An Apple watch enthusiast got his wearable tech running on an old operating system this week. It’s a tech trip back in time. Nick Lee of New York got this Apple watch running on the Mac OS 7.5.5, which hasn’t been updated in about 20 years. The Mac OS 7.5.5. dates back to the 1990s. Lee used an emulator to do so.
The process involved porting the open source Mini vMac emulator to the OS platform on which the Apple watch runs. It took him about four hours to complete the process, sending the watch back in time. A user, at least at this point, cannot interact with the Mac OS desktop though, although there is potential for voice commands to carry out actions.
Perhaps most amazing about this news is that no jailbreaking was required. Instead, Lee used the WatchOS developer kit to create the port. Lee is a programmer who had access to the WatchOS 2.0
The Watch’s S1 chip is about equal to the A5 chip in the iPhone 4S. That means the watch certainly has the functionality to run those kinds of programs. It’s a throwback of Mac OS nostalgia on the Apple watch this week.
In regards to the present-day Apple Watch, it appears the Watch is gaining more attention from consumers than the iPhone. As per Morgan Stanley data released June 24, demand for the wearable device is higher by about 20% than the first-generation iPhone six months after it launched. The data also shows, according to Apple Insider, that Apple Watch’s interest in its launch week was about half of consumer interest in the first iPhone. However, the Watch has had less deceleration since its initial launch than the iPhone. The Apple Watch also has had more supply constraints than the iPhone. The launch of the iPhone 6s is just around the corner.