Alternatives
Products that do what A new native app for 20 year old OS X does
A few of us here are probably familiar with the original Xbox modding scene and the iconic xbins FTP server. Recently, I came across an amazing tool called Pandora by Team Resurgent [0], which got me thinking about how incredible something like this would have been 20 years ago. Just to clarify, I had no involvement in creating Pandora—I’m just inspired by their work. For those who aren’t familiar, getting access to xbins involves a rather dated process. You need to connect to a channel on an EFnet IRC server, message a bot for temporary credentials, then plug those credentials into your FTP…
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Hey HN! I built a native macOS desktop client for Hacker News and I'm open-sourcing it under the MIT license. GitHub: https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News Download (signed & notarized DMG, macOS 14.0+): https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News/releases Screenshots: https://github.com/IronsideXXVI/Hacker-News#screenshots I spend a lot of time reading HN — I wanted something that felt like a proper Mac app: a sidebar for browsing stories, an integrated reader for articles, and comment threading — all in one window.…
Feb 2026 · github.com
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RetroTick parses PE/NE/MZ binaries, emulates an x86 CPU, and stubs enough Win32/Win16/DOS APIs to run classics like FreeCell, Minesweeper, Solitaire and QBasic, entirely in the browser. Built with Preact + Vite + TypeScript. Demo: https://retrotick.com GitHub: https://github.com/lqs/retrotick
Feb 2026 · retrotick.com
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I'm building a video conferencing app designed to facilitate better remote piano lessons. My hope is to solve a lot of the challenges piano tutors and new students deal with when taking lessons through Skype/Zoom. It leverages WebRTC's data transmission to send media, MIDI state, and (eventually) send sheet music files and other musical data. I'm surprised with how well the MVP has worked and would love to hear any feedback or suggestions!
2024 · keyboardconnect.com
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To try it out, simply build the project yourself from source, or use attached bootable ISO image of the system (in Releases on Github) and run it in QEMU. https://blog.vxn.dev/rou2exos-rusted-edition
2025 · github.com
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Hi HN, To truly understand how operating systems and network protocols work, I decided to combine two classic learning tools: the xv6 teaching OS and a from-scratch TCP/IP stack. I'm excited to share the result: my own from-scratch TCP/IP networking stack running directly inside the xv6-riscv (https://github.com/pandax381/xv6-riscv-net) kernel. The project uses a modern virtio-net driver, allowing it to run seamlessly in QEMU and communicate with the host machine. Key features: - From-Scratch Stack: The core is powered by microps…
2025 · github.com
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Hey guys, so I've been working on native desktop macos client for jellyfin server. Feel free to join and try it out https://testflight.apple.com/join/LVj8KwAq
2023 · testflight.apple.com
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Hey HN, I’m an ex-Google engineer trying to get back into music production. I needed a way to sequence my hardware synths using AI contexts without constantly switching windows, so I built this. It runs entirely in the browser using WebMIDI. No login required. It connects to your local MIDI devices (if you're on Chrome/Edge) and lets you generate patterns. Tech stack: [React / WebMIDI API / etc]. Link: www.simplychris.ai/droplets Code is a bit messy, but it works. Feedback welcome.
Dec 2025 · simplychris.ai
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When building Hookie, I worked with NATS Jetstream a lot. While you can do everything using the CLI, I prefer the feeling of a nice GUI better. So I built one.
23d ago · streambench.app
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2015 · github.com
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Hello HN: Here is the link https://apps.apple.com/app/id1579078660 After forgetting to turn off a p2.xlarge instance for a week, I got so mad at myself I learnt swiftUI to build a native macOS console for most of the actions I do on the web AWS console. I didnt want to use electron or other non native frameworks. Most importantly I just wanted it to know how much a certain instance costs right now, no matter its state, its type, its lifecycle(like ondemand or spot) and the costs associated with the EBS volumes attached including their IOPS/throughput and etc. It also…
2021
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hi everybody, I’ve been working on this harness that is all native Swift for macOS. It’s fully featured with every feature i could find in cline, codex, and claude code. There is all swift command line too It’s taking me a long, long time, a few months to build this, and it’s fully open source Apache 2 licensed. Hoping people fork this and make many branches I’m looking for people who want to work on something that has much lower memory usage and much more potential to be just more efficient. Every other single harness has is written in using electron, so this harness is really unique in…
27d ago · github.com
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This was an interesting porting project for a few reasons (IMO): - The original game is/was awesome and, from a programming perspective, a wonder -- smooth scrolling arcade game on a 128kb Mac in 1984... - The port was done with a lot of help from AI (mostly Claude Code, but some Gemini CLI as well). I'm a programmer; it wasn't vibe-coded. But I couldn't have done the port of 68k assembly without it. FWIW, Claude seemed better at actually porting the 68k assembly but Gemini was better at finding bugs. YMMV. - I love Redux and Redux Toolkit for state management. For the port, I put the…
Sep 2025 · continuumjs.com
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I think the very first video game I ever played was Bugdom by Pangea Software, which came with the original iMac. There was also a shooter called Nanosaur, but my 7-year-old heart belonged to the more peaceable Bugdom, which featured a roly-poly named Rollie McFly needing to rescue ladybugs from evil fire ants and bees. Upon seeing the port to modern systems (https://github.com/jorio/Bugdom), I figured it should be able to run entirely in-browser nowadays, and also that AI coding tools "should" be able to do this entire project for me. I ended up spending perhaps 20 hours…
Feb 2026 · reallyeli.com
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So, I've never written a line of Rust in my life. I wouldn't know an `&mut this` from a mutandis. But I saw a tweet about a month ago that said, in this new era of AI, you'd be able to just take a library that you love, throw a TUI around it, and call it an app. So I spent about 200 bucks last month, here's what I came up with: Imbolc is a DAW that runs entirely in your terminal. It talks to scsynth over OSC and ships 58 instruments and 39 effects. VSTs are a work in progress, also GarageBand loops if you want to recreate "Umbrella". The codebase is about 60k? lines of Rust across 5 crates,…
Feb 2026 · github.com
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Hi HN, I’ve been working on a Rust userspace radio stack for running WFB-style links from macOS using RTL8812AU USB adapters. Full disclosure: I'm a software engineer, but not really a hardware or embedded systems engineer, so Codex GPT 5.5 has done the lion-share of the work here along with a bit of help from Claude Opus 4.7 here and there. It's taken about 1.5 to 2 weeks to get from zero to this first release. macOS doesn't expose the monitor-mode / packet-injection path that WFB systems normally rely on. I really didn't like the idea of needing a separate linux box just to talk WFB…
May 2026 · github.com
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Started this because configuring Fabric8 for EKS was driving me crazy. Building a client that auto-detects your environment (IAM roles, profiles, local configs) so you don't have to wire it all up manually. Still pretty early and building for EKS right now. Long way to go, but putting it out there early to see if others have hit the same problems or want to help shape where this goes.
Oct 2025 · github.com
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Here's something I realized: the most AI-native knowledge base isn't a SaaS product with an API. It's a folder of markdown files on your disk. Obsidian stores everything as plain .md files. That means Claude Code (or any AI tool) can grep, read, write, and traverse your entire knowledge base with zero setup. No API keys. No OAuth. No middleware. Just local file I/O. The only missing piece was sync. I wanted my vault on iPhone (iCloud), on Mac (local), and on GitHub (backup + version history) — without paying $4/mo for Obsidian Sync. cc-md is ~400 lines of bash. iCloud handles Apple…
Feb 2026 · github.com
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Try it at: ssh krnl.duetbrowser.com No sign up, totally free - no download. Let me know what you think. Prior art exists (brow.sh) but I wasn't satisfied with their graphical take. I wanted the raw, old skool terminal days of the early internet - BBS, and old green phosphor library comptuers - but running the modern web, with all the bells and jingle jangle whistles (JavaScript, etc). No funding, no VC, just 100% raw terminal fun. Not sure how long the demo will last, but try it out.
Jul 2026
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