Did Apple's recent developer conference make you long for the days when your Macintosh greeted you with a smile and could set flying toasters as a screensaver? As it happens, a developer managed to get a copy of Mac OS 7 running on a Nook Simple Touch.

"FlyingToaster" on the 68k Macintosh Liberation Army forum got the OS running on his Nook with a little help from other like-minded developers. Member "zydeco" got Mini vMac software running on Android, which you port onto your Android device. This will then let you use Mac OS 7 and 7.5*, although FlyingToaster notes that 7.0 is more reliable than later versions. He then used Mini vMac for Android and hacked it onto his rooted Nook Simple Touch.

Of course, there are a couple of small issues. The screen of the Nook Touch can get a "ghosting" effect (that's where certain images burn onto the screen), and also suffers from the occasional flickering that apparently can render some applications unusable. Although the onscreen keyboard works well enough to let you use Microsoft Word and a paint program, it has no arrow keys, which can be annoying if you want to play some retro games.

Other than that, the software generally reacts to being touched as though it's being clicked. There are a couple of minute niggles, like the Apple menu being a bit awkward to select, but that is probably to be expected when the OS was designed for a little pointer rather than a finger.

To get a vintage version of Mac software running on your Android gadget, visit the forum. You can also see more images of the hack running on FlyingToaster's Imgur page.

[68k Macintosh Liberation Army via Mike Cane X and Gizmodo]

*The "Mac OS" moniker didn't come into use until Mac OS 7.5.1; prior to that, it was typically called System 7. ↩

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This story, "Blast From The Past: Nook Touch Hacked to Run Mac OS 7" was originally published by PCWorld .