Macaros 0.1 — AROS on Apple Silicon 🎉 Actually, here it is: the first release. Macaros is AROS (the open-source AmigaOS reimplementation) running as a native app on Apple Silicon, hosted by macOS. The Mac owns the drivers, and AROS reaches them through standard exec I/O. What comes with it • A host Rust cross-compiler, so you can build Rust programs for AROS. • The core ffmpeg libraries and FFProbe (there is no standalone ffmpeg binary). The

FFViewX

tool plays video natively, and can use the host GPU through a shim for a 5 to 10x speedup. • Real fixes, like the crash when resizing a window. • More experimental pieces, like some crash containment. • A shared clipboard, to copy and paste between AROS and the Mac. • Mount folders from the host. • Internet access through the host. • A lot of work went into driving AROS from the outside: look at

aros-ctl

. It automates things, and it also lets an AI drive the system without running blind 👀 It can even figure out where it is stuck (

aros-ctl diag

and similar). What does not work yet The Cocoa/Metal settings are not really plugged back in, so most preferences have no effect for now. The good news: the settings UI is generated automatically from a JSON file, so this should be done soon-ish. How big is this (these numbers are AI generated, I cannot verify them myself)

AROS OS source (aarch64 CPU port + darwin host):
  32,800  .c     kernel, drivers, host bridge
   4,000  .h     headers
     700  .conf  module/build config
     700  .src   module sources
     330  .s/.S  assembly (aarch64 boot/context)
     600  rest   diff/in/tmpl/yml/md
  Total: ~39,100 added / ~10,400 removed, 598 files

Host / graft layer (Cocoa/Metal, harness, tooling):
  54,900  .c     host bridge, drivers, harness, samples
  34,600  .md    docs (design/spec/status)
  10,300  .h     headers
   8,800  .m     Objective-C (Cocoa/Metal display, app shell)
   4,200  .sh    run/deploy/control scripts
   2,400  .s/.S  assembly
   1,900  .rs    Rust-on-AROS work
   2,000  rest   metal, perl, python, toml, json
  Total: ~125,900 added over 225 commits

And the funny part: the first commit is dated June 26. I guess this is what 100 million tokens buys you in Claude Code, with both Opus 4.8 and Fable 5. Help wanted This is the very first release. I have not fully mapped where all the moving parts live yet, and my AROS distribution is still missing many tools, preferences and settings. If anyone has time to help me understand the project a bit more, I would really appreciate it. If you have an Apple Silicon Mac, please have a look and let me know what you think. 👇 github.com/jonx/…/v0.1