Fear of flying — Why the iPad 2 isn't even better

A good friend of mine pointed out the money phrase from Steve Jobs at this week’s iPad 2 introduction: “This is worth repeating. It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology is not enough. It’s tech married with the liberal arts and the humanities. Nowhere is that more true than in the post-PC products. Our competitors are looking at this like it’s the next PC market. That is not the right approach to this. These are post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC, more intuitive.”

It’s an insightful even brilliant statement that’s 100 percent true. Then why doesn’t Steve Jobs practice what he preaches?

Jobs and Apple definitely have a better handle on the […]

Just shoot me

Last night I was surfing the web and came across a news story titled Ten Things Americans Waste the Most Money On from a web site called 24/7 Wall Street. I’ll save you the trouble of reading the story: we Americans waste our money (in monetary order from most to least) on restaurants, gifts, audio/video equipment, pets, hotels, entertainment admission fees, alcohol, sporting goods, tobacco, and apparel. Or in other words eating, having family and friends, enjoying music, having a dog or cat, experiencing the world, knocking back a dirty martini, exercising, and replacing our worn-out clothing is a frigging waste of money.

Just shoot me.

If we didn’t spend all that money what would […]

By |February 28th, 2011|2011|91 Comments

Why Leo Apotheker will be fired from Hewlett Packard

I don’t think Leo Apotheker is going to survive long as CEO of Hewlett Packard. This is not based on any inside information, just my own pondering. And when Apotheker does go down, I’m pretty sure I know who will take his place.

The players in this drama are Apotheker, various HP executives, and the HP board, with the important bit of information being that the board has changed substantially in composition since Apotheker was appointed last year. It’s a new board.

Leo Apotheker was a dark horse candidate to run HP. He’s German, comes from an enterprise software background at SAP, the big German software company, and has no history in hardware. All previous HP CEOs […]

Attack of the Minis

Next week Apple will have a product event, presumably to announce the next generation of MacBook Pro notebooks. Every year we see these upgrades. The notebooks get faster with more storage and every couple years they look a little different. This time, however, there will be another change — the addition of a new type of peripheral data port called Light Peak that promises, at 10 gigabits-per-second — to be the fastest-yet connection between a Mac and a storage device or even from one Mac to another. And this latter use is key because in addition to Light Peak-equipped MacBook Pros, I expect to see next week a Light Peak Mac Mini. Now that’s interesting.

Light […]

By |February 21st, 2011|2011|83 Comments

Major Jalloud

Long before I became involved with technology I worked as a reporter in the Middle East. My work there introduced me to many important characters of that era. Some of them, like Yassar Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization and King Hussein of Jordan, are long gone from the scene. I effectively predated Mubarak, and in those days Bahrain was mainly known as the only place on the Gulf where drivers were polite and you could legally buy a drink. But one constant that remains is Colonel Qaddafi of Libya, though he’s not what this column is about. It’s about Major Jalloud, Qaddafi’s right-hand man.

I have no idea if Major Jalloud is still alive or […]

By |February 20th, 2011|2011|67 Comments