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Location: GUIs > Apple > The Apple II Desktop

The Apple II Desktop

I originally found this program on an Apple II GS system disk back in high school. I imported the disks to PC  disk file format, but I only recently found an emulator that could properly run it.


The Apple II Desktop is broken in to two components, the Selector and the Desktop.
The Selector is a small menu program that allows quick selection of applications or booting from other Apple II devices.


The Desktop's About box. It is interesting to note that this was back in 1986 and based on the Macintosh UI that was released in 1984. Microsoft Windows did not even come close to a UI like this until almost 10 years later with Windows 95! (And then M$ ditched it all in Windows 98)


The Desktop, which was obviously based on the Macintosh finder, presents the file system as a series of iconized files and folders. Double clicking a drive or folder opens up a new windows that can be dragged around the screen and resized at will. Notice how open drives and folders remain grayed out. There is also a "zooming" animation that occurs when a folder or drive is opened.


Just drag and drop between folders or to a drive to copy files. Dragging to the trash deletes them.


I was copying some files around when it hit me how much this was like Windows 95 (or perhaps how much Windows 95 took from it). Other disk managers of the time were usually very unfriendly about overwriting files and I was surprised to have it ask me in this manner.


Also notice the Selector menu, which lets you manage the items previously seen in the selector screen. Now is it just me or does this look like a the "new" Windows 98 Favorites menu?


This is one of the Desktops dialog boxes. In this case it is editing one of the Selector entries.


The Apple II Desktop is not really an operating system, but it does come with several desktop accessories. On is a simple calculator.


Another accessory is the text viewer. It can view any file that contains ASCII text. Clicking on the "Proportional" in the upper right switches between a proportional and fixed width font.


Finally, it also includes a scrambler puzzle with the Apple logo.