As was widely reported in the media, the second and third quarter of 2010 show a steady decline in cable subscriptions. This is earth-shaking for the cable companies, who have seen growth in US subscribers over their entire history. It’s a key indicator of not only consumers being more careful with their spending, but the [...]

Recently I’ve had several good conversations about exactly what business Apple is in. They have clearly transcended their traditional role as a computer maker. Some people think that Apple has become a media company, or a telecommunications company. What they have really done is to become a luxury brand. As a luxury brand they are [...]

A number of months ago I posted my disappointment in the version 1 Kindle. I’ve also tried out the version 2, and continue to be convinced that the Sony Reader is a better piece of hardware for dedicated book reading.
But (if there wasn’t a but there wouldn’t be much of a post here) the Sony [...]

In my last post, I shared benchmark data for the web browser on the iPhone versus BlackBerry. My theory is that web browser performance is critically important for smartphone user experience. Furthermore, the BlackBerry seems to be embarrassingly inferior to the iPhone in this respect. This begs the question, how do other phones stack up.
Thanks [...]

Two weeks ago I got a new laptop from work. After extensive hemming and hawing, I went with an Apple MacBook (the black one, cause it looks hotter^Wmore professional). Previous to this I had been running Ubuntu on a Thinkpad T40 bought around the founding of StreamBase. My goal for the change was to [...]

When Apple announced the MacBook Pro, my first reaction was not to any of the hardware changes but to the name. This machine represents the end of the PowerBook brand name, a brand that dates back well before the PowerPC processor, to the first Apple notebook computers in 1991. I believed that PowerBook was one [...]