I use it to this day to run the "Best Books" accounting software (cut down MYOB) I bought in 1991 for the single-digit number of invoices I issue in a year. That's M68k software. Accounting doesn't change. The only thing I've had to do is change the GST rate from 12.5% to 15% in 2010.
I use print to PostScript for invoices and reports then copy them to the host machine (which these days can be anything) and PDF or print them.
In theory Basilisk II would do the job, but SheepShaver runs PowerPC software too, and a modern CPU emulating PowerPC emulating 68k is just fine.
I should try "II in a Mac" (from 1985) inside that.
> modern CPU emulating PowerPC emulating 68k is just fine.
I personally like to run my PowerPC 68050, 6502 NES emulator virtual python environment on the cloud, so that way you can virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine.
Okay, Okay, I know what you're thinking Amazon AWS engineers, not enough virtual machines, not enough abstraction, we'll leave it to the pros for that!
I also maintain a decades-old Macintosh that is kept simply for offline tax / accounting / business invoicing (USB print).
Even as a Millenial, it is extremely frustrating that modern versions of Excel/Office/&c are always trying to be so [un]helpful... auto-dates/-formatting is just such an absolute nuissance.
The day this machine dies will be one of great personal mourning / frustration.
Actually I almost never use a GUI word processor, just a lot of markdown/asciidoc or simply plain text. I do use Google sheets a lot for all kinds of stupid little things -- just so convenient that it's all automatically on every computer/phone/tablet I own -- or anyone else's computer I have access to, and I can share reader or editor links with people etc.
Hah, I actually haven't used it since I was last doing misc consulting stuff before living in Moscow in 2015-2018. I found my BestBooks folder easily enough, but had an ancient SheepShaver. Downloading an Apple Silicon-compatible build from January 2025 I replaced the app file, pointed it at a disk image, dragged the BestBooks folder in via the Unix shared folder ... and it launched right up!
The name SheepShaver is a play on ShapeShifter, which was a Mac II emulator for Amiga. I remember running an Amiga Emulator (UAE) AND Shapeshifter on top of that since it was the best Macintosh Emulation at one point in the late 90s.
There was a whole community around theming OS X in the aughts, chock full of talented designers. It all depended on ShapeShifter. MacThemes2.net was bustling, along with self-important invite-only communities like macristocracy.com.
Gosh, I remember that so well and fondly miss it. Was a wild, whimsical time for sure. They made other fun "haxies" (as they called them) too, but ShapeShifter was always the coolest. To this day I remember my favorite was the green Aluminum Alloy theme; I liked Milk too. Somatic was wild as well!
Fun fact: ShapeShifter was virtualized, not emulated, so software ran at full speed. I used it to play Myst and other games on my Amiga. Its 68060 CPU was faster than any real Mac, so programs were screamingly fast on it.
SheepShaver was originally virtualised and not emulated. The original version ran MacOS in a virtual machine on PowerPC BeOS (BeBox and Mac that ran BeOS.) Because of this it ran at full speed and was akin to the Classic environment on early MacOS X. I used to use it to run IE5 as the BeOS browser was quite poor and PowerPC never got any ports of more modern browsers. It ran really well and could be made full screen.
I’ve got it on my Amiga 500 with Vampire 500 accelerator (so-called 68080 MMX). Pretty sure that’s nearly the fastest native 68k Mac, even if it’s an FPGA.
For a very short period of time and circumstances (Mac PPC was out but some Photoshop plugins were m68k only) an Amiga with SCSI and a 68060 was the fastest Photoshop Mac. :)
I love playing with SheepShaver (and BasiliskII and MinivMac).
I created disk images for the various 68K/PPC Mac emulators that have not just my early game sources but the compilers/tools to build them (if you're into that sort of thing).
But I have a repo with the shareware games and two more repos of games that were never completed (and probably a third one coming when I get time to put it together). They're easy enough to find if you're interested with the above link as a starting point.
I just wanted to say that I LOVED Glider 4 when I was a kid. I had an Amiga 500 and later a 1200 but probably played Glider more than anything else, except maybe Frontier Elite 2, in my father's Macintosh LC.
Glider was very cool. Up there with Dark Castle in games I actually played.
A bit later on there were decent flight sims: FS4, Hellcats (amazing for the time), A-10 Attack!, F/A-18 Hornet, and the hardest to do well in: Flying Nightmares.
I first saw SheepShaver at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, a commercial product that enabled a Classic Mac environment on PowerPC-based BeOS hardware, the original BeBox.
These days, if you are just curious or want to relive to glory days of Apple's rise and near-death of 1990s, it might be easier to run a hosted environment such as Infinite Mac.
I’m surprised nobody mentioned the Rosetta Stone that is infinitemac.org - it’s “just” compiled to JavaScript or whatever but really well done.
From their “About”:
>>>Infinite Mac is a project by Mihai Parparita to make classic Mac and NeXT emulation easily accessible. It uses WebAssembly ports of Mini vMac, Basilisk II, SheepShaver, DingusPPC, and Previous to allow a broad set of System Software/Mac OS versions to run on the web.
Shortcuts to the most popular versions are available: system6.app, system7.app, kanjitalk7.app, macos8.app, and macos9.app.
<<<
Edward Mendelson does an amazing job packaging Sheep Shaver with a bunch of built-in utilities and interfaces to your outer system that makes it much more usable out of the box:
It’s too bad there isn’t more momentum in the Mac emulation scene. It seems like it stalled out with SheepShaver and Basilisk II. The only new thing is “make it run in JS.”
I would love to see an emulator that could run later OS versions like Tiger.
Sheepshaver is great, but I've found Qemu's PPC emulation has progressed probably beyond what Sheepshaver can offer. For instance, it can run MacOS 9.2.2 and even early MacOSX PPC versions. Due to it's emulation limitations (lack of MMU), Sheepshaver has some weird incompatibilities, for instance MS Office, that you won't encounter running Qemu. On Mac, the UTM app is a great place to start!
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I use print to PostScript for invoices and reports then copy them to the host machine (which these days can be anything) and PDF or print them.
In theory Basilisk II would do the job, but SheepShaver runs PowerPC software too, and a modern CPU emulating PowerPC emulating 68k is just fine.
I should try "II in a Mac" (from 1985) inside that.
I personally like to run my PowerPC 68050, 6502 NES emulator virtual python environment on the cloud, so that way you can virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine while you virtual machine.
Okay, Okay, I know what you're thinking Amazon AWS engineers, not enough virtual machines, not enough abstraction, we'll leave it to the pros for that!
Even as a Millenial, it is extremely frustrating that modern versions of Excel/Office/&c are always trying to be so [un]helpful... auto-dates/-formatting is just such an absolute nuissance.
The day this machine dies will be one of great personal mourning / frustration.
Thanks for the emulation alternative, OP!
Actually I almost never use a GUI word processor, just a lot of markdown/asciidoc or simply plain text. I do use Google sheets a lot for all kinds of stupid little things -- just so convenient that it's all automatically on every computer/phone/tablet I own -- or anyone else's computer I have access to, and I can share reader or editor links with people etc.
Here's browsing some oooold data...
https://hoult.org/bestbooks.png
https://hoult.org/bestbooks_about.png
BestBooks is apparently an offshoot of MYOB 3, your find is MYOB 5.
There was a whole community around theming OS X in the aughts, chock full of talented designers. It all depended on ShapeShifter. MacThemes2.net was bustling, along with self-important invite-only communities like macristocracy.com.
Good times.
Found a list with screenshots for those curious: https://www.mac-dvd.com/cool-mac-theme.html
I rocked CrystalClear Interface (CCI) from Musings from Mars for a good while too.
I created disk images for the various 68K/PPC Mac emulators that have not just my early game sources but the compilers/tools to build them (if you're into that sort of thing).
The commercial games are here: https://github.com/EngineersNeedArt/SoftDorothy-CasadyGreene...
But I have a repo with the shareware games and two more repos of games that were never completed (and probably a third one coming when I get time to put it together). They're easy enough to find if you're interested with the above link as a starting point.
A bit later on there were decent flight sims: FS4, Hellcats (amazing for the time), A-10 Attack!, F/A-18 Hornet, and the hardest to do well in: Flying Nightmares.
These days, if you are just curious or want to relive to glory days of Apple's rise and near-death of 1990s, it might be easier to run a hosted environment such as Infinite Mac.
https://infinitemac.org/
From their “About”: >>>Infinite Mac is a project by Mihai Parparita to make classic Mac and NeXT emulation easily accessible. It uses WebAssembly ports of Mini vMac, Basilisk II, SheepShaver, DingusPPC, and Previous to allow a broad set of System Software/Mac OS versions to run on the web.
Shortcuts to the most popular versions are available: system6.app, system7.app, kanjitalk7.app, macos8.app, and macos9.app. <<<
https://www.mendelson.org/macos9osx.html
You can think about his work as a wrapper for Sheep Shaver with some quality of life improvements and some pre-installed software on the disk image.
I would love to see an emulator that could run later OS versions like Tiger.
I’ve personally run as new as Tiger with it. Takes a little bit to start up but after that it’s reasonably responsive.
UTM.
https://github.com/utmapp/UTM