A clever way to divert attention from your own shortcomings is to talk about someone else’s, real or imagined. In business, you focus on the things your competitor supposedly does wrong, hoping they won’t stop to look more closely at your own failings. So we have Microsoft making a huge deal about an alleged “Apple […]

When the media grabs on to something, even if it’s a false concept, you just know they’ll never let it go. Take those frequent claims that Macs are “premium priced” compared to the PC. In recent years, I’ve said over and over again that the Mac and the PC are priced in roughly the same […]

Once upon a time, you had two fundamental classes of journalists. One group worked for regular newspapers or broadcast facilities, plying their trade; the others were employed by the supermarket tabloids, offering up gossip, real and otherwise, about various and sundry celebrities, political figures and notables from the business world. While there are gray areas, […]

So a client calls me to set up his spanking new MacBook, an operation that I took to be utterly routine, having done that sort of thing for years with different Macs. Arriving at his home, I realized I had forgotten to take my FireWire cable — he had purchased the white MacBook entry-level model, […]