JawnCon put its conference schedule inside an emulated Macintosh Plus

JawnCon, Philadelphia’s hacker conference, built this year’s schedule as a HyperCard stack and runs it “in a Macintosh Plus, in a 68k emulator in your browser,” according to the event’s schedule page, though a plain web version is there too for anyone in a hurry.

HyperCard is an odd pick for 2026, and the page says what makes it special. It says HyperCard “was released in 1987 and predates the World Wide Web and JavaScript,” and that its scripting language, HyperTalk, later influenced the design of AppleScript. Hackaday’s Tom Nardi says the schedule runs on the emulated Mac “for style points.”

The conference behind it is growing. JawnCon 0x3 runs October 16 to 18 at Arcadia University, according to its own site, and Hackaday says it’s in its fourth year, with an extra day, a second stage and nearly 30 talks on everything from board games to modern pager networks. JawnCon’s site lists tickets at $100, free for students with a .edu email address, and Hackaday says the talks will be recorded for anyone who can’t get to Arcadia University.

The badge follows the same retro idea. Hackaday says this year’s looks like a simple handheld calculator but includes a touch-tone (DTMF) generator, games and a way to link up with other badges. It runs on an ATmega328P-P and is handed out as a bare circuit board, with STL and 3MF files to print your own case ahead of time.

If you’re a student near Philadelphia this weekend, your ticket costs nothing. If you’ve never used HyperCard, this schedule is the easiest way I know to try it. Open it on a computer in Chrome: the page warns the emulator may not work properly on mobile browsers.

I’d click through it even if I weren’t going. It’s a 1987 app showing you a 2026 conference.