Ah, remember those well. Must've been System 7 or thereabouts. They were great: simple, straightforward and utterly unpretentious, not assuming any prior knowledge on the part of the user. A very simple solution that did the job.

Unfortunately, they got the boot at some point (OS8?). Perhaps they just weren't fancy or complicated or glamorous enough any more? Or perhaps seen as an admission of weakness; after all, if this stuff actually needs explained to users then it can't be quite as super-easy as Marketing would like to make out.

I mean, if a smark cookie like Jimmy Doohan could get it so wrong in Star Trek IV, how on earth d'they expect my poor old mum to manage?

Ironically, given the power of modern machines - full-screen video, remoting/IPC and gobs and gobs of disk space - companies like Apple and MS could easily bundle first-class introductions and tutorials to their OSes and software with every machine. Less arrogance, snobbery and elitism in software; less emphasis on bells and whistles; more focus on helping the user with their current needs, and showing them all that the existing technology can provide.