Apple Copland D11E4 now boots directly in your browser
One of Apple’s strangest unfinished chapters has just become much easier to explore. Michael Steil has managed to get Copland D11E4, the final publicly available build of Apple’s abandoned next-generation operating system, running inside an improved version of the DingusPPC emulator — directly in a web browser.
Copland was Apple’s ambitious mid-1990s attempt to replace System 7 with a considerably more modern architecture, including a microkernel, virtual memory and pre-emptive multitasking. The project was eventually cancelled, with Apple instead acquiring NeXT and following the technological path that would ultimately lead to Mac OS X.
The browser version uses WebAssembly and, according to Steil, a modern computer can emulate the system at roughly the speed of the original hardware. Getting D11E4 running required 11 patches to DingusPPC. Once booted, you can actually poke around Copland and try surviving software such as GXSlidemaster and Eric’s Solitaire.
It is unstable, unfinished and occasionally drops straight into a debugger — which, frankly, makes it an even more authentic visit to one of computing history’s most fascinating dead ends.