These screen shots were taken with Basilisk II using a copy of MacOS 7.5.5 that was downloaded from Apple's web site and installed on a clean disk volume. MacOS has gone through a very large number of minor revisions in which new features have been added since 1.0. This page shows a couple features that I found interesting.

The MacOS booting up. The icons in the lower left are MacOS extensions that are loading.

The MacOS Desktop. It is basically the same as the desktop of the original MacOS. Like the original, it shows the drives and a trash can right on the desktop, there is a single menu bar that is always at the top of the screen, and file icons can be placed on the desktop. A new feature from the original is the ability to make an alias to a file (similar to a Windows 95 shortcut, but not quite as crude).

Have you ever wondered what a menu option or icon does before you click on it? Balloon help lets you know what a menu option does or what an icon is for by displaying a help balloon by every object as the pointer passes over it.

This is the MacOS 7.5.5 control panel folder. This is a real folder that contains control panel programs, unlike the Windows 95 control panel which is generated by a program.

Now here is a real interesting feature in MacOS 7.5.5, it lets you change the color of certain icons to represent various categories. Icons in MacOS can be completely customized, such as the Stuffit folders shown here. Just copy any icon or graphic on to the clipboard, select an icon, click File - Get Info, click the icon graphic and then click Edit - Paste. No fancy registry tricks are used like Windows does, folders use a simple hidden icon file and regular files store their icon in their resource fork.

Here are just a few of the desk accessories that are under the Apple menu. This version of MacOS comes with a post-it note type program as well as the traditional Note Pad program. It also has a File Finder program

(click on the image for large version)
Finally, a couple of screen shots that I think are impressive considering that these were made with a software emulator running 68K code on an x86. The first is running Netscape Communicator 4.06, Acrobat Reader 3, an old Claris Works word processor, and DOOM. Doom actually runs at a playable speed on a PII 333 under Basilisk II if the video is set right (640*480*256).

The last screen shot is taken at 1600*1200. The single menu bar works great on small screens or where only one program is used at a time, but in my opinion it becomes less efficient on large screens where many programs may be used at a time.

One more highly customized screen shot of MacOS: 3-d menus are generated by Appearance manager , new drive icons were copied in, the Control Strip (mainly useful on powerbooks), and the Microsoft Exchange Client for 68k macs (useful only if you have an MS-Exchange server).