Watching TV in the 1960s was really very easy. You just plugged in your set, connected an antenna, turned it on and you were all set. Well maybe. If you didn’t live in an area where a roof antenna was allowed, you’d have to stick with a rabbit ears, and you might have to manipulate it to work differently with each channel.

In my day, having most stations emitting from the same transmission tower (the Empire State Building) in New York City made it easy. One setting, and all was well. Well, not quite. My obsessive desire for a perfectly clear picture was never filled. It was always a little ghostly.

Segue to my travels to small towns around America to begin my broadcast career. There were usually no nearby stations, or perhaps just one. A proper roof antenna would be hugely expensive even if it were allowed. But then there was cable TV, originally defined as “community antenna television.” It worked by setting a large receiving system to pick up distant channels, and wiring neighborhoods to pick up the signals on a portable receiver. Hence the cable or set top box.

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I’ve been following the goings on at Apple Inc. since the 1980s. In those days, I was the eccentric among owners of personal computers (and perhaps I still am). So when I went to a software store (remember them?) and asked about software for my Mac, I was presented with a dismissive look, though an occasional store clerk would absently point me to a barely visible shelf at the rear. It came as no surprise to find just a few titles, some obsolete, and most covered in dust.

I’m serious. But in those days, I would order software at a discount via a mail order catalog, such as the one from MacWarehouse.  It was later acquired by another online retailer, CDW.

It got worse by the mid-1990s, when Apple’s poor leadership almost killed the company. With the release of Windows ’95, announced with The Rolling Stones singing “Start Me Up,” the end of the Mac loomed large. But most people probably didn’t notice some of the telltale lyrics in the song, such as “You make a grown man cry.” And when it came to Windows, I totally agreed.

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I haven’t said much about Apple in recent months. Mostly it’s because they haven’t put out anything completely new, and political issues about monopolistic restrictions on third parties are still works in progress. The watchword is modest or less when it comes to new Apple gear and operating systems. It’s almost as if Apple has setup up a Keynote presentation with bullet points, where minor updates to products are listed. Each year, they go through the last and add the ones that developers can perfect, or at least make workable, within the appropriate timeframe.

So the iPhone 15 Pro may be the bee’s knees for some people, particularly if you haven’t upgraded in a few years. If you have an iPhone 14 Pro, you’ll probably prefer to sustain a yawn and get on with your business.

But let’s look at the main topic of this column, about things super or marvelous:

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Being a loyal Mac user in 1998 wasn’t such a great place to be for many of us. Although co-founder Steve Jobs was doing a lot to keep the company afloat with a slimmer product lineup, profits were slim or none. In the days before the iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, many still didn’t take the company seriously. Worse, many Mac users had made the switch to Windows.

But in the spring of that year, I got a long look and a fair amount of experience with the product that some suggest saved Apple. In those years, I was a member of their Customer Quality Feedback (CQF) program, which meant that I’d get pre-release software and occasionally a pre-release Mac to put through its paces.

Hardware, of course, had to be returned at the end of the beta cycle, although there was one instance where I came close to keeping a certain preproduction Mac.

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