> Three decades later, with the release of macOS 26.5, Apple caught up: you can finally set your Mac to 'Always' boot whenever power is restored, regardless of how it was shut down.

Back in the 1990s, a Mac sysadmin showed me a clever trick for this.

Get one specific Apple Desktop Bus keyboard that has a soft power key on it, I believe the Apple Extended Keyboard[1]. Then get a Bic pen[2]. Push down the power key on the keyboard, and while it's still down, wedge the pen cap between the key and the keyboard case.

The pen cap is the perfect size and shape to hold the key down, and Bic pens are easy to find. There are no ill effects from having the power key down all the time, and the Mac will boot up after a power failure. So you don't have to drive to work just to push the power button.

This was especially handy considering you sometimes needed to use Macs as servers (file server, printing, certain Mac-only applications, etc.), but Apple did not make servers.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Extended_Keyboard

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bic_Cristal

The power button on the Macintosh IIsi could be turned with a flat-head screwdriver to achieve the same thing you describe (locking it in the permanently-powered state): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_IIsi#/media/File:Mac...

My memory from classic Mac OS is that pushing the keyboard soft-power key brought up a system-modal dialog asking if you wanted to shut down, restart, or cancel, a dialog with exactly the same design as: <http://www.christianboyce.com/page25/files/tipofthedayjulyth...>

That would obviously not be compatible with a server, maybe if soft power was just constantly held down starting from boot that dialog wouldn't show up?

I remember debugging with macs and lots of engineers had fishing weights with square bottoms to hold down keys.

I didn't have one so made a few stacks of pennies I taped together.

for example shift at boot, cmd+s, etc...

Isn't it easier to scotch tape or better yet, duct tape it down?