# Messages For Macintosh
Messages for Macintosh is a software suite for classic Macintosh (System 2.0 through MacOS 9.2.2) systems to interoperate with Apple iMessages via a familiar interface, with [supporting software](https://github.com/CamHenlin/imessagegraphqlserver) running on a newer Mac computer.

![messages for macintosh](/images/messagesformacintosh.png)

## How to use Messages for Macintosh
There are two setup guides for Messages for Macintosh:

- [the user-facing setup guide](https://henlin.net/), for users not interested in exploring the development workflow. This is the article you want if you just want to use your old Mac to chat.
- [the developer-facing setup guide](https://henlin.net/), which explains how to set Messages for Macintosh up in such a way that you can make modifications to its different pieces

## Technologies
Messages for Macintosh is built on a lot of technologies. The READMEs of each of these is each worth familiarizing yourself with if you would like to contribute to Messages for Macintosh:

- [Retro68](https://github.com/autc04/Retro68) - a GCC-based cross compilation env for classic Macintosh systems
- [Nuklear Quickdraw](https://github.com/CamHenlin/nuklear-quickdraw) - a heavily modified, Macintosh-specific version of [Nuklear](https://github.com/Immediate-Mode-UI/Nuklear) allowing a simple way to provide GUI services
- [CoprocessorJS](https://github.com/CamHenlin/coprocessor.js) - a library that allows us to handle nodejs workloads sent over a serial port
- [serialperformanceanalyzer](https://github.com/CamHenlin/serialperformanceanalyzer) - used to analyze the performance of many different parts of the application

## Limitations / areas for improvement
Messages for Macintosh is not perfect. Here are some known limitations and things that could be improved:

- 10 conversations at a time, with the ability to open a new conversation if you know the recipient's address book entry
- Up to the most 15 recent messages are displayed in your selected chat. No pagination
- No image / emoji support (although emojis are generally translated to text)

## Pull requests and issues welcome
If you make any improvements or run into any issues, please feel free to bring them back to this repo with pull requests or issue reports. Both are welcome and will help Messages for Macintosh to be more useful in the future. 

## Animated demo
Here is a short demo of the classic Mac app in operation:

![messages for macintosh demo animation](https://henlin.net/images/messagesformacdemo.gif)
