Must Apple be number one at everything it does? Does being number two — or three for that matter — mean the company has somehow failed? Hardly. With record revenue and profits, it certainly doesn’t seem that the company is confronting potential failure at every turn. But it’s not always the market leader. Take the […]

Normally I don’t take notice the passing of a long-time auto executive, but I’ll make an exception with the news of the recent death of Kenichi Yamamoto. He once served as president and chairman of Mazda, but he became most famous by being head of the team of engineers that perfected the rotary engine for […]

At one time, tech pundits wondered what company should buy Apple, and it’s true that, in the 1990s before Steve Jobs returned, that was not beyond the realm of possibility. In early 1996, Apple evidently negotiated with Sun Microsystems — do you remember them? — to sell itself. This came in the wake of the […]

I should feel lucky. I’ve owned several VWs over the years, but never considered a diesel option. Not that I had any prejudice against a different kind of engine — I owned one of Mazdas original rotary engine cars in the 1970s — but the value proposition just didn’t make much sense to me. Here’s why: […]