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 […]

The common argument is that Apple’s gear is too expensive, that cheaper products would greatly expand the market and swat Android, Windows and other competitors. Yes, that’s the theory. But through all these years, Apple has largely avoided the cheaper stuff. Well, maybe the Macintosh Performa, in the days before Steve Jobs returned to the company, […]

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 […]