Since the Apple II is the older cousin of the Macintosh, we've always had a soft place for it in our hearts, disregarding its flaws and appreciating its strengths. In fact, one of the first Macintosh emulators was for the Apple II+. Nowadays, of course, Apple IIgs emulators have also been developed.
 | the required IIgs ROM image. (This file must be renamed to ROM.kegs) |
| KEGS-OSX 1.84 (0.65). |
| KEGSMac 0.85. |
KEGS-OSX is a new Apple IIgs emulator especially built for Mac OS X. It's been ported from HP-Unix and this version has a lot of optimization, both on the source code and in Cocoa integration. It can achieve 10 times the speed of the original version.
| the Apple IIgs System Software 6.0.1 from Apple Computer. |
 | the KEGS homepage. |
| the KEGS-OSX homepage. |
 | to Benoît Dardelet, Darrell Walisser, and Gilles Tschopp, authors of KEGS. |
| Bernie ][ The Rescue 2.6. |
| Bernie ][ The Rescue 3.0 Preview Version. |
| the required IIgs ROM image. (This file must be renamed to Apple2GS.ROM) |
Bernie ][ The Rescue is the best source of Apple IIgs emulation. Since the Apple IIgs was compatible with older Apple II titles as well, Bernie ][ The Rescue is also a great way to play regular Apple II software. This emulator delivers fast, accurate IIgs emulation via a low-level emulator implementation ("emulating metal"). It's fast, stable and runs about every Apple IIgs software program effortlessly.
Bernie ][ the Rescue is also the only Apple IIgs emulator which can run Wolfenstein 3D, DiversiTune, and other recently released titles for the IIgs.
| the Apple IIgs System Software 6.0.1 from Apple Computer. |
| the Bernie ][ The Rescue home page. |
| to Andre Horstmann and Henrik Gudat, authors of Bernie ][ The Rescue. |
| Stop the Madness 0.851r. |
| Stop the Madness 0.881r. |
Stop the Madness was one of the first emulators for the Apple II. Stop the Madness is not even PowerPC native, but it's still speedy, fully-featured and compatible with most Apple II software.
There are two versions of Stop the Madness available. Version 0.881r has many extra features and customizability. However, it also has a lot of problems, and isn't nearly as stable as 0.851r.
| to Kevin Lund, author of Stop the Madness. |
| Catakig 1.17b. |
| the ROM image of an Apple IIe for use with Catakig. |
| the ROM image of an Apple II+ for use with Catakig. (This file must be renamed to Apple2P.ROM) |
Catakig is a very impressive emulator! Catakig delivers full support of the Apple II, Apple II+, and Apple IIe, simply by downloading the appropriate ROM image. Catakig also provides full sound and graphics support, in both monochrome and color, and even includes the odd quirks of the original Apple II display hardware and color palettes.
| the Catakig home page. |
| to Colin Klipsch, author of Catakig. |
| OSXII 0.8 beta. |
| OSXII 0.7 beta, for Macs with nVidia video cards. |
OSXII is a Mac OS X-only Apple IIe emulator written in Cocoa. It has steep system requirements--it requires OS X 10.2.2 and a 500MHz G4 or better. However it appears to be a quite functional, solid emulator if you have the horsepower to run it.
| the OSXII home page. |
| to Axel Bauer, who ported OSXII to OS X. |
| Virtual ][ version 2.5.1. |
Virtual ][ is a Mac OS X (Jaguar or later) Apple II emulator written by Gerard Putter. It emulates either an Apple II or Apple II+; you can set plugin cards, amount of memory and type of monitor; different configurations can be saved as documents; multiple virtual machines can run at the same time (only limited by available processor power); it supports several peripheral cards: the 16 Kb RAM card, a clock card, a printer card and the Disk II card; it can read and write Apple II disk images in several popular formats; it emulates a cassette tape drive; it plays sound produced by the Apple II through the Macintosh speakers; it accurately implements the hardware of the Apple II in software, so all Apple II software should run.
| the Virtual ][ homepage. |
| to Gerard Putter, author of Virtual ][. |
| IIe 3.0.1. |
| IIe 3.0. |
| the required IIe ROM image. |
IIe, by Vincent and Victor Tan, is a very solid Apple IIe emulator. Version 3.0.1 fixes some bugs and holds the promise that future versions will emulate sound cards.
| Victor and Vincent Tan's home page. (this points to an archive of the original page) |
| to Vincent Tan, author of IIe. |
| MacE 1.0. |
An emulator which isn't quite as nice as either of those two is MacE. Although it's an Apple IIe, it seems very 'prerelease.' First of all, you can't load disk images yet. Second, many menu items refuse to respond, including the About box, the Insert Disk item, and the Preferences box. However, it's certainly a fancy version of BASIC if you're so inclined.
| iGS 0.53r6 for PowerPC. |
| the required IIgs ROM image. |
iGS is an Apple IIgs emulator based on the freeware XGS. It includes tools for conversion of DSK and DiskCopy disk images, and should work well with most Apple IIgs applications.
iGS has steadily improved from its first incarnation. Ensoniq support works suprisingly well in a number of titles, and the disk image conversion process has been made much easier. The GS Finder boots up very well under iGS, although not as quickly as Bernie (which has been tuned for PowerPC).
| the Apple IIgs System Software 6.0.1 from Apple Computer. |
| the iGS-Mac home page. |
| to Michael Bytnar, author of iGS. |
| ][ in a Mac 2.5.3. |
][ in a Mac was the first emulator ever designed for Macintosh computers. It worked on
the original toaster Macs, and apparently ran at a decent fraction of the
Apple ]['s speed. Unfortunately, this relic relied on a lot of weird tricks
for screen rendering and speed and therefore fails to run on most current
Macintoshes. Reportedly the emulator will boot and run on some newer
machines if the monitors control panel is set to black-and-white, but on my machine it just displays a tiny box in the corner of the screen.
 | of ][ in a Mac. |
| OpenPhoenix. |
OpenPhoenix (originally called Deja ][) is a stripped-down Apple II emulator meant for one purpose only--running AppleWorks on the Macintosh. As such, it does an admirable job of this task, including nice tricks like automatic clipboard conversion. Also, since OpenPhoenix is an open-source project, the source code is included along with the software.
| of OpenPhoenix. |
| of OpenPhoenix. |
| to Mark Munz, one of the authors of OpenPhoenix. |
| Gus 1.0b4. |
Gus is an Apple IIgs emulator for Power Macintoshes. It is an Apple project that many felt was the best Apple IIgs emulation package. For a time, Apple gave away copies of Gus to schools and non-profit institutions. However, it appears that Gus is no longer being developed.
| of Gus starting up. |
| of Gus running the Apple IIgs Finder. |
Apple Software
| the Apple IIgs Fairway, an excellent Apple IIgs site. |
| the Asimov Apple II Archive, an incredibly thorough Apple II archive. |
| a large archive of Apple IIgs software which can be used with XGS or Bernie. |
| DSK2FILE, which lets you convert Apple II disks to Mac DSK files (and vice-versa). An Apple II with two disk drives is required. |
| Easy Convert, a utility for Apple IIgs owners that makes conversion of 3.5" and 5.25" disks to Macintosh a simple task. |
| ][2Mac, which lets you copy Apple II disks onto your Mac (and back),
in a way that they can be used in both 'IIe' and 'Bernie ][ the Rescue'. |
| the home page of A2Convert, a utility for cataloging Apple II disk images. |
| a collection of tools for dealing with Apple II DSK images. |
This Apple II software should work with any of the above emulators. If you have problems with images, please contact the emulator authors.
| the MESS page. (MESS is a multi-console emulator which includes support for Apple II.) |
