The early mainstream successes of personal computing were products like the Commodore 64 and the Apple II. They ran apps from third parties, and supported third party peripherals, but the devices themselves were designed, engineered, manufactured and distributed by a single company. In other words, the suppliers of these computers were vertically integrated. When the […]

For the last couple of years I have been an active user of Instapaper, Marco Arment’s excellent service for saving online articles for later reading. According to his press kit the service has more than 1 million signed up users and is profitable. Instapaper is successful for good reason — it offers a lot of […]

The world is crying out for decent post-PC smart devices. In response the industry is producing terrible products that would never see light of day in any other product category. How do we know the world is crying out for decent products? The iPad. In 15 months the iPad was making more money for Apple […]