Vincent Gable’s Blog

I give Microsoft’s current Mac software some shit, but I think it’s deserved. So it’s only fair I mention their glory days.

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.