This list has been compiled from several different sources, and as such some of the Easter eggs may not work properly with your configuration, if at all. Use them at your own risk !!!
HARDWARE EASTER EGGS
— MACINTOSH PLUS
From the debugger, enter “G 40E118”. This gives you a “Stolen from Apple Computer” message.
— MACINTOSH SE
Hit the interrupt switch (the button with the broken circle on it, on the left side of your machine closer to the back) to go into the built-in debugger, and enter “G 41D89A”. Four bitmap pictures of the Macintosh development team appear as a slideshow. Reboot (hit the button closer to the front, with the triangle on it) to get out of the endless cycle.
— MACINTOSH CLASSIC
Hold down Command-Option-x-o right after you turn on or reboot the machine. The Classic starts up from a minimal ROM-disk which contains System 6.0.3, Finder 6.1x, and AppleShare. (This version of the System is not recommended to run the Classic under.) If you look at the ROM-disk with a program able to see invisible files (like ResEdit or MacTools), you'll find folders hidden there bearing the names of the Classic designers. (The keys ‘X’ and ‘O’ were chosen because the development code-name of the Classic was the “Mac XO”.)
— MACINTOSH IICI
Set the system date to 9/20/89 (the release date of the IIci), and set your monitor to 8-bit color. Restart while holding Command-Option-c-i. You'll see a color picture of the IIci design team. Click the mouse to continue the restart.
— MACINTOSH IIFX
Set the system date to 3/19/90 (the release date of the IIfx), and restart while holding down Command-Option-f-x. You'll see a color picture of the IIfx design team. Click the mouse to continue the restart.
— APPLE FAX MODEM
While holding down the button on the front panel, turn on the modem. The modem will beep three times. After the three beeps, press the button again timed exactly where a fourth beep would have come (that is, spaced exactly with the same “rhythm”). If your timing is correct, the modem will speak the digitally-recorded voices of the three developers saying their names.
SYSTEM SOFTWARE EASTER EGGS
(“7.X” refers to System Software version 7.0.0 or higher)
— MULTIFINDER 1.0 (distributed with System Software prior to 6.0)
Hold down Command and Option while selecting “About MultiFinder…” from the bottom of the Apple menu. A scrolling list of credits appears.
— MULTIFINDER 6.0
Select “About MultiFinder…” and leave the dialog up for about an hour or more. (Yes, this means you can't use your machine meanwhile…). A message will appear:
“I want my”
“I want my”
“I want my l--k and f--l”
You can also see this message if you snoop around in the 'STR#' resources of MultiFinder for a while with ResEdit.
— SYSTEM 6.0.7 OR SYSTEM 7.x
Look through the data fork of the System File with a disk editing program (such as Norton Utilities, MacTools, or FEdit), or hold shift and “Open…” the System file with MS Word. The string “Help! Help! We're being held prisoner in a system software factory!” is at the end of the data fork.
— SYSTEM 6.0.7J (Kanjitalk)
Set the clock to January 1, 1992, and restart. The startup screen says “Happy new year” in Japanese.
— SYSTEM 7.x
Press Command-Option-Escape to kill the process currently in the foreground. This is useful if your machine is taking way too long to finish something and is ignoring you, or if an application has crashed -- sometimes you can use this trick to regain control of your machine long enough to save your work from other applications and restart your Mac (after you use this trick, you should generally restart as soon as possible, because memory may have been trashed). This is actually a documented feature of System 7. However, since lots of people never bother to read their manuals…
— FINDER 7.x
Hold down Option while choosing “About This Macintosh…”. The menu option changes to “About the Finder…”, and if balloon help is turned on, the balloon now reads “Displays a dialog with the original Finder picture.”. The original picture of the mountains from System 1.0 appears. If the creation date of the invisible “Desktop Folder” is May 13, 1991, or later, the names of all the Finder developers through Mac and Lisa history also scroll by. Hold down Command-Option while choosing “About” to get a goofy-face cursor.
— CACHES (Quadra Control Panel) 7.x
Option-click on the version number in the upper right-hand corner. The “040” icon will whoosh over, revealing the name of the programmer.
— CAPS LOCK (PowerBook Extension) 7.x
Turn on balloon help, press Caps Lock, and point to the up-arrow icon in the menu bar. The balloon help reads: “This file allows your Macintosh TIM or Derringer to display an icon…”. These were the working names of the PowerBooks; Apple forgot to change the extension before System 7.0.1 was released !
— COLOR (Control Panel) 7.x
Click on the Sample Text a few times. The strings “by Dean Yu” “& Vincent Lo” alternate.
— LABELS (Control Panel) 7.x
Delete all the label names in the Labels control panel, and reboot. The labels are now “None,” “a”, “l”, “a”, “n”, “j”, “e”, “f”.
— MAP (Control Panel) 6.0.x and 7.x
1. Type MID as the city name, and click Find. The location found is the “Middle of
Nowhere”, an insignificant location in the middle of the South Atlantic. (System
7.x only)
2. Click on the version number “7.x”. This will insert the string “v.7.x, by Mark Davis”
into the city name field.
3. Press Option and click the Find button. This will search alphabetically to every
city stored in the control panel.
4. In the Finder, if you select the Map Control Panel icon and open it from the File
menu after pressing either Shift, Option, or Shift-Option, the map displayed will
be at either 200% resolution, 400% resolution, or 800% resolution, respectively.
5. Click anywhere in the image of the map and drag. You'll stroll…er…uh…scroll
around the world.
6. Copy either the color map from the Scrapbook supplied with Apple's System Soft-
ware version 7.x, or the color map from the “Globe” module from After Dark by
Berkeley Systems. Open the Map Control Panel and choose Paste, and click
“Replace” when prompted to do so. You'll replace the standard black and white map
with the new color version.
— MEMORY (Control Panel) 7.x (on a machine capable of virtual memory)
Turn on virtual memory and hold down Option while clicking on the pop-up menu used to choose a hard drive for your swapfile. This brings up a hierarchical pop-up menu with the names of the programmers; each name points to a submenu with a few comments.
— MONITORS (Control Panel) 7.x
Click the version number (“7.x”) in the control panel window. When you do this, a box pops up with the names of the people who wrote Monitors. While you hold down the mouse button, tap Option. When you press Option, the smiley face sticks out its tongue. After tapping Option at least times (the more, the better), the names begin to get rearranged and some first and last names get replaced with “Blue” or “Meanies”.
— PUZZLE (Desk Accessory) 7.x
You can paste any graphic from the Clipboard into Puzzle's main window by using the standard Paste command in the Edit menu. You can also create your own Puzzle graphic in any graphics program and again, copy to/paste from the Clipboard. Ideally, any graphics you create will be 79 pixels wide by 79 pixels tall, or else Puzzle will automatically scale the graphic to fit those dimensions. You can also copy the picture from the Puzzle and look at the Clipboard to see what it will look like when solved. Finally, you can choose Clear from the Edit menu to rotate between the standard Apple logo graphic, an old-style number puzzle graphic, and whatever graphics you've currently pasted (however, once you've Cleared a pasted graphic you must re-paste it to use it again; only the Apple logo and number puzzle are permanently stored within Puzzle.)
— MACSBUG (under Finder 7.x)
Turn on Balloon Help and point to the MacsBug file. The balloon reads: “This file provides programmers with information proving that it really was a hardware problem…”.
— QUICKTIME 1.x
1. Turn on Balloon Help and point to the QuickTime file. The balloon reads: “time n. A
nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession
from the past to the present to the future.”.
2. You can make Startup Movies the same way you make StartUpScreens. Just rename
your favorite movie to “Startup Movie”, drop it in your System folder, and restart.
3. In Simple Player, hold down Option as you select “About Simple Player…”. The two
movie frames now have greyscaled cats in them.
THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE EASTER EGGS
— ADOBE PHOTOSHOP®
Hold down the Option key and select “About Photoshop…”. A dialog crediting “Knoll Software” as the original designers appears.
— CLARIS CAD
Hold down the Option key and select “About Claris CAD…”. A system configuration summary appears.
— DART (Apple's Disk Archiving and Retrieval)
Select “About DART…”, and click on the picture of the dartboard. A credits animation will play; clicking on the text area while the credits are displaying will make them go by faster.
— DISINFECTANT
Select “About Disinfectant…”, and hold any menu down to pause the advancing virus names while the music plays. A bitmap photo of John Norstad appears in one half of the dialog, while in the other half an animated sequence of virus names march out while the Monty Python theme song plays, until they get stomped by a huge foot. Holding down a menu pauses the viruses (but not the music), and if you hold the menu down long enough, the entire theme song (John Philip Sousa's “Liberty Bell March”) will play ! (You may have to release the mouse button every now and then if the music does stop).
— FLASHWRITE II
Hold down Option as you select “About FlashWrite II…” under the “star” logo. A Mr. Mojo Risin' quotation appears.
— HYPERCARD 2.x
Hold down Option as you select “About Hypercard…”. You get (in 2.1 only) a dialog box describing your system setup, and (in either 2.0 or 2.1) the chooser name, if you've entered one, appears in the “HyperCard by” title. (That is, if you entered “Joe Cool” as your name in the Chooser (6.0) or Sharing Setup (7.0), the top of the window will read “HyperCard by Joe Cool”. Also, on a Quadra, you will be told your system is a “Macintosh Macintosh”.
— INSTALLER 3.x
1. After dismissing the initial welcome dialog, type “ski”. A humorous list of the
developers will appear, and you will be able to choose from five wait-cursors: the
hand with the moving fingers (standard), a spinning globe, the familiar spinning
disc, the even more familiar wristwatch, and dots that move (this works under
System 6.0.x only).
2. Hold down command and option while the Easy Install screen is up. The Help button
becomes “About”, and clicking on it brings up a few screens of credits.
— JAM SESSION
Choose “About Jam Session…”. The credits are displayed on the label of a record, and you can hear it click (as an old record does after it's played to the end). When you click the mouse to dismiss the dialog, you hear the scratching noise of the needle being lifted off the record.
— KIWIENVELOPES! 3.1
Choose “About KiwiEnvelopes!…”. A letter is deposited into a mail truck which then rolls off the screen. After it leaves, a marquee shows the names of the development team.
— MACDRAW PRO
Hold down Option while selecting “About MacDraw Pro…”. The dialog shows your system setup.
— MACPAINT 2.0 (only the first few copies, before Claris caught it)
Hold down Tab and Space while choosing “About MacPaint…”. A bitmap of a well-known painting of a nude zebra-striped woman atop a white zebra appears.
— MICROSOFT EXCEL 3.0
1. Open a new spreadsheet, then go to cell IV16384. (Press Command-Right, then
Command-Down to jump there.) Use the scroll bars to scroll down and right more
until only that cell is showing, then set that cell's width and height both to 0. All
that will remain in your window will be the little square in the upper-left-hand
corner that you normally click on to select the entire spreadsheet; click on it. The
contents of the window will be replaced by a little Lotus-stomping, then a list of
Excel's programmers and beta-testers. When your normal Excel window comes
back, scroll away to keep the show from repeating.
2. Set the style of any cell to “excel” (by selecting “Format Styles…” and typing
“excel” without the quotes). Then choose “About Excel…” from the Apple menu and
click on the big Excel icon. A brief animation (“So good, it hurts.”) alternates with
the names of the developers (“Recalc or Die!”).
— MICROSOFT WORD 3.x (and up)
1. Spellcheck the word “childcare”. The spell-checker will suggest one word:
“kidnaper” (sic). (checked with Word 3.01 and 4.0)
2. Select “About Microsoft Word…” and command-click on the Word icon. The result-
ing dialog box gives the names of beta-testers.
— NORTON UTILITIES 1.1.x (and higher)
1. Choose “About The Norton Utilities…”. Command-click the diamond just in front of
the string “Version x.x” in the About box. When running 1.1.x, a list of the develop-
ers appears. When running version 2.0.x, a nifty caricature cartoon of the develop-
ers appears. In version 2.0.x, you can get the list of the developers by just clicking
on the large icon of The Disk Doctor (click on the Doctor in his new position to
make the list go away, or click OK).
2. In Speed Disk (Norton Utilities 1.1), choose “About Speed Disk…”. Command-click
the diamond just in front of the string “Version 1.1”. The large letters that make
up the name “SPEED DISK” swap themselves pair-by-pair until the name eventually
unjumbles itself again.
3. In the Filesaver Control Panel (Norton Utilities 2.0.x), click and hold on the life
preserver icon to see the names of the two main developers.
4. In Wipe Info (Norton Utilities 2.0.x), choose “About Wipe Info…”. Command-click on
the diamond icon to change the cursor to the hand-with-eraser cursor. Drag
through the entire About window without clicking the mouse button, and zeroes
will appear in the window. When the window is about 99% full of zeroes, you'll
hear a nice little sound, followed by a picture of the developers.
5. In Norton Backup (Norton Utilities 2.0.x), choose “About Norton Backup…”. Click on
the diamond next to the string “Version 2.0.x”, and you'll hear a pretty sound before
the About box goes away.
— QUICKEYS 2
Open the macro definition window, and click on the logo to bring up a credits window. Wait for about half a minute. A bunny walks across the window beating a drum. After it crosses, the message “QuicKeys keeps on going!” is displayed.
— RESEDIT 2.x
These Easter Eggs are documented in the book “ResEdit™ Reference: For ResEdit version 2.1”, available from the Apple Programmers' & Developers' Association (APDA) at (800) 282-2732. The book also includes many keyboard shortcuts and some special ResEdit features; however, here are a few of the best.
1. Hold Command-Option and choose “About ResEdit…”. You'll see a list of credits.
2. There is a hidden Change Color command in the pixel (bit) editors. If you hold down
the Command key and pick a new color, all pixels of the current foreground (or
background) color are changed to the new color.
3. Hold down Shift, Option, and Command as you choose “About ResEdit…”. You can
now enter “pig mode”, along with an oinking pig sound. When you put ResEdit into
pig mode, resources will be compacted and purged each time ResEdit goes through
its event loop (several times a second). However, since this makes ResEdit slower,
it's not of much use outside Apple; in fact, it's usually only used to debug ResEdit
itself !!! If you're writing you're own editor, though, you can use pig mode to test
your editor. Finally, if you turn on pig mode while running ResEdit from a floppy
disk, the disk will “oink” a few times each second (be warned, on occasion this can
cause a crash…).
— SOUNDEDIT (not for Pro versions)
Choose “About SoundEdit…”. A bomb alert box will come up, but after a second you'll see the fuse start to burn (along with appropriate sound effects). Once it blows up, you'll see a list of credits along with a sad doggie and bomb debris.
— TEACHTEXT 1.1 (and up)
Hold down the option key while you select “About TeachText…”. An extra list of odd names appears (possibly developers ?).
— TO DO! 3.1
Option-click on the copyright message at the bottom of the window. A poem by the author appears. (You may have to make the window a little bigger to see all of it).
— WRITENOW 2.2
Select “About WriteNow…”, then option-click on the About dialog. Little men run out and change all the letters one-by-one.
Many of these goodies came from a file called MacTricks that a friend of mine gave me. Although it was a text document, apparently it had been set up to be used on the UNIX platform. As such, I've edited out all of the unnecessary characters used by that system. I've also gone through and corrected some minor spelling and grammar errors. I've verified what Easter eggs I could out of this list, and I've added all of the ones that I know of.
The original author of MacTricks is Brian S. Kendig, from Princeton University. He requested on the original file that you address any new goodies to him, but I'm not sure as to how to get in touch with him. If anyone knows how to do so, please contact me so that I can update this file with the proper information (after all, this was apparently his baby, and I don't want to take anything away from his work). In the meantime, however, I'll continue to update this file with new Easter eggs if anyone wants to send them to me. Leave me some E-mail on America Online, or send me a note if that's more to your liking.
