Operating system features are not forever, but sometimes they meet resistance. It’s better, however, when you are told, in advance, what the changes might be and not have them thrust upon you unexpected or unwanted. This peculiarly true when something is removed or switched off.

So when a functional Apple menu was removed in the original OS X Public Beta (it moved to the center of the menu bar), the one you actually had to pay for, there were loads of complaints. Why fix something that worked so well without replacing it with something better? Of course, Apple brought it back for the actual 10.0 release, in March 2001, though it wasn’t nearly as customizable as the previous version, but it least it did something.

More to the point, 14 years have passed and it’s not that a whole lot has changed in the Apple menu beyond the addition of an App Store. The Dock, aside from some changes in its looks, and expanded pop-up menu choices over the years, remains the same sort of app and document launcher people love to hate.

That takes us to Dashboard, which debuted in OS X Tiger 10 years ago. It was presented as a special repository or environment for widgets, or tiny apps, which you could operate separate from your regular software. Consider it a partial successor to the Control Panels of the original Mac OS minus the system enhancements.

Dashboard shipped with a small collection of standard widgets, such as a calendar, a weather widget and a flight tracker. You might even consider this a forerunner of the iOS app scheme, where you have loads of single function apps that run within a far more restricted environment.

It wasn’t hard to create a widget. Apple even added a feature to Safari make a web page into a widget, and there’s still an Open in Dashboard option. Even though Dashboard has fallen more and more into disuse, and new widgets are rarely developed, the app is always working.

Until now.

There’s a published report that the latest OS X El Capitan beta, the one going to developers and public beta testers this week, switches off Dashboard by default. Just to confirm the report, I checked it out, and, sure enough, a common keyboard shortcut used for Dashboard, F12, was non-functional. This came without warning, and, in fact, hardly makes sense from a logical point of view. If you don’t want to use Dashboard, don’t hit the key. Simple as that!

In any case, there are two ways to reenable Dashboard. One is to launch the app itself (in the Applications folder or perhaps in the Dock), or go to System Preferences, under Mission Control, and choose how you want to display Dashboard. You can use “As Space,” which puts it in its own exclusive space as the label implies, or “As Overlay,” which grays out the background, both desktop and app windows, and imposes your widgets above them.

Choose your poison.

Now I continue to use exactly two Dashboard widgets after all these years. One displays the weather, the other, a iStat Pro, lets me check various system-related stats and functions. Although it no longer indicates what system processes are active, I can see if something is dragging down the system. It’s faster than opening Activity Monitor, though I’d still have to use that app in the event I ran into a problem.

I’d miss Dashboard if it went away. It’s convenient to invoke to, say, check the weather, or figure out if something is going on when the system might be sluggish. There are a few other widgets in my collection, and perhaps I’ll find a reason to use some of them from time to time.

Apple’s intended replacement is Notification Center, where widgets made their debut in OS X Yosemite. I sill prefer Dashboard. Worse, there really aren’t all that many widgets listed for Notification Center at the App Store, so even if I preferred it, which I don’t, I have fewer choices. But that’s just me.

Now it may just be that Apple will let Dashboard continue essentially unchanged until people just forget about it. I suspect most Mac users aren’t even aware of its existence unless they just happen to press the keyboard shortcut, and it miraculously appears in front of them.

It may also be that Apple didn’t really intend to turn off Dashboard, but it’s an OS X El Capitan glitch. That seems just as probable, since there doesn’t seem to be a logical purpose in disabling it. Besides, what right do they have to change a setting that you made on your Mac without your knowledge or permission?

Just asking!

In any case, Dashboard had a decent life even if it never quite received the love from Apple and Mac users in the years following its introduction. That it’s hung around this long is actually a pretty good thing, because it continues to have great value — for those who care.

Microsoft has made a huge deal of the fact that its virtual assistant, Cortana, can run on Windows 10, even on your desktop PC. This is a supposed advantage over the Mac, since Apple hasn’t opted to include Siri on OS X.

Not that Apple couldn’t do it, but this is clearly a design and/or marketing decision that may actually make a lot of sense. While talking to your iPhone or iPad may not seem so strange, speaking commands to your computer is hit or miss. It’s a miss at the office, for example, and the jury is out how businesses will treat Cortana, even if they agree to upgrade to Windows 10. That Microsoft has been rushing out critical security and performance updates over the first three weeks doesn’t help your piece of mind.

But if you must have Cortana on your Mac, Parallels has a way to make it work across the board, even in the Mac environment. Can you dig it?

Now Parallels has a long history with the Mac platform. Back in the spring of 2006, with the first Intel-based Macs available, I was among the first journalists invited to get beta copies of Parallels Desktop, which allowed you to run Windows on a Mac in a virtual machine. Mind you this wasn’t a new feature. There had been utilities that did just that on Macs for years, but performance was terrible with the older PowerPC Macs.

Running Windows natively on an Intel processor was a revelation. Apple created Boot Camp, which let you boot into Windows, using a special partition on your drive for storage. But Parallels made it more efficient at some sacrifice in performance. You’d could run Windows and Windows apps side by side with your Mac apps. You could also run various flavors of Linux and other operating systems.

The other big player in virtualization, VMWare, released Fusion, a very credible alternative that some might find superior overall. But Parallels almost always manages to offer snappier performance. Nonetheless, a new version of Fusion, with support for OS X El Capitan and other new features, is expected soon.

Over time, Parallels managed to find ways to reduce startup times, app launch times, and overall performance. Support for graphics hardware was added and enhanced, and you were able to even play Windows games, though obviously not quite as fast as on a regular Windows PC, or even with Boot Camp.

A special integration feature, Coherence, essentially lets Windows apps appear within OS X windows, so the Windows app is no longer segregated from the rest of your software. It was the utmost in integration if you had to reside in both platforms. Indeed, perhaps the best way to run Windows is on a Mac, so you get the added benefits of OS X and Apple’s superb integration of hardware and software.

Parallels upgrades come pretty much every year, and each time there’s the promise of improved performance and a few enhancements in OS integration. Since Apple lets you run OS X in a virtual machine nowadays, Parallels Desktop is a way for you to experience a development version and not abandon the release version for regular work. A developer can jump back and forth to see the impact of the new OS to their software.

That takes us to Cortana.

This week, Parallels Desktop 11 arrived, with full support for Windows 10. That includes making Cortana available on a Mac under Coherence mode. So you can use Cortana to run Mac apps, according to Parallels, or answer questions including those related to your location, taking advantage of OS X’s Location Services.

In addition to the standard desktop version, there’s also a Pro edition of Parallels that lets you run virtual machines using up to 16 CPUs and 64GB of RAM, clearly earmarked towards the Mac Pro. Except that the Mac Pro’s most powerful processor has 12-cores, or maybe Parallels is looking towards the future.

Regardless, Parallels sent me a link to the Pro edition with a two-year license (it’s sold on an annual basis), so I was able to test it full tilt on an iMac with 32GB of RAM.

Long and short of it is that Windows 10 did appear to start and resume faster than with Parallels 10, though I didn’t take the time to run official benchmarks. Either way, it’s fast enough. The new Microsoft Edge browser was acceptably quick, and Word 2013 launched within a few seconds, but not as quickly as Word 2016 for the Mac.

I haven’t spent a lot of time with invoking “Hey Cortana,” but it did sort of work. I configured my Mac’s internal microphone, rather than my studio mic since it’s not always on. You have to engage the voice activation feature and a few other settings before it runs, which probably gives businesses an excuse to keep it disabled.

So the setup is not near as automatic as Siri, but both failed when I inquired, “Where are the Rockoids?” That’s the name of the sci-fi novels I wrote with my son, and since the files for that book are plentiful on my Mac, and I use a “rockoids.com” email address on the Mac and the iPhone, I give both Cortana and Siri a zero.

Honestly, I find Cortana more or less a wasted effort. To ensure precision, I’d rather just type my commands in the search window to avoid mistakes and having to repeat myself. Still, it’s a flashy feature that Parallels clearly believes will help sell upgrades to the new version. Regardless, it’s a credible refresh to what, for many Mac users, is an essential app.

There are surveys and there are surveys. Depending on the methodology, and the accuracy of the sampling, you can get all sorts of results, and some might even be accurate to a degree. If the market research company has an ax to grind, numbers can be appropriately manipulated too, but the survey that forms the basis of this little discussion does not appear to have been performed by such a company.

It comes from MusicWatch, a firm highly respected in the industry, and is based on interviews with 5,000 U.S. customers. As you’ll see shortly, however, that may not guarantee an accurate result.

The key metric is the number of Apple Music users who plan to pay for the service when the 90-day free trial expires, and that’s 64%. Getting nearly two-thirds who intend to keep up their memberships is actually a decent result, but some of the other figures are disquieting.

So we have 48% of those who sampled Apple Music no longer using it. It sits idle. Now it may be that some of these people will come back to it later, and the survey doesn’t specify exactly how long these users tried the service before giving up on it, or perhaps they are just ignoring its presence. This also appears to fly in the face of the first number, that 64% will plan to actually pay for the service when the free trial is up. Does this make sense?

The mind boggles.

Another significant number is that 61% of those responding to the survey have disabled the auto-renew option in their iTunes accounts. Now many may be hedging their bets, but the figure is surprising, because most people who actually sign up for free trials aren’t likely to consider a recurring payment until the payment comes due unless they intend to cancel. Or at least that’s my impression in signing up for free trials over the years.

Of the Apple customers surveyed, 77% knew of Apple Music, so there is surely room to grow. It all depends on how well Apple is promoting the service, and whether there will be more blatant appeals with the OS X El Capitan and iOS 9 releases. In all, 11% of Apple’s U.S. customers have supposedly tried Apple Music. But this is a curious figure, since, worldwide, only 1.4%, or 11 million, have actually signed up for the free trial, or maybe U.S. numbers skewed higher. It would be nice to see some sort of worldwide survey.

One disturbing comment comes from Russ Crupnick, Managing Partner for MusicWatch, who, in explaining the “subpar’ numbers, states, “That’s the disadvantage of not being the first mover in a market where very good services currently exist.”

That goes to suggest that Apple isn’t bringing much, or anything, new to the table, and that people are already happy with Spotify and other subscription services. But cconsider the situation in the smartphone segment before the iPhone arrived. Were customers already satisfied with their BlackBerry? I expect if you polled them at the time, that would have been the case.

But wait, there’s yet another report about how many Apple Music users are still using the service. It comes directly from Apple, which states that the percentage is closer to 79%. It does seem more credible, considering the high percentage of users who plan to continue to use the service.

Commenting on a recent survey conducted by research firm MusicWatch, which claimed only 52 percent of Apple Music trial customers still use the service, Apple said the actual attrition rate is closer to 21 percent.=

True, the Apple Music advantage may be ephemeral to some. More hands-on curation, integration with Apple’s ecosystem, Beats 1, and some exclusive tracks, such as the Beatles. That’s hardly a new paradigm, but merely an Apple slant on existing subscription structures. So it may be less distinctive.

But wait, there’s yet another report about how many Apple Music users are still using the service. It comes directly from Apple, which states that the percentage is closer to 79%. It does seem more credible, considering the high percentage of users who plan to continue to use the service.

When you consider the possibilities for success, don’t forget that it took Spotify seven years to hit 20 million paid members. Apple got 11 million to subscribe in one month, and if seven or eight million keep their memberships, that would be a decent result. I would also assume that, by September 30th, many millions more will have decided to sample Apple Music.

Sure, Spotify started from nothing. Apple already has 800 million iTunes accounts, but it’s real early in the game, and it would be wrong to bet against Apple. Besides, there is just no precedent for a company with a user base that large starting up a music subscription service from scratch. Apple appeared pleased with the 11 million number; some tech pundits are skeptical.

It’s also possible that the early Apple Music glitches might cause some people to hold back. At the end of the day, however, I think it’s more about individuals deciding if they need to subscribe to anything new, and whether what Apple is offering is on their radar. That remains to be seen.

Besides, based on the first month’s numbers, assuming almost two-thirds keep their subscriptions, that Apple will probably beat Spotify and then some by the end of the year. If customers are satisfied, they won’t cancel, and that’s where Apple has to be mindful of the initial problems and make sure most are eradicated when the holiday rush begins.

Let me make it personal. I subscribed to Apple Music on the first day. While the For You feature took a while to grasp my musical tastes, it’s somewhat better now. I haven’t lost any music, and unwanted DRM is not attached to any of my own content. While I have not disabled auto-renew, I’m not at all sure if l want to keep it running. Maybe I’ll upgrade to the family version so my son, Grayson, who listens to more music than his dad, will have access to the service.

On Monday morning, Mrs. Steinberg came to me and asked about the Apple Car? “The Apple what”? I responded, and I was somewhat distracted with another task. She pointed me to the TV set, where I observed a certain cable news station interviewing an editor from a well known tech publication who was pontificating on the subject.

All the well-worn rumors were there, based on reports that Apple has established “Project Titan” to develop their new vehicle. Before I get to the rest of the details, such as they are, the latest wrinkle in this tale has it that Apple is seeking a place where development vehicles can be test-driven. One location mentioned is a former naval base located near San Francisco that is already being used by Honda and Mercedes-Benz.

Another has it that Tim Cook and other Apple executives went to Germany last year to tour the assembly line for BMW’s i3 electric car. Another mentioned negotiations with Apple and BMW that evidently failed to produce an agreement.

One report mentions a secret development lab in Sunnyvale, CA, not far from Apple’s corporate headquarters. It would be populated by hundreds of employees, many recruited from other car companies, including Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Tesla. This all begins to sound so credible, right?

Now it’s not as if Apple could build a car that quickly. Traditional auto makers might be able to knock out a new model in a couple of years, but a company that never did it before? How long would it take to create a prototype, and then to establish a working production line on which to build that vehicle? While Apple has plenty of cash to fund such a project, that doesn’t guarantee when, or if for that matter, it might happen.

It reminds me of all those claims that Apple was working on a smart TV, but the best the rumors produced was a story that perhaps one or more prototypes were built, but the product was abandoned for one reason or another. It doesn’t matter why at this point since there’s no evidence it’s going to happen.

Bear in mind that Apple reportedly considers loads of possibilities for new products, or revisions to existing products. Some of those possibilities may even appear in the supply chain as prototypes are built, but they are never green lit.

So what about an iCar, Apple Car, or whatever you want to call it?

It may well be that Project Titan, as rumored, truly represents the initial foray into becoming a car maker. It would certainly be difficult, and that’s an understatement? Do you recall how many brand new car makers have actually manufactured and sold motor vehicles in the U.S. in the last 60 years?

I don’t mean a new brand from an existing maker, such as GM’s failed Saturn division, or the luxury monikers from several Japanese makers, such as Acura, Infiniti and Lexus. I’m saying from scratch, from the ground up.

A famous example is the DeLorean DMC-12, a futuristic vehicle that was available from 1981 through 1983. It was famously used as a plot device in the “Back to the Future” movies, where it was modified by a mad scientist with a time machine. In the real world, the DeLorean had an unceremonious ending, being pushed into bankruptcy after the arrest of its founder, legendary auto designer John DeLorean, on drug trafficking. While he was later found not guilty, it didn’t come soon enough to save the company.

How many other auto companies have come and gone? There are a few “kit car” firms, making small numbers of custom vehicles, but Apple does mass production. It wouldn’t build a few thousand high-price exotic vehicles merely to demonstrate new technology.

Perhaps the most popular recent entrant into the car marketplace is the Tesla. While the luxury electric car seems successful enough, the company has been plagued by manufacturing delays in adding to the model lineup. It’s yet to become profitable, but founder Elon Musk seems in it for the long haul.

So if an Apple Car comes to pass, what form would it take? Being an environmentally friendly company, no doubt it would be an electric vehicle, and may even sport a self-driving feature. As I enter my 70s, I have begun to think about when I will no longer be able to drive by myself, but I have friends in their late 70s and even 80s who manage to traverse the highways and byways and are perfectly safe drivers.

Still, I have to wonder.

But is this something that’s really being considered by Apple? What about setting up a test bed to evaluate new technologies for CarPlay? Wouldn’t Apple want to be able to evaluate the feature in new vehicles from a variety of manufacturers, to make sure it integrated properly into existing electronic systems? Wouldn’t that require a staff of motor vehicle engineers and designers, and even test tracks on which to run the vehicles to confirm that future iterations of CarPlay were safe and secure?

Must it be a car?

That’s a question that is no doubt currently being considered by the media as they examine, from afar, what Apple is doing with its automobile initiative. If an Apple Car were to come to be, however, it would not appear for several years at the very least. At the end of the day, however, it may be just a fantasy and nothing more than a better way with which to test automotive technologies that will be available to the rest of the industry.