In what is unquestionably one of the more creative Nook Simple Touch homebrew hacks we've seen, you can now install the classic Macintosh OS on Barnes & Noble's ereader. There's likely no one happier about this than Mike Cane, who blogged last year about an "impossible dream" that centered around loading the legacy OS onto a Nook. It turns out the dream wasn't so impossible after all. In February, Cane came across a report claiming someone had successfully installed Mini vMac — an early Macintosh OS emulator — onto the device. The hack wasn't exactly flawless, but Cane's wishes had come true. Unfortunately, there was little in the way of proof at the time.

That all changed yesterday when he came upon a gallery of photos that depict Mac OS 7.5.3 running on Nook hardware. FlyingToaster, a member of the 68k Macintosh Liberation Army forum, had duplicated the original trick, finding that Mini vMac II offered an improved experience that addressed scaling and grayscale issues. With the app installed onto the Nook Simple Touch, users can run virtually any classic Mac OS app or game on the E Ink display. It seems like a fairly straightforward process, so if you're nostalgic for the days when Mac software was a bit simpler, hit the source links below.