Note: This list has been compiled from several different sources, and as such, some of the Easter eggs may not work properly (if at all) with your configuration. 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.
System Software Easter Eggs
(“7.X” refers to System Software version 7.0.0 or higher)
System 6.0.7 or 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 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.
Color (Control Panel) 7.x
Click on the Sample Text a few times. The strings “by Dean Yu” “& Vincent Lo” alternate.
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.)
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.
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).
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.”
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.
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…).
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).
We would like to thank Brian S. Kendig, from Princeton University, who originally compiled this list. If you have any Easter Eggs, E-Mail IconsRUS on America On-Line, and maybe we'll include another batch of Easter Eggs in a future edition of Inside Mac Games.
