It almost seems as if a growing number of my columns are very much about comparing the present with the past, or just remembering something I did or observed years ago and how it relates to a current event. So I read an article about the iPod’s 15th birthday. But this is something Apple won’t make […]

Some lessons of Apple history: Back in the mid-1990s, Apple suffered from a severe bout of model proliferation. The consumer-based Performa lineup was available in so many configurations, it was hard to tell one from the other without a cheat sheet. In some cases, a model number was customized for a specific dealer, meaning that […]

I got my first iPod in 2001, a review sample from Apple. It had all of 5GB storage, using a tiny hard drive that sometimes wouldn’t survive day-to-day use before failing. While its $399 purchase price was described by many as too high, it didn’t stop Mac users from buying more and more of them. Within […]

The other day, I read a column in a tech blog that praised Apple’s performance under Tim Cook and the company’s stellar financial performance, particularly in the last quarter. When Steve Jobs and Tim Cook were compared, it was about the company being managed by an executive rather than an entrepreneur. So far so good, […]