Mike Elgan

Apple’s in trouble. The company depends on iPhone revenue for growth. But the iPhone isn’t growing. The competition is. Growth by Chinese smartphone upstarts is in the double digits. Meanwhile, Google is suddenly more serious about smartphone hardware. And Samsung is about to announce a new line of amazing phones. Enterprises and businesses gravitate toward […]

Apple says the iPad Pro is “better than a computer.” (That’s an interesting claim to make for a company that makes computers.) But is it true? I’ve been pondering this question since Apple unveiled the new iPad Pro line and iOS 11 operating system at their WWDC event for developers earlier this month. Surprisingly, my […]

The coming explosion in home automation, which is the consumer dimension of the Internet of Things revolution, is going to be dominated by some company, or some small number of companies. I think the most obvious leader in this burgeoning category is none other than Samsung Electronics. Samsung’s Dilemma Samsung succeeds in the all-important smartphone […]

 Apple Pay, which is the long-awaited Apple mobile payment system the company rolled out this week, will probably make a lot of iPhone and iPad users very happy. What’s not to like? It makes capitalism more friction-free. If you have the right hardware, it makes spending money easy — just tap an NFC device at […]

The creator of Lotus Notes launched a new communication app this week. Former Lotus, IBM and Microsoft executive Ray Ozzie, as well as Matt Pope and Eric Patey, released an iOS app called Talko. The app is revolutionary because it replaces not only conference calls, not only meetings themselves, but phone calls. Business communication falls […]

A new trend has emerged where technology companies have realized that abusing and harassing users pays big. Here’s how customer service is supposed to work: The company that thrills its customers by doing unexpected good things for them eventually gets a reputation as a good company to do business with and, as a result, wins […]

Whether you think NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is a hero or a traitor, you have to admit: The guy knows how to keep his information secure. The fact that Snowden isn’t sitting in Guantanamo right now with ankle cuffs and a bag over his head demonstrates his ability to avoid detection. Snowden spoke at the […]

Google’s Android Wear operating system got very real last week. Google executives demonstrated the platform to 6,000 developers and press at the company’s annual Google I/O conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. And then they gave each attendee a watch running Android Wear. (I accepted an LG G watch as an evaluation and will be […]

Apple’s rumored acquisition talks with Beats Electronics got the tech snobs talking. Beats is best known for headphones widely acknowledged as “mediocre” and “overpriced.” That opinion is backed up by numbers: A pair of Beats Studio Headphones costs $299 at BestBuy. Yet experts widely acknowledged that the cost for the electronics and parts necessary to […]

I believe the next big thing in computing is the audio interface. Call it hearable computing. Hearable computing is not a sub-genre of wearable computing, nor mobile computing, nor desktop computing. It’s a thing unto its own. And I believe it will take two forms: First, the always listening, ubiquitous microphone; and second, the always […]