I absolutely love these write-ups! Every time one comes out I read it immediately.<p>This doesn't jive with my recollection, though:<p>> The monochrome cargo vans of 1985 had improbably become the multimedia sports cars of 1993, all whilst sticking to the same basic software and hardware architecture.<p>I don't really believe that this was true until after the adoption of Windows 95 (and remember, Windows NT retained the older Windows 3.1 look for longer; well into the late 90s my college labs' Windows machines looked ancient). At the time, the Mac was the closest thing to a multimedia sports car (with Amiga being the hand-crafter multimedia Rolls Royce, to carry the metaphor too far): it was attractive and ran well. Those of us who used Macs back then look at Windows 3.1 and thought it was a joke; we didn't even think DOS was worth noticing.<p>In retrospect, I actually have a lot more respect for DOS now than I did then: given what it was, it wasn't actually bad, and it enabled some neat programs. If I were teleported back in time, I might get a DOS box. But there is no way I'd want to use Windows 3.1 again — give me a System 7, 8 or 9 Mac anytime!