Let me state from the outset that I’ve never owned an iPhone that arrived in defective condition or developed a defect after heavy use. Unless heavily abused, I expect them to last a fairly long time, other than, of course, the battery. But since most of you probably swap your mobile phones every couple of [...]

Unlike many tech companies, Apple has a long-range vision. Maybe you didn’t see how the iPod would develop, the ongoing improvements in the iPhone or the path from Mac OS X 10.0 to 10.6, but there’s little doubt Apple had broad concepts about the direction of these products from Day One. I wasn’t surprised when I [...]

In recent years, it was widely assumed that Apple and Google were working together to combat Microsoft. That may have been true at one point in time, but a lot of things have since occurred hat have put Apple at Google at loggerheads. The most recent salvo in this growing conflict was that intellectual property lawsuit [...]

Sometimes I feel that I?m becoming the tech equivalent of the Media Matters Web site. That?s the one where they analyze what they regard as erroneous reports from their opponents. Since they have a liberal orientation, that means anyone with a conservative bent; their biggest target is Fox News. But I have no political agendas to [...]

When I suggested recently that we had returned to the silly season, perhaps a little earlier than I might have expected, I didn’t know how right I was. A recent article, from a site that I won’t name, is now suggesting that the iPad is the first nail in the Mac’s coffin, that it won’t [...]

Now we all know that Snow Leopard appeared last August, but for some of you it still has serious problems, so you’re sticking with Leopard. Some of you are even Tiger holdouts, because Leopard didn’t light your fire. The other day, I saw a perfectly serious article claiming adoption of 10.6 was not so good and [...]

It’s nothing new. When the iPod first came out, bloggers and so-called tech pundits were busy complaining about the features it didn’t have, such as a built-in radio, or perhaps a working kitchen sink. None of that hurt actual sales of the product, of course, since it became a runaway best-seller and sales only began [...]

Some people want you to believe that Apple is a dictatorship, with Steve Jobs micromanaging everything and relying on his temperamental personality to make critical corporate decisions. Good or bad, it means that, were Jobs to bow out, the company would be on the skids in an extremely short time. There may be something in this [...]

Apple can?t stay out of the news, not that they?d want to. So in the past couple of weeks, you learned that all the known problems with the 27-inch iMac have been fixed, the iPad ships on April 3rd in the USA, and later that month in other countries and, by the way, Apple is [...]

On the whole, I think Apple’s tight integration among its mobile devices and the way software is sold is a good thing. There is a rich selection, somewhere in the range 140,000 and 150,000 as I write this, with billions of downloads. Some tiny developers have made boatloads of money as a result of their [...]

In 1998, Apple killed the floppy drive. It took a few years for the rest of the industry to catch up, but the handwriting was clearly on the wall. Of course, anyone who actually lost data on a worn or defective floppy would only cheer the end of that flawed storage scheme. Segue to 2007. Apple [...]

This week, there’s a report that Apple is suing a mobile phone handset maker, HTC, over supposed various and sundry patent infringement issues. Now in passing I should point out that HTC is also the company that builds Google’s Nexus One smartphone and a number of other devices that support the Android OS. And, yes, I’m [...]

There are some reasonable certainties in the Apple universe, and one is that there will be an iPhone OS 4.0 release some time later this year, probably in July. That is, if the expected timeframe for Apple’s WWDC remains in late June. For now, I’ll stay away from other possible product revelations, such as the prospects [...]

Those of you who have been following the ongoing 27-inch iMac soap opera are aware of the reports about display defects. These include screen flickering and a yellowish tinge. Early on, some newly-minted owners, including Macworld magazine, got units with cracked screens. Worse, this hot-selling model was particularly difficult to get, unless you were ready [...]

Some of you may have read a report the other day that Apple was behind the curve because there were no recent updates to the MacBook Pro lineup. This despite the fact that Intel had recently upgraded its mobile processors. So what’s wrong with Apple? Don’t they want their customers to have the latest and [...]

Since Opera released the first alphas and betas for Opera 10.5 beginning last year, they’ve been able to boast of having the speediest browser on the planet. Test after test shows tiny increments of advantage over Google Chrome, Firefox and, of course, Safari. You hardly count Internet Explorer in such benchmarks, since it trails the [...]

All right you know that Apple Inc. is brilliant when it comes to spin control. They have managed to control their corporate message far better than any other company and, in fact, probably better than many governments. Whether it’s all due to the iron fist of Steve Jobs, or it’s a cooperative approach formulated by [...]

Just the other day, author and columnist Kirk McElhearn said he was going to close his Gmail account. Yes, it’s free, so what’s the beef? Well, Kirk is extremely concerned about the way Google tracks everything you’re doing and delivers targeted ads, hoping you’ll click on them and thus boost their revenue. I suppose that’s not [...]

Not so long ago, the question I’m asking in this column would be considered downright insane, and maybe it still us. But please take a look at the facts and maybe you’ll see where Microsoft needs to consider this matter very seriously. In 1995, Microsoft released version 1.0 of Internet Explorer, an application derived from Spyglass [...]

In the wake of a press release from RESCUECOM, a third-party computer repair service, that Apple remains the top-rated company, I have to wonder why so many people perceive Macs and recent Mac OS versions as seriously flawed. Clearly there’s a disconnect, since other surveys, from Consumer Reports and elsewhere, also show superior ratings for [...]

It is widely believed that Apple will unveil iPhone 4.0 at this summer’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference and ship it shortly thereafter. There’s also a passing level of speculation that they will also deliver preliminary information about the next great reference release for Mac OS X, 10.7, sporting an unknown feline moniker. The real question, however, is [...]

Recent Apple product releases have received an almost unanimous “ho hum” reaction from many members of the tech media, not to mention Mac users. Despite a tremendous amount of anticipation about the iPhone in 2007, for example, the critics maintained that it lacked key features, not to mention being a little too different from existing [...]

You just know that the critics are busy comparing the iPad to other tablet computers and perhaps netbooks. If what they suggest is true, those are the chief competitors to the new Apple gadget. But it may turn out that Apple’s biggest competitor is ? Apple! More specifically, Apple’s notebook lineup. You see, many if not all [...]

Someone once said you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. So we have a situation where Apple?s biggest rival ? not including Google of course ? remains Microsoft, yet Microsoft continues to create products that run on the Mac. There?s even talk of a version of Office that will be designed specifically for [...]

All right, you can be certain that, between now and the actual arrival of iPads for shipping to customers, various and sundry financial and tech pundits will be trying as hard as they can to rip Apple a new one about the product. This is, in large part, a mirror of the six month run [...]

In an article for entitled “The Microsofting of Apple?,” editorial board member Holman W. Jenkins Jr., writing an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, makes the silly mistake of comparing Microsoft’s predatory methods to compete with its rivals with Apple’s ascendancy in recent years. As with many of Apple’s staunchest critics, Jenkins’ lack of understanding [...]

As I read the complaints about the lack of a Web cam and “true multitasking” on the iPad, I’m reminded of the complaints folks voiced years ago about the original Mac OS. In those days, as I mentioned in yesterday’s column, Apple cobbled together a cooperative multitasking system to allow you to run more than [...]

You can bet the critics were howling when Apple’s press event and product information on the iPad failed to mention multitasking. How, then, do you run more than a single app at the same time? What if you need to integrate the content you create in, say, Pages with Numbers? Isn’t this all a throwback [...]

Humans are strange beasts. I wonder what an alien race might think of us if they come to Earth to observe our society and psychology. Consider how we root for the winner, and then, in an abrupt change of face, fervently hope for their defeat. So consider Apple?s plight over the years. Despite a loyal fan [...]

When you run Safari, the search address bar will give you any search engine, so long as it’s Google. With the iPhone, you can select Yahoo! as an alternate. Sure, you might find it only slightly less convenient simply to visit the search engine of your choice, and add it to Safari’s toolbar. However, as you [...]

In the old days of CRT displays, I never, ever, got a perfect product. Except perhaps for the original 13-inch Apple RGB color display, every one of them was defective in some fashion. Now you can call me obsessive/compulsive, or just picky, but my eyes would discern the minor irregularities in screen geometry, where the [...]

No, folks, this isn’t a conspiracy theory, nor do I actually believe Apple’s being especially secretive about the things they do to make you switch from one technology standard to another. But it sometimes takes a few years to comprehend their vision. Take the decision to embrace USB in 1998 starting with the original iMac. Till [...]

The other day I saw what appeared to be an ad for the iPhone, depicting a new app that allowed you to manage your auto insurance policy. But rather than segue to the telltale Apple logo, it turned out that this was actually commercial for GEICO, complete with that lizard-like puppet that serves as the [...]

As expected, the iPad consumed much of the chatter about Apple this past week, but it didn’t stop there. As most of you know, few tech pundits talked about anything else in the weeks leading up to the introduction of Apple’s latest and greatest. At the same time, the official Apple responses to various and sundry [...]

Before I get into the meat of this commentary, one thing troubles me, and that’s whether Apple has jumped the shark when it comes to using the infamous “i” prefix for its products. Beginning with the position Steve Jobs assumed when he took over Apple shortly after his return to the company, iCEO, and ending [...]

Consider your choices. You can spend $489 for an Amazon Kindle DX (unless they suddenly drop the price), which does little more than read books and publications. You can spend $300-$400 for a netbook, which is a pathetic excuse for a notebook computer — or you can, beginning in March, buy a basic Apple iPad [...]

Anyone who experiences dropped calls from the wireless carrier that once promised fewer dropped calls must be wondering if AT&T’s exclusive on the iPhone is poised to expire. There are reports now that Apple will announce during their Wednesday morning shindig that the iPhone will become available at more than a single U.S. carrier. Before the [...]

The financial community has, in the past year, warmed to the inevitable success of Apple’s business plan, and you wonder why it took so long. For so many years, you see, the words “beleaguered” and “Apple” were synonymous. Whenever Microsoft released a new version of Windows, you just knew that the Mac couldn’t possibly compete, [...]

Depending on which version of the conventional wisdom you choose to believe, Apple is engaged in a battle to the death with Google and Microsoft. With the former, it?s mostly about smartphones, although Google is also working on a desktop operating system. When it comes to the latter, it?s the eternal conflict between the Mac [...]

Just the other day, I read yet another commentary from an alleged tech pundit claiming that the reason Apple didn’t conquer the world with the Macintosh in the 1980s was because they opted to keep the platform closed. Thus, there is no chance that Apple can overcome the Google onslaught and not fall behind in [...]

Since my recent column, “Does Windows 7 Make a Difference?,” was published, there has been an active debate about a new Microsoft window management feature, where a document is pinned at the edge of the screen a grabs half the display. You can place a second document on the other half of the screen to [...]

You’d think that anything Apple unveils during its now confirmed media event later this month is pretty well known. If that’s the case, I suppose there’s no valid reason for any further coverage. All we need are the final product descriptions, the price and when orders will be accepted. Of course, I’m being facetious here. It [...]

As some of you have heard, the PC industry appears to have recovered from a severe case of the doldrums, reflected in declining sales for part of 2009 mostly as the result of the world economic crisis. There was, however, one shining light in all this grief, aside from Apple’s record profits of course, and [...]

Regardless of whose sales figures you believe, it’s a sure thing that the netbook saved the PC industry in 2009. Without those cheap, shrunken notebooks, I’ve little doubt that sales would have been perfectly awful for most of the PC box builders. Instead, they can return to an alleged PC resurgence, and Windows 7 no doubt [...]

As you know, different market research firms have different number-crunching methodologies, so you can expect that the results will vary, and sometimes be contradictory. A case in point might be the first reports of U.S. PC sales for the last quarter. Depending on which firm’s figures you quote, Apple either gained market share or lost [...]

The feeding frenzy over stories about a possible tablet computer from Apple has consumed the tech media in recent weeks, but don’t forget that we’re talking about one product that is supposed to be launched this month. That leaves plenty of time for more mischief and speculation as to what Apple is going to deliver [...]

You just knew when Google introduced the Nexus One that it had to be the ultimate iPhone killer. After all, it was Google, and the Android platform is new and sexy. Well, anyway it’s new, so it just has to succeed. The reality appears to be something else again. The Nexus One is a rebadged HTC [...]

When you don’t know what’s going on with Apple, it’s perfectly reasonable to look over their product lineup and see what gaps might be filled. That, alas, can be a double-edge sword. Take the desktop lineup. Three models, but no affordable expandable model. The Mac Pro is simply too rich for most Mac users, and, despite [...]

When a company becomes set in its ways, the door to potential disaster looms. This may well be why Chrysler and GM had to run to the government for a bailout when the market changed right under them, whereas Ford, which had executives with greater foresight, we ready to cope with the economic downturn and [...]

You just know that Apple’s critics are busy harping on the features of the Nexus One phone, from Google and HTC, which appear to trump those in the iPhone. This should, so they say, make it the ultimate iPhone killer. But is any of that true? It is very clear that Google and HTC have taken a [...]