Editing Macintosh clone (section)

==Emulators==
{{as of|1989}}, the only legal Macintosh clone was an [[Atari ST]] with Mac ROMs.<ref name="microbytes198902">{{Cite magazine |date=February 1989 |title=Nanobytes |url=https://archive.org/details/eu_BYTE-1989-02_OCR/page/n15/mode/1up?view=theater |access-date=2024-10-08 |magazine=BYTE |page=12}}</ref> The ST can emulate a Mac by adding the third-party Magic Sac emulator, released in 1985, and, later, the Spectre, [[Spectre GCR]], and Aladin emulators. The first three of those emulators requires that the user obtain a set of Mac ROMs sold as system upgrades to Macintosh users. Later, multiple [[Emulation on the Amiga#Mac OS on Amiga|emulators]] were released for the [[Amiga]].<ref>{{cite web | url=http://shapeshifter.cebix.net/|title=The Official ShapeShifter Home Page}}</ref>

Starting with the sales of [[Power Macintosh|PowerPC Macs]], a [[Mac 68k emulator|CPU emulator to run 68000 applications]] was built into the Mac OS. By the time [[Motorola 68060|68060]] processors were available, PowerPC Macs became so powerful that they ran 68000 applications faster than any 68000-based computer, including any Amiga, Atari ST or [[Sharp X68000]]. This means even a 68060-upgraded Atari ST clone or Amiga, which avoid CPU emulation, were always slower, on top of causing some programs not to work thanks to imperfect virtualization of the Mac system and remaining machine components.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/ppc.html |title=The PowerPC Triumph |accessdate=1 July 2011}}</ref>

[[Connectix]] also released another 68k emulator for Macs, replacing the original, called Speed Doubler, supposedly reported to be even faster than Apple's. As the years went by, the emulator was not updated to work with later versions of the original Mac OS, however, supposedly because Apple's own 68k emulator eventually surpassed it in performance, and the OS itself relied further on native PowerPC code with each new Mac OS update.

There was also a software emulator for x86 platforms running [[DOS]]/[[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] and [[Linux]] called [[Executor (software)|Executor]], from ARDI. ARDI reverse-engineered the Mac ROM and built a 68000 CPU emulator, enabling Executor to run most (but not all) Macintosh software, from System 5 to System 7, with good speed. The migration from 68000 to [[PowerPC]], and the added difficulties of emulating a PowerPC on x86 platforms, made targeting the later Mac OS versions impractical.