Although it had been previously announced, I was quite pleased to wake up Thursday morning to find a welcome message in my Inbox from Netflix — the online video rental company — that “now you can watch movies (some new releases) instantly on your Mac.” Most Netflix rental plans beyond entry-level offer the free service, and […]

Before Mac OS X took over, I wrote a book about Microsoft Office 2001. When Mac OS X arrived, Microsoft ported their office suite over, as Office X. Although they charged their standard upgrade fee for the suite, there were actually very few new features to talk about. One, as you recall, was “multiple selections,” […]

In the past, software publishers were ragged for delivering applications to Mac users that were far too reminiscent of the Windows platform. WordPerfect got a bad start as a result, and perhaps they never lived it down. What’s more, when Microsoft delivered Word 6, it came across as a poor handmaiden to the Windows version, complete […]

When I first started writing computer books in 1994, I remember being asked whether I had a copy of Word installed on my Mac? You see, as with most publishers then and now, they rely heavily on Word’s Track Changes feature to monitor the editorial production process from the original manuscript to the final version […]