One of the downsides of a company as secretive as Apple is that customers and the media will feel compelled to speculate about new products. Some of that speculation will be true, some of it not, but it’s usually hard to know in advance which predictions will pan out except through logic, reason and a […]

I’m sure many of you won’t be surprised to learn that there’s a growing perception that Steve Jobs will never return to Apple, at least to his full-time job. The best compromise appears to be that he’ll select someone to be permanent CEO, perhaps acting CEO Tim Cook, and that Jobs will assume some sort […]

I suppose this week represented a huge test for Apple and the stock market. Knowing that Steve Jobs was going to be absent from Apple for five months, how would Wall Street react, particularly in light of the possibility that he might never return as CEO? Well, some analysts suggest that the financial community has […]

If you can believe Microsoft, they frequently put groups of users in little test rooms — or some sort of testing environment — and expose them to the new features in a product. By gauging their reactions, they decide whether those capabilities deserve to go into production. Now if you look at Microsoft’s shipping products, […]