"GEM/XM" as it is known was a project started in 1986 intended to bring multitasking to the GEM desktop. Of course this never actually made it to market after Digital Research abandoned it along with all other aspects of GEM. It was, however, later released under the GPL, and what we have here is "FreeGEM/XM" 3.0 beta 4, seemingly the last release.

Since this is little more than a backend project to bring multitasking, the desktop is no different from older releases.

The about page, showing both the original Digital Research copyright dates and those of the FreeGEM developers.

The FreeGEM/XM accessories. Like the Mac OS these are not considered full applications and can co-exist with the main shell.

Here is the application menu, which shows us the first evidence of multitasking as both the main desktop and something called "FILTER" are running at the same time. This menu is used to switch between programs, similar to MultiFinder in later versions of the Mac OS.

Programs under GEM include nice standardized installer applications, which will either install to the hard drive or install to a second floppy drive if you don't have a hard drive.