The original concept of the Internet was to be free and open. Well, not in the sense of charging you for the service, but letting you access the content you want without a gatekeeper. Sure there are sites that require usernames and passwords, and cater strictly to people who are customers who sometimes pay for access, […]

Long long ago, you could actually get a brand new version of the Mac OS free. Until the early 1990s, you could go to your favorite Mac dealer, give them a set of floppies, and (assuming they wanted to be helpful) you’d have the requisite files copied over in short order; some dealers might add […]

In 1984, I was working in a prepress plant, laboring over traditional cold (or photo-based) typesetting equipment. Instead of looking at a true representation of the printed page, the video display presented text and formatting commands. Yes, with a little practice, you could visualize the end result, more or less. However, these particular devices simply […]

You can imagine the scene: Just as soon as a new product arrives from Apple, be it hardware or software, you can bet that a few complaints will appear on various and sundry support sites. It may be chronic system crashes, noisy audio ports, excessive fan noise, and, no, I didn’t invent any of these […]