Mike Elgan

Back in May, when everyone was hailing the coming age of the Palm Pre, I predicted — correctly, it turns out — that the Pre would fail. With 20/20 hindsight, that prediction sounds non-controversial. But at the time it sounded crazy to many, and I got a lot of hate mail for it. After all, […]

ALSO SEE: 12 Black Friday Secrets Retailers Don’t Want You To Know AND: 10 Black Friday Secrets Retailers Don’t Want You To Know Don’t look now, but Black Friday is dead. Use of the term Black Friday to refer to the first day of the holiday shopping season goes all the way back to 1965. […]

Microsoft stole Apple’s retail store idea, as well as the Apple store look and feel, for its first outlet in first store in Scottsdale, Arizona. (A second one is planned for Mission Viejo, California). Trouble is, unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn’t make PCs. Big monitors and PCs are part of the Apple store aesthetic. Microsoft needed […]

The Apple iPhone rules the smart phone landscape, and the Amazon Kindle dominates eBooks. But the future of their leadership was called into question this week. Today’s leaders will become tomorrow’s losers, according to forecasters. Here’s why they’re wrong. Why the iPhone Will Rule Gartner “predicted this week that by 2012, smart phones running Apple’s […]

You hear a lot about Internet addiction, or Internet Addiction Disorder. Camps and rehab clinics have sprung up all over China, and even in the United States, to help cure victims. Internet addiction is diagnosed when excessive use of the Internet interferes with normal life — job, relationships, and so on. Internet addiction is real. […]

Windows 7 got off to a great start with positive word-of-mouth from beta testers. Windows 7 features a “painless install,” said one. “Totally compatible,” gushed another. “Almost as good as XP,” exclaimed a third. But will Microsoft screw up the Windows 7 launch like it did Windows Vista? So far, it’s not looking good. Windows […]

Most big, long-term trends in computers and technology are well understood. Everyone knows, thanks to Moore and his Law, that gadgets get smaller, cheaper and faster. But the least appreciated trend is the inexorable transition from mechanical to solid state. Don’t look now, but we’re about to reach the end of the trend — soon […]

Microsoft geniuses are secretly toiling away in an underground lab to build a gadget that will kill the coming Apple Tablet device, right? Wrong. The device in question is called Courier, and it’s got two 7-inch screens, one camera, one stylus pen and no chance of ever seeing the light of day. Sorry to be […]

The US government says China is out to steal your secrets — and will successfully do so, unless you take extreme precautions. Symantec chief technology officer Mark Bregman told an IT publication this week that he was “advised by people in three-letter agencies in the US Government” to not bring his phone and laptop to […]

Most predictions about Apple’s big event today were wrong. No, Steve Jobs wasn’t a no-show. Apple didn’t kill the iPod Classic. And the company didn’t announce Beatles music on iTunes. But the wrongest prediction of all was that the iPod Touch would grow a video-capable camera. Pundits were certain iPod Touch would get a camera […]