I have preferred the "Classic" Macintosh in the early 1990s because it tried to provide a coherent design across the entire system. This even extended to file

I have preferred the "Classic" Macintosh in the early 1990s because it tried to provide a coherent design across the entire system. This even extended to file shortcuts: in the Finder I could "Create Shortcut" to a file on a remote AppleTalk file server. I could put that shortcut on a floppy by dragging its icon to the floppy icon. Eject the floppy, hand that to someone, who could go back to their office on the other side of campus, insert the floppy, open the Shortcut file, and the Mac would get the file from the file server, download it, and get to work. If I needed to move the file on the file server to a new location for a whatever reason, any shortcuts to the file would still work. These days, we just do this in seconds with a web link. But back then, compared to NDIS networking on DOS-based clients, it was a game-changer. The PC quickly developed sophisticated networking by throwing money at the servers. Prices could get way up there, particularly when you factored in licenses for each client that could connect. Although the Macs were more expensive than single user desktop PCs, the Mac ad-hoc, peer networking was just built into the base system. I could go on about how this tended to play out in many different areas of functionality. Adding a new video card? Turn off Mac. Insert card. Turn on Mac. Done. Yes, we would argue endlessly about the devilish details that we dealt with on a daily basis. And again, as the corporate networks continued to mature, the Mac as a client was often sidelined. Mac replaced by cheaper desktop PCs and very expensive network right about the time that the web development took off and disrupted the industry again. Classic Mac cratered, just to be replaced by my favorite system of all time, the same attempt at whole-system design on top of a mass-market UNIX. I had more fun productive work building and supporting these network systems. When Windows NT shipped with the modern Win95 GUI toolkit, NT's deep support of every network protocol, and device drivers for just about every x86 bit of hardware, and NT's very strong kernel implementation was made to work. Unified security model. Group Policies. Active Directory wiped out my little toy networks. Books were written. All that history is now but a distant legend, lost to the mists of the Y2K bug that destroyed human civilization. Now that we seem to be winning against the Terminators and H-Ks, we can perhaps entertain the dream that our children's children will someday step out into the light of a brand new day, the GNU Manifesto in one hand, and in the other, John Perry Barlow's writ of sovereignty for all data, everywhere, forever free.