In the beginning was Word 3.0

The Beeb has woken up to realise that the Macintosh is twenty-five years old.


Malcolm learned most of his tricks from either the Amstrad 8256 or the Mac 128. He rarely got close to the household BBC Micro, which spent most evenings playing Snapper (Acorn's rip-off and improvement on Pac-man).



The real pity of that was Malcolm wanted to become an Elite. Or, at the very least, to master Hopper.



And the Beeb had to have someone to review that quarter-century-old piece of e-archaeology. They chose someone totally, totally impartial of course. Jane Douglas from -- read this very carefully -- MSN. That stood for MicroSoft Network, the last time Malcolm looked.

So, no bias there.

But Malcolm can assure one and all of one thing. Mark this:

Those teaching-notes and worksheets he produced on a Mac128 and an Epson dot-matrix printer were once the very zeitgeist of the educational cutting edge.

Twenty years on, he still found the odd echo and pale-imitation in new and unknown staff-rooms, where his neglected, scribbled-on, past labours still had an afterlife as they

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn

or simply provided work for supply teachers and cover classes.
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