Operating system features are not forever, but sometimes they meet resistance. It’s better, however, when you are told, in advance, what the changes might be and not have them thrust upon you unexpected or unwanted. This peculiarly true when something is removed or switched off. So when a functional Apple menu was removed in the original […]

In the early days, my first forays into the online world included searching for stuff using Gopher. You could even use it via the command line, so it’s really old. As browsers became more popular and the web became easier to use, Gopher fell into disuse, although it’s still being maintained by some mainstays. According […]

The very first Mac arrived in 1984 without the ability to upgrade anything. Even opening the case was a chore best left to service technicians when troubles arose. Although the Macs that arrived in the years after Steve Jobs left Appleoften sported relatively easy upgrading, it wasn’t always a cake walk. I remember, for example, […]

The conventional wisdom — which is seldom conventional — has it that Apple and Microsoft must tout loads of flashy new features to justify asking their customers to pay for their ongoing operating system upgrades. That may be true, all right, but it only presents part of the picture. Now as some of you recall, […]