Way back in the early 1990s, I discovered a fancy Open/Save dialog utility known as SuperBoomerang. Its main stock and trade was to rebound or return to the last used file in either dialog. There were other features that included such Finder specialties as renaming a file or folder, or moving it to the Trash. If you managed lots of files, it could be a real time saver.

Despite glitches here and there — remember we’re talking about Mac OS 7.x here, infamous for being buggy — I came to rely on such a handy utility. For a time I even experimented with a competitor that was, for a time, part of Norton Utilities for the Mac, known as Directory Assistance. It offered similar functions, but I always returned to SuperBoomerang.

Over time, SuperBoomerang went from independent status to becoming a part of Now Utilities, a set of handy Mac OS enhancements — buggy as well — that became essential to my workflow.

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So there’s a published report that pegs Apple Watch sales at seven million for the first six months. The new numbers, from Canalys, are a bit shy of other figures that estimate sales at eight million. They are all looking at the increases in Apple’s “Other” category in its quarterly financials to guess how much Apple Watch sales impacted the totals. Apple isn’t telling us.

Now some might suggest that Apple isn’t spilling the beans because sales haven’t met expectations. But independent estimates demonstrate that Apple is selling more units than all other smartwatch makers combined. So why the secrecy?

Apple has, in the past, indicated that it doesn’t want to give out the information to competitors, but the estimates are out there, and they are considered credible. So why not? I’m not about to suggest that the decision is wrong. But just saying that sales exceeded Apple’s expectations means very little, unless we know just what those expectations are. And we don’t.

Now I suppose Apple Watch sales will soar, more or less, for the holiday season. Certainly a watch, particularly a fancy one, would be an ideal Christmas gift, right? Apple has expanded the dealer network to make it easier to find the model and bands you want are readily available. You can even find them at Target, hardly a chain for expensive stuff. The software has been extensively revised, so the next two months might give us some clues as to its potential.

Or maybe early adopters are still going to be a big portion of the market. That’s not something I’m about to take a guess on.

But I will say this: I have considered whether I’d want to buy an Apple Watch. It’s not a matter of whether the money is available or not but the need. While a lot of people don’t use watches anymore, I’ve had one on my wrist since I was 10 or 12 years of age. I’ve usually focused on fancier watches, say a chronograph (albeit a cheap one), although I rarely use the extra functions. It’s just a fancy gadget to me.

My latest watch was purchased last spring, before the Apple Watch went on sale. I had been using a Guess watch with a few extra complications or gizmos. But after about ten years of steady use, it would only run erratically even after a battery swap. Sometimes it would go for days, and I’d wake up and discover that it stopped. It wasn’t expensive enough to consider sending it in for repair, so I looked for something real cheap on fine Sunday morning at a nearby Walmart Supercenter.

I came across a watch that seemed far better than its $12.88 purchase price. It had an ivory/silver face, and a silver stainless steel case. The matching watchband looked the same, although I can’t see whether it has a stainless steel label. It also had a tiny date display, tiny enough that I had to look closely with reading glasses on to see anything. There was no visible branding.

In any case, after close to nine months of use, it’s running about 15 seconds fast. I suppose I should fix that, but it helps slightly towards being on time for something; Barbara sets her clocks five minutes late. More to the point, I don’t care. That level of accuracy is perfectly satisfactory, so I have little need to worry about it.

It has a multiyear warranty, requiring that I send it back to the manufacturer’s service depot with a shipping fee that’s roughly half the purchase price. By the time I would pack it and pay postage, the price won’t be much less than just buying a new one, and if I can get a couple of years out of it before a battery replacement or repair is required, I’m perfectly happy.

Perhaps I should feel guilty. Walmart is clearly building these watches in an Asian factory with very cheap labor, for how else can they sell what appears to be a watch of reasonable quality so cheaply? Would I pay $25 or $30 to have a genuine U.S.-made watch? Probably, but I’m perfectly happy with the one I have.

Obviously, it’s all about keeping the time. An Apple Watch is more for fitness and notifications. While I do partake of a mixed exercise routine — aerobics and weight-training — I’ve not considered writing anything down, or recording the body measurements on some device or other. My iPhone handles the notifications.

Long and short of it is that, yes, if someone generously bought me an Apple Watch for the holidays, or my birthday, or my wedding anniversary, I wouldn’t refuse it. I wouldn’t take it and offer it on Ebay for as much as I could. I’d happily keep it and proceed to see if it was at all possible for it to become an indispensable part of my life.

So far as I’m concerned, the use case for the Apple Watch is not quite proven. Perhaps it will be as more apps and features are added. But Apple is clearly in this game for the long-haul, not something that will live or die by any individual quarter’s sales.

Last year, the critics were wondering why so few were switching from iOS 7 to iOS 8. The theory went that the number of visible changes were fewer, and thus people were less inclined to update, and don’t forget the infamous 8.0.1 update that bricked some new iPhones.

It didn’t help that Apple made the upgrade storage requirements too high for people with space-challenged gear. That meant that many who might have upgraded early on, found it difficult or impossible to do so.

At the end of the day, you would find it easier installing via iTunes on a Mac or a PC, since the storage requirements were less. Apple also slimmed the update over time. By September of this year, before iOS arrived, the iOS 8 adoption rate had grown to between 85-90%, depending on the source, not very far behind its predecessor. That pretty much ended speculation that the upgrade was fatally flawed.

Indeed, one of the biggest changes in iOS 9, other than the promise of greater stability, is a much tinier upgrade archive. This helps reduce the upgrade failures, and there’s less need to do it on a Mac or a PC.

All told, it resulted in Apple reporting a migration rate of over 50% less than a week after its September release. This figure was way above that reported by third-party metrics systems, such as Mixpanel Trends, and resulted in some level of skepticism. Apple’s numbers were based on visitors to the App Store, and loads of apps were updated to support the new features in iOS 9 during the first few weeks. I suppose that could have skewed the numbers some, but things have more or less equalized since then.

In any case, less than two months since its release, Apple reports the iOS 9 migration rate has reached 66%. It’s over 70% at Mixpanel Trends, and that’s the usual spread between Apple and the third-party stats. This speedy adoption curve, partly due to apparent high sales of the new iPhones, is all the more impressive due to the fact that the number of improvements is lower than has been the case in recent years. Some of that is attributed to Apple’s clear intent to focus more on minor enhancements and performance improvements above gee-whiz features that may require a few revisions to work properly.

Apple has also been pretty fast in issuing updates to iOS 9 to fix problems and add a handful of features. So 9.0.1 and 9.0.2 arrived a week apart starting in September. Two weeks ago, Apple issued a 9.1 update that had additional bug fixes, tweaks for Live Photos, and a bunch of new emoji icons. I suppose the latter has appeal for some of you.

Regardless, all these fixes have clearly chipped away at the remaining bugs in iOS 9. It doesn’t mean all the problems are gone, but it’s commendable that Apple continues to work on the issues. More to the point, members of Apple’s Public Beta program continue to get software seeds.

Indeed, an iOS 9.2 is already under construction, and both developers and Public Beta testers are able to download copies. While Apple rarely announces what’s going to be fixed in one of these updates, testers report that the key fixes impact the Safari View Controller, problems with iCloud Keychain, Apple Watch syncing, audio quality and AT&T’s NumberSync and Wi-Fi calling features. I suppose this version will be the one that ships with the iPad Pro when it arrives, and that’s rumored to happen as early as next week, though Apple hasn’t confirmed it.

Regardless, it does appear that Apple is moving fast to make iOS 9 as reliable as possible. When I looked over the list of bugs, it appears most have already been addressed. The lists haven’t been updated much in recent days either, which augers well for its long-term success.

Contrast that with the early buzz on OS X El Capitan, which arrived at the end of September. While you can’t always accept App Store ratings as more than a rough indication of a product’s reception, it’s telling that the score is less than 2.5 stars. That’s somewhat worse than OS X Yosemite at this stage, and indicates that Apple may have plenty of work on its hands to fix the bugs.

I rummaged through the reviews and encountered some reports of installation problems, or the inability to reboot after an apparently successful installation. While the circumstances appeared to differ, quite often installation glitches are the result of existing problems on the Mac, rather than anything Apple did with the installer. Without accounting for any of those problem reports, I can tell you that I did experience the beta process and never had it fail to install on recent iMacs. I’ve not as yet attempted to upgrade to El Capitan on my 2010 17-inch MacBook Pro. The major reason is inertia. I don’t use it as much as I used to, so I just haven’t bothered.

Meantime, Apple is working on an El Capitan 10.11.2 updater, so perhaps some of the glitches reported at the App Store will be addressed. I’m still encountering occasional freezes in Mail. It hangs for a bit, but things resolve themselves after 30 seconds or so. That problem has existed through every version of El Capitan that I’ve installed.

But that will take us to another article.

This column is very personal. The keyboards I use and find best for my needs are very much apt to disappoint many of you. In fact, I’m sure of it, but I hope you’ll look at the big picture.

Once upon a time, my favorite keyboard was the Apple Extended Keyboard II. Introduced in 1990, it was big, strong, and heavy. Did I say noisy? But it had its charms, one of which was a solid feel courtesy of its Alps mechanical switches, and a Caps Lock key that actually locked down when activated. You didn’t have to look for the tiny green light to confirm your choice.

While it came free with your new Mac, it was expensive if you bought it separately. The Wikipedia entry on the subject says $163, an odd figure. That would be $262.51 in today’s dollars. In contrast, a modern equivalent, the Matias Quiet Pro, is $149.95. The layout is similar to the Apple keyboard, and its laser-etched keys the lettering is resistant (but not immune) to fading. The custom Alps switches are designed to run quiet. As a side effect for the relative silence, the feel is a tad less crisp, but still more solid than anything Apple offers in the 21st century.

To Apple, it’s about thin and light, and the rest follows. Their note-book keyboards are good, better than most I’ve tried, but mediocre compared to a traditional desktop computer keyboard. But that hasn’t stopped Apple from embedding the same basic feel in its accessory keyboards. In recent years, there have been two versions. One is more or less traditionally designed with the numeric keypad, connected to your Mac with a standard USB cable. The other was the now-discontinued Wireless Keyboard without the numeric keypad.

I suppose the basic advantage is that you can move from MacBook to Mac with Apple’s keyboards and not have to adapt. That’s a good thing for folks in a hurry, and you’re apt to make fewer errors, at least during the first few minutes of heavy typing. At least that’s been my experience, but I’m still not nuts about typing and using the trackpad on my aging 2010 MacBook Pro. Yes, I realize today’s trackpads, with Force Touch, are supposed to be better.

In the old days, I would actually bring along a regular keyboard and mouse in my note-book case, but that can become ungainly, so I ended up just putting up with it.

But it wasn’t my ideal solution. A Matias keyboard was still placed in front of my iMac, and since I don’t travel near as much as I used to, I venture to say that over 95% of the time spent before a personal computer involves working on the iMac.

Since a computer keyboard is definitely not a one-size-fits-all product — and the same can be said for a mouse or trackpad — I wonder why Apple isn’t recognizing those differences. Sure I can see the design considerations for the new MacBook’s keyboard. It has to be as thin and light as possible, so designing a keyboard with limited travel switches that offered most of the feel of the regular Apple keyboards makes sense.

Less so the recently released Magic Keyboard. It’s slimmer in ways that do not make practical sense. Not having it elevated in the rear reminds you of a note-book keyboard, but I just plain didn’t like it. Maybe I’ve become too accustomed to big and wide, but the few days I spent on one didn’t in any way convince me to switch, even if I felt it was worth the money. Fortunately, I was using a review unit from Apple, so all I needed to do was pack it up and send it back and forget about it, along with the Magic Mouse 2 and the Magic Trackpad 2.

Now as much as Apple has clearly invested in new input devices, which is usually more than other PC  companies do, and as much as they clearly have a point of view, I would hope they would consider customers who prefer the more traditional keyboard for their desktop computers. Sure, you have plenty of choices out there, but if you’re expecting to use the free input devices that come with a brand new iMac, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to have a choice? Well, of course not, never with Apple. It’s not their way.

So I do not expect Apple to expand its keyboard choices. Desktop computers are a small minority of sales. Only the iMac is supplied with a pair of input devices. The Mac mini and Mac Pro make do without. Apple’s online store offers a small selection of third-party alternatives from such companies as Logitech. It would be nice to see Matias among the offerings, but that’s just me, for the choices offered by Apple are very much in the slim and light mode, on the surface not that much different from their own products. Sure, I’d have to try a few to know for sure, but why?

Of course, a computer keyboard is yesterday’s news. In addition to touchscreens, there’s always voice, and typing is destined eventually became passé. As Scotty said in a certain “Star Trek” movie from the 1980s, when confronted with a physical keyboard — connected to a Mac no less — “how quaint.”