From “Classic” Mac OS 8.1 in 1998 through Mac OS X 10.2 Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (for Mac) was the default web browser Apple chose for Mac OS. The very fist iMac? It came with IE:mac, just like the first version of Mac OS X.

And IE:mac wasn’t so bad, for it’s era. (It was the first browser to have color correcting PNGs, by the way!) There was one really neat feature that I think is worth calling out: it would match your iMac’s color, automagically.

Technical Details That I Only Half Remember

If you have a better understanding of how this worked, please let me know! I couldn’t find any details online. Mostly, I’m writing down what I remember before I forget.

The poorly named Gestalt function lets you check information about the Mac OS runtime, like “what version of Mac OS is this?“. You pass it a FourCharCode, and replies with a 32-bit value or an error code — old stuff from the “Classic” Mac OS days.

There was an undocumented code, 'yum!' ¹, that returned the color of an the iMac or iBook case. IE:mac would check this when it first started, and choose a color scheme to match the operator’s Mac. It was a seamless personal touch that really impressed me.

It’s the sort of thing I’d like to see more of on today’s multi-colored iPods and iPhones.

¹It might have been 'Yum!', I don’t remember exactly, and Gestalt() returns gestaltUndefSelectorErr, -5551, for all of variations on my MacBook Pro under Snow Leopard.

There’s a detail about Marathon ∞ that I haven’t seen documented anywhere, but I thought was very cool.

If you tried to use MacsBug on a PowerPC machine to inspect (disassemble) M∞, none of the functions had names, except for one: HeyPervertStopLookingAtMyPEF.

(PEF stands for Preferred Executable Format, the way Mac OS applications stored PowerPC code).

Today, you can still play Marathon 2: Durandal on XBox Live for a price, or play any of the trilogy for free on a computer. Sadly though, I don’t think the game has aged as well as Escape Velocity, which is still a blast today.