Archive for the ‘Tech.pinions Quick Takes’ Category
WSJ’s Internet History Is Way Off
The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page seems to have dedicated itself to showing that every single thing uttered
Robert E. Kahn (Wikipedia)
by President Obama is at best a misstatement. Today, Gordon Crovitz takes on the President’s statement that the government helped …
Confirmed: The iPad Isn’t Good At What It Isn’t Good At
What is it about the iPad that moves seemingly rational people to say perfectly ridiculous things?
The latest example of this foolishness is Matt Asay, writing in The Register, who argues that because there are some enterprise chores that the iPad …
Will Windows RT Include Outlook? Microsoft Won’t Say
Folks who plan to use Outlook on ARM-powered tablets, such as the Windows RT version of the Surface, may be in for a disappointment. The materials Microsoft released this week along with the Consumer Preview of Office 2013 were frustratingly …
Very Quick Office Reaction: Getting the Cloud Wrong
I’ve just spent about half an hour playing with the new Office 2013 preview, so obviously this is a very preliminary reaction. There will be a lot more to say in coming weeks and months. But I do think that …
Customers May Have Forced Apple’s EPEAT Retreat
Well that didn’t take take long. Just a week after Apple announced that that it was pulling its products from EPEAT environmental certification, it reversed itself and said it would continue with the program and work with EPEAT to evolve …
The Tech.pinions Opinion Cast: An Evolving Idea
An analyst colleague of mine and I were joking recently at a major tech trade show. We thought it would be funny if we put up a table in the hallway with a sign that said Ask the …
Celebrate the Fourth with Warring Declarations of Internet Freedom
When the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1776, it was rife with divisions: north vs. south, slave vs. free, big states vs. small states. But the delegates managed to compromise on a document that remains fresh, relevant, and revolutionary. …
Further Thoughts on Apple and Investors
In a post this morning, Ben Bajarin speculated on what it is in investors’ thinking about Apple that keeps the stock price relatively depressed. Like Ben, I am not a financial analyst, but I think the mystery is even deeper …
An Install CD? Really?
Hard drive powerhouse Western Digital is getting into the home networking business with a new line of high-speed wireless routers, some with built-in storage, that the company says are optimized for streaming media around the house. I’ll be taking a …
Was Winning on SOPA Bad for Tech?
I’ve spent a very interesting day at the Tech Policy Summit in Napa, but based on what I’ve heard, I’m beginning to think that the industry’s quick victory in killing the Stop Online Piracy Act this spring may be a long-term …
Phil McKinney to CableLabs: Time for Some Cable Innovation?
In a fascinating move, CableLabs, the non-profit research and development arm of the cable industry, announced today that Phil McKinney, former CTO of Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group, was coming aboard is CEO. What makes this interesting is that McKinney is …
Steve Jobs in Carbonite
Part of Steve Jobs’s brilliance in life was his mercurial nature, sometimes fortified by duplicitousness. He thought an Apple phone was the stupidest idea on earth until the arrival of the iPhone. He made fun of Intel processors until Apple …
Next Time, Samuel L. Jackson Should Try Matzoh Balls
Apple is having some fun with a TV ad in which Samuel L. Jackson tells Siri to remind him to put the gazpacho on ice. Unfortunately, when others try to replicate the experience, Sire is going to leave them with …
A Windows 8 Problem I’m Looking Forward To
Windows 8 introduces a problem new to the annals of computing. Systems using the new Uniform Extensible Firmware Interface in place of the venerable BIOS and a solid-state storage device in place of a spinning hard disk may boot so …
Intel Could Use a Dose of Andy Grove
In a presentation to financial analysts on May 10, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said he was not particularly worried about the prospect of Microsoft issuing a version of Windows for ARM processors later this year. “We think [x86 is] a differentiator,” …
DISH Hopper: What Goes Around Comes Around
Satellite TV operator DISH Network got a lot of attention when it announced its new Hopper DVR with a feature that “can automatically skip commercials in primetime TV – ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC in HD. Only on the Hopper. …
Back to the Future: Windows RT Browser Wars
This morning, I had the strange feeling that I was back in 1997. With Google cheering them on, Mozilla complained that Microsoft was unfairly excluding browsers other than Internet Explorer from devices, expected to be mainly tablets, running the forthcoming …
iPad Magazine Apps–A Rare Failure
Technology Review Editor Jason Pontin has written an insightful article on why magazine apps on the iPad have been a huge disappointment to publishers–and why TR is abandoning its apps in favor of an HTML 5 web site.
When the iPad came …
How Apple Won’t Become a Mobile Carrier
At GigaOm, Whitey Bluestein writes that Apple’s next move is becoming a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), buying wholesale spectrum from operators such as Verizon wireless and AT&T and offering an Apple0branded service directly to customers. I’ll never say never, …
It’s Not Apple’s Responsibility To Pay More Taxes
Most of the response to The New York Times‘ takeout on how Apple avoids billions of dollars in taxes has implied that Apple is doing something wrong and somehow has a moral responsibility to be paying more. Nonsense. As Arik …
Windows on ARM May Get Its Own Brand
The Wall Street Journal‘s Don Clark is reporting that Microsoft is considering calling the version of Windows that will run on ARM chips something other than Windows 8, the name expected to be used for the Intel/AMD version. But I can …
Antitrust: Apple Could Lose by Winning
A Cnet analysis by Declan McCullagh and Greg Sandoval of the antitrust suit against Apple and several book publishers concludes that the case against Apple seems particularly weak. But it rather curiously begins by citing the ultimate failure of previous antitrust …
Word Should Live–But We Need Something Else
Deadspin editor Tom Scocca has written a rant for Slate calling for the death of Microsoft Word. Many of his complaints are well grounded, but miss the point. what we really need is not to get rid of word, which …
Apple Will Sell Exactly 169,652,000 iPads in 2016
Need a lesson in the difference between precision and accuracy? Head over to the Gartner web site for the latest predictions of tablet sales over the next four years. With precision down to the nearest thousand–and I suspect that only …
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