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After 22 Years, Walt Mossberg Writes Final WSJ Column
McGruber writes "Walt Mossberg, principal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, has written his last column after 22 years of reviewing consumer technology products for the newspaper. His final column discusses the dozen personal-technology products that were most influential over the past two decades."
Why did the NYT let a report called 'Walt Mossberg' write newb-level electronics reviews, rather than pushing him in the direction of being a hard hitting, hard drinking, crime-beat reporter with a tolerance for risk and a taste for vigilante justice?
It seems like such a waste...
Humm... lose the MacBook Air and toss in the Garmin Forerunner GPS. The MacBook Air didn't exactly revolutionize anything. But handheld GPS has changed the way we drive, walk and find restaurants.
So ubiquitous people forget we have them. And where we left them :)
Space Invaders?
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
This seems like a huge omission. It's hard to think of a more influential computer game.
Apple Newton???
Mossberg's editorial point of view is of the average consumer, and I don't think most people care about computer games. I don't.
But choosing the Newton because of AI? Everybody has been working on that, and the Newton's approach was a dead end. The Newton had an even bigger impact that Mossberg omitted: It launched ARM into the low-energy device market, which it now dominates.
Have a nice time.
I would argue Wolfenstein 3D before Doom. The Apple Newton is important because it introduced the concept of a handheld. The industry learned from Apple. Without Newton's handwriting recognition failure, Jeff Hawkins would not have invented Graffiti, which was a "simpler" way of entering data into a handheld through a stylus. Graffiti worked until the Treo and Blackberry keyboards came along, followed by Apple's adaptive touchscreen.
Sure, but what were its competitors doing that changed the User Experience for the better?
Screwing up so bad they made Apple look amazingly good.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
He has Google, FaceBook and Twitter on his list. In those three cases the product is You.
He should have had Alta Vista, USENET NEWS and IRC.
These successors have only made scads of money off ideas from real pioneers.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Apple doesn't understand Software Libre at all
More like, you do not understand Apple, and the HUGE degree to which they have based success on top of open source.
BSD, and LLVM are but two of the largest and most obvious examples. But also Apple has used open standards when possible, like CalDav or VNC...
Yes Apple (like ALL companies currently) uses IP for competitive advantage. But they do so on top of a very thick layer of Free software...
the marketing dollars from Apple are just too tempting.
He got nothing from Apple for writing the article. What you and others misunderstand is the simple fact that many people LIKE using Apple products. That must go double for a guy like WM who tests many new electronic devices, you have to figure he gets a lot of stinkers and so more than most can appreciate something built well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
iPod? Why not the Creative Nomad.
Speaking as a former Nomad owner, your comment is like saying, "Ferrari? Why not a Ford Pinto?"