David Pogue

"Microsoft, as you may have noticed, hasn't exactly been hitting home runs lately. Only a fraction of the population upgraded to Windows 95; much of cor­porate America, having finally got the kinks out of Windows 3.1, has no inten­tion of budging. Suppose, then, that the air gradually begins leaking out of Microsoft's tires. Subsequent Windows versions become absolute monstrosities, laughable bloat­ware that requires 128MB of RAM."

"Incredibly, Apple has persuaded Disney, which owns ABC, to make available all episodes of five TV series, including "Lost," "Desperate Housewives" and "That's So Raven." Each show costs $1.99 — an easy impulse buy if you missed an episode. They play back beautifully, with no network logo in the corner, no yearlong wait for the DVD, and no commercials. (One 43-minute "hour" of TV takes 12 minutes to download with my cable modem, and about two minutes to transfer to the iPod over its U.S.B. 2.0 cable.) ...That Mr. Jobs persuaded Disney to dip its pinky toe into these waters is an impressive development — and a very promising sign."

"Five billion dollars a year spent on ringtones? What the?"

"For the last 15 years, Microsoft’s master business plan seems to have been, "Wait until somebody else has a hit. Then copy it.""

"People won’t start dumping Google en masse; Google is a habit."

"You're witnessing the birth of a third major computer platform: Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone."

"The Kindle is the most successful electronic book-reading tablet so far, but that’s not saying much; Silicon Valley is littered with the corpses of e-book reader projects."

"The Kindle is just the razor. The books are the blades — ka-ching!"

"An international team of psychiatrists has flown to Redmond, WA in an attempt to discover exactly what makes Bill Gates tick. And, more especially, what makes him go cuckoo every half hour."