Mike Elgan

The tech press and gadget blogosphere obsess over new products, new Web sites, new technologies and new ideas. We all love the shock of the new. But the truth is, the very best products in this industry are new versions of old products. 1.0 releases often take bold stabs at solving existing problems. But only […]

The new iPhone 3GS is much faster, more elegant and more usable than any other iPhone. With each new version, the high quality of the iPhone stands in stark contrast to the low quality of its exclusive US Carrier: AT&T. I think it’s time for Apple to drop AT&T — or, at least offer iPhone […]

As murder-mysteries go, this one is baffling, in part because the corpse is still breathing. The one-word answer is: Oprah. But the full truth is far more interesting. Twitter was the hottest, fastest-growing, most attention-grabbing social service for a while, but suddenly it appears that many of its users don’t actually use it and its […]

Antitrust law exists to support market competition and protect the public from unfair business practices. But who protects us from grandstanding government lawyers? Case in point: The New York Times reported yesterday that US antitrust regulators are going after Google, Apple and Yahoo. The probe centers on the accusation that these companies are colluding with […]

I know, I know. Apple iPhone: old and busted. Palm Pre: new hotness. Palm’s new phone will be June’s flavor of the month, etc. The Pre will have smartphone enthusiasts squealing with delight at its feature-rich and innovative user interface, which appears to do everything the iPhone does plus a gazillion things the iPhone can’t […]

Everybody’s talking about real-time search — the kind of search where you can find things posted seconds ago, rather than hours or days. (People are even talking about Google talking about real-time search. The company has been hinting lately about such an offering.) The current leader in real-time search is Twitter — but Twitter isn’t […]

Google rolled out today some of the best new search tools ever. My favorites are the “Wonder Wheel” and the “Timeline.” I’ll save my over-enthusiastic gushing about these features for another column. Instead, I’d like to address the many comparisons being made between Google’s new “Recent results” feature and the search function of Twitter. Is […]

Steve Jobs is probably one of the best and most visionary CEOs in the world, and a national treasure. He’s also been sick lately, and I wish him a full and speedy recovery, followed by a return to Apple as full-time CEO. But even visionaries have blind spots. Jobs was totally wrong about the market […]

Windows Vista bombed, so Microsoft went back to the old drawing board and cobbled together the current future versions of Windows, which is version 7. I warned last year that, because Microsoft thinks Vista’s unpopularity was all just a big misunderstanding, and because of the market pressure to get Windows 7 out early, the company […]

The conventional wisdom is that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is a nerdy software visionary who is even more brilliant as a business man. It’s hard to argue with Microsoft’s long-term success. It’s also hard to criticize the world’s greatest philanthropist, a man who has been devoting much of his time and fortune to improving and […]

Google has a “Facebook killer” on its hands. And, no, I’m not talking about Google’s Orkut social network (unless you live in Brazil, where Orkut has already “killed” Facebook). Google is just one acquisition away from offering a social network that does everything Facebook does, minus all the things everybody hates about Facebook. This social […]

New technology requires the invention of new words — which used to be coined by engineers. Some were descriptive (“electronic mail”), others whimsical (“mouse”). Fast forward to today, and technology is big business. The marketing people now coin words, motivated less by descriptiveness or amusement and more by profit. Sure, It’s the job of marketers […]