a G4 Mac can fully handle a Discord client autonomously (perhaps also with not only AltiVec SIMD and FPU, but also GPU acceleration somewhere?), then I would definitely consider a purchase! Regardless of me, though, I know many folks in the various Mac communities who are perfectly happy with offloading work to other computers, and would be more than open to supporting your project as it is right now. Perhaps some of them would even commit to making a purchase? All I can say is that it is not uncommon for people to run Crypto Ancienne on some other computer, like a Raspberry Pi or other PC, as per this guide on System 7 today: https://system7today.com/setup-crypto-ancienne Once you release MacinCord, I recommend creating an "app page" for MacinCord in the Macintosh Garden, and leaving a link to your website in it. We totally welcome this kind of behavior in there. We even support requests such as the client download not being available in the Garden directly, so that it doesn't mess with your own visitor and download statistics, as has been previously done here for example (until the author decided to upload it there directly): https://macintoshgarden.org/games/flappy-mac Make sure to see the comments for a reference on how this went down and what the author concluded. This might give you a bit of insight. If you get in touch with either Knezzen (AKA Knez) and/or Bolkonskij, who can be found in and even currently run the "Macintosh Garden", "Mac OS 9 Lives!" and "System 7 Today", they will GLADLY announce your project as "news" in the front page of the Garden and MOS9Lives. They are very fine gentlemen and will welcome you with open arms no matter what. I'm also looking forward to seeing what else you will end up cooking up for the Mac both software and hardware-wise, all those ideas are genuinely excellent! Since you are even considering hardware projects, here's one food for thought for you: figuring out schematics that could be used to boot Mac OS today (assuming the parts are there, else we find replacements if not, though last I checked NXP still was manufacturing a "G4" 7448 PPC CPU until recently, which works with our Macs after running famous CPU Upgrade upgrades like GigaDesigns', since they are pin-compatible with the 7447, and a compatibility shim can and has been used for sockets expecting a 7455 or 7457). Something akin to reverse-engineering the PowerMac MDD (Mirror Drive Doors model), but without any of the legal concerns (if charging for it, at least). The idea is to get "hardware independence" and make PowerMacs again. (I and others don't like "mainstream" CPUs so much, because of backdoors and other concerns like Intel's ME, AMD's PSP, and/or equivalents in both ARM and RISC-V CPUs.) Anyway, just throwing that out there, just in case one day the thought comes to mind, because if so, you aren't alone in this, and by far. ;) I also have this tendency to yap a lot too, so I hope the volume I'm posting now isn't TOO overwhelming, but to wrap things up, I'm also really glad to hear you intend to release the source of MacinAI (both versions)! I totally get the reluctance about source release, though, it's like laying out in the open one's own dirty laundry in public so to speak. :) But I think you shouldn't fear it, most community members would gladly and positively welcome the source code in whichever form it comes, with "unclean and untidy" code or not, and/or AI-assisted code or not. Above all, what your MacinAI project itself ALREADY accomplishes is nothing but instantly respect-inviting, because the technical details you went through in your downloads page really show the domain of knowledge you have is already beyond what most people can even keep up with, let alone acquire. (I particularly love the CW Pro 5 compiler bugs for AltiVec that you discovered, and that you shared them so we are all the wiser). Plus most people will be already too busy being happy that such software even exists for Mac OS! (May I sneak in a potential future request, even? You got FPU and even AltiVec acceleration... Can we, just maybe, hope for GPU acceleration one day, too? The 1.5GHz mini, unlike the other minis, even has 64 MB of VRAM, as opposed to just 32 MB, and while that's probably nothing for MacinAI purposes, I thought it could be... worth a tiny mention. :) ) I also thought I'd bring up the following quote, which I dearly carry with myself for life: "Never make decisions based on fear." It's good to be prudent or careful, for sure, but the best decisions we make in life always come out from anything but fear. In other words, go ham with those projects and releases! :) Looking forward to it all. (Again, zero pressure though!) |
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