What you've heard is true: Macintosh's Finder is indeed easy to use. But as Apple's developers get more innovative, will Finder stay the same?

[originally appeared in PC Magazine as a cover story, 9/12/89]

(Obviously out of date, but interesting in several respects. First, it's worth remembering how far ahead of its time the Mac OS was. So many of the special abilities I discuss about the Mac are ubiquitous now. Second, to see with hindsight how the entire web is the fruition of the dream I described for the Mac's early hypertext product, HyperCard (which was the base of many early multimedia projects.) In 1989 I predicted it would lead to "thousands of worthwhile programs out in the ether, free for the taking—a digital community sharing programs that solve problems, entertain, and inform." (BTW, I'm not saying I made any of that happen; I don't think I invented the internet or anything. Just saying many of us in the multimedia community envisioned a transformation of computing when multimedia and software merged and when that software was easily distributed and shared. In 1989, I'm not even sure I'd heard of DARPA, but I'd already been using email and BBS tools for years, so it wasn't hard to imagine.) Kinda cool: this article also was cited as a reference in a paper at an international conference, Patrick Gerland, "Software Development: Past, Present and Future Trends and Tools," NIDI/IUSSP Expert Meeting on Demographic Software and Micro-computing, Strategies for the Future, The Hague, …

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