A shout out to those involved in Acorn, RISC OS, etc around the late 1980s and throughout the 1990's. Around 1992 or so, our family bought our first computer (when I was around 5 years old) which was an Acorn A3000 running (if I recall correctly) RISC OS 2 on ROM. The school I went to also had Acorn computers (including the RISC PC toward the latter half of the 1990’s).

Nowadays I consider myself extraordinarily privileged to have experienced RISC OS on Acorn hardware in its heyday. I see so many things in modern computing inspired by RISC OS. The taskbar in modern era Windows and Mac OS is remarkably similar to RISC OS 2 which was released in 1988. RISC OS was also an early pioneer of anti-aliasing fonts and had it years before it appeared in Windows.

However, sadly, there are many things now lost to history. A machine running RISC OS 2 booted in literally <3 seconds. It was basically just a console screen with “RISC OS 2048K” (or something along those lines) and a second or two later you were at the desktop. It is near impossible to find any modern computing device that boots as quick as the A3000 running RISC OS did.

RISC OS also had a wonderful file-save dialog which was simply the file icon—which you were to simply drag and drop directly to the folder you wanted to save the file to! Given you usually had the right folder open anyway, it was usually a case of just dragging to your already open folder. So much more sensible than having to search for a folder in a small explorer window.

Thanks to all involved. Acorn and their RISC OS sparked a lifelong interest in computers. Thank you!