A new native app for 20 year old OS X
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…
In plain words
This native macOS application simplifies access to the xbins FTP server, which was central to the original Xbox modding scene. Instead of the dated process of connecting to IRC channels and requesting temporary credentials, the app streamlines the workflow into a single click. Built as a native application for older OS X systems, it was developed on original 2007 hardware to maintain compatibility with legacy machines.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
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 client to access xbins. Pandora (and my app) simplifies this entire workflow into a single click. Inspired by Pandora, I decided to build my own take on what this dream tool might have looked like back in the day. I wrote a native Mac app on original hardware—an Intel iMac (20-inch, 2007)—running a 20-year-old operating system, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. This was my first foray into native Mac app development, though I’ve done some iOS development in the past. The result is Uppercut [1], and the source is available on GitHub [2]. For the development process, I used Claude to help with a lot of the coding, especially since I was constrained to Xcode 2.5 and the pre-“Objective-C 2.0” features available at the time. I had to be very specific in prompting Claude to avoid newer features that didn’t exist back then. Since the majority of Objective-C code out there comes from the era of iOS development (which relied heavily on Objective-C 2.0 until the arrival of Swift), this was a unique and challenging exercise in retro development. [0] - https://github.com/Team-Resurgent/Pandora [1] - https://uppercut.chadbibler.com [2] - https://github.com/chadkeck/Uppercut
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