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Mac Easter Eggs
System 8


By: David K. Every
& Daniel Fanton
(C) Copyright 1999 DKE - All Rights Reserved.

MacOS 8

Code Name: Tempo

Despite all the hype about MacOS8, it has relatively few easter eggs hidden in the Finder. As of right now, there is no secret about box or any other major easter egg like those in previous systems. Apple is trying their best to make the System as stable as possible. Removing easter eggs has been one of many ways to do that. Sytem 8 no longer has the Blue Meanies' hidden text, but that is to be expected the Blue Meanies were System 7 engineers. So, this is all I have. However, there have been a few great easter eggs added to various extensions and control panels in System 8. Look for blue apples; many of those new eggs were from System 8.

In The Resource

In the System File's STR resource, there is a new string, -16572, that says "Output sifter based on the DAV Audio Driver. This beast does not touch hardware directly in an attempt to be more portable."

In the CICN resource, at ID -20204, you will see the winking Mac you see above. MacAddict says that at just the moment the smiling Mac appeared on start-up, it was supposed to wink at you. Afraid that the wink might be offensive to other cultures, they removed the code but left the icon.

The Next Secret About Box?

In pre-release versions of OS 8, a secret about box could be accessed by holding down Command-Option-Control and selecting "About the User Experience Team..." from the Apple menu. The screen would then be cleared and the MacOS face would come up. On top of this background over-sized, pixelated icons of bugs and system icons would fade in and out along with credits of those who worked on the OS. The whole show took several minutes and would loop endlessly until the mouse was clicked or a button pressed. (From MacAddict)

Sadly though, it seems to have disappeared... with one exception:

Going into the Finder with ResEdit, go to the hmnu resource. At IDs 514 and 545, you will find listed "About this Computer...", "About the Finder...", and finally "About the User Experience Team...". Also, to support my theory that the egg still exists, there is also a User Experience Team balloon help string that appears when "About the User Experience Team..." is highlighted.

MacOS 8.1

Code Name: Bride of Buster

In early beta versions of the MacOS 8.1 Finders, the Special menu had different titles. Version 8.1b4c8 showed "Smile" in place of "Special" while version "8.1b2c3" displayed "Luscious". These names are in fact the code names of each beta release.


Created: 08/26/98
Updated: 11/09/02


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