Macintosh Bible, 8th Edition, The

Screensavers

Years ago, the theory ran like this: You needed a screensaver to protect your Mac's display from the burn-in phenomenon. It made sense, since when you look at the tiny ATM machine at a bank, you see images of the display burned into the screen itself.

So you bought a screensaver to protect your investment in your Mac's display. This made even greater sense in the days when even a basic 13-inch monitor cost upward of a thousand bucks. Now, with prices of similar-size products running below a couple hundred dollars, the issue of protecting the screen no longer seems quite so compelling.

In the old days, millions of Mac users ran screensavers of flying toasters and animated spaceships on their displays. There were active development ...