Two Mac-like desktops for the Apple II, from 1985.

Date:
Mon, 02 May 2022 00:25:45 GMT

Description:
"Quark Catalyst" and "Mouse Desk" (which would later be purchased by Apple).

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Back in 1985 not long after the introduction of the original Apple Macintosh line (and before the release of the Apple IIgs) there existed multiple graphical desktop environments for the Apple II line of computers (including the Apple IIe and IIc).

Two of them Mouse Desk and Quark Catalyst attempted to look as much like the Macintosh desktop as possible. March 1986 article, in InfoWorld, reviewing both Mouse Desk and Quark Catalys.

Lets take a look at these two systems. As we go over them, its worth remembering that these were built for IIe and IIc systems with only 128k of RAM. Considering the hardware constraints, they are darned impressive. Mouse Desk

Mouse Desk was originally developed by a French company (known as Version Soft) back in 1985, and released for the Apple IIe and IIc.

This isnt a full desktop operating system, like GEOS (which also had a
version for the Commodore 64 ). No real applications to speak of.

It did, however, implement a few Desktop Accessories (such as existed back on the older Mac System software). Tiny little mini applications, including a sliding puzzle, and a calculator).

Mouse Desk was, in reality, two things: a graphical file manager, and application launcher.

The next year (in 1986), Apple purchased Mouse Desk and re-released it as Apple Desktop for the Apple IIgs. This was a stop-gap release until the official GS/OS was ready. Image credit: a2desktop.com

One truly fascinating aspect of Mouse Desk / Apple Desktop is that it is
still under active development. Not joking. Theres a GitHub repository for it and everything.

The source code for Apple Desktop (or Mouse Desk) was never released. Which means all the current development activity are based on disassembled versions that have been reverse engineered.

In fact, a new version ( Apple II Desktop Version 1.2 Alpha 44 ) was just released a few days ago. Quark Catalyst

Quark Catalyst was a piece of software that called itself a Program Selector.
The key purpose of Catalyst was to take Apple II program floppies and move the data over to 3.5 floppies or to hard drives and then launch them from there.

This was a way to speed up load times as well as reduce the need of swapping out and using 5.25 floppies quite so often.

In 1985 version 3.0 was launched which included a Mac like interface. Which looked exactly like this: Image credit: Quark Catalyst 3.0 manual

Overall Catalyst was a pretty impressive clone of the look and feel of the
Mac System software. Like Mouse Desk, there really werent applications to
run here, but it did have some Accessories again sliding puzzle and calculator. Image Source: Flickr .

Quark Catalyst was sold alongside a 3.5 floppy drive that Quark sold for the Apple II. But, technically, you could by the software standalone. How did they compare?

While Ive had a chance to use the recently updated versions of the Apple II Desktop , Ive never found a way to run Catalyst (either on hardware or in an emulator). So its hard for me to pass judgement between the two systems other than to note that the feature set and visuals are strikingly similar.

According to InfoWorld, back in 1986, both programs earned a 7.0 / 10. So, apparently, assuming they were similar is pretty spot on.

Fun side note: Yours truly used to write for InfoWorld (and other IDG owned tech publications) for a number of years. Though long, long after that
review of Catalyst and Mouse Desk was published.

The standard, annual subscription to The Lunduke Journal is currently just $1 / month. Which, considering the massive number of perks , is an absolute steal. Get 76% off for 1 year

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Link to news story: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/two-mac-like-desktops-for-the-apple


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