What the death of VHS means to Mac

It’d be hard to think of a more popular technology than the VCR, which transformed the way people could watch TV, created the home video market, and brought the piracy issue out of back alleyways and into the home of everyone. And while home video is going stronger than ever, the ubiquitous VHS tape is now officially “dead” as the last major distributor cancels shipments.

Pop culture is finally hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once-ubiquitous home-video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past.

After three decades of steady if unspectacular service, the spinning wheels of the home-entertainment stalwart are slowing to a halt at retail outlets. On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Fla., warehouse run by Ryan J. Kugler, the last major supplier of the tapes.

And as I read this (looking over at the long-disused but still fuctional VCR sitting under my TV), I began thinking about how Macintosh, introduced in 1984, had gone through years of unpopularity and still hung on while VHS had reigned for years only to quickly pass away, unmourned.

The big difference, of course, is that…