A writer on Macs since I first saw a Powerbook. Bought one the next day--and many portables since. Plus now the iPhone and iPad. Picked up a lot of owner-fixes over the years, knowledge that used to be more common and less "procedural" - I understand why Apple has had to formalize it's methods, but this is still a system you can control, repair and maintain as deeply as you want to go.

I see a lot of questions from people afraid of their machines--and a lot that a moment's googling could answer. Both are symptoms of user disempowerment. I'm not sure, in the end, that Apple Geniuses have been all that helpful to both the image and reality of Macs as a user-friendly computing environment. They don't know anything you can't easily know yourself.