Articles by Rob Enderle

CES surprised me again this year. For a show that comes too early in the year for most buyers and companies, it still stood out as having some truly amazing things. It will be remembered for showcasing the birth of personal flight vehicles, along with a Tesla-beating car, and Ford showing how it could do what Apple couldn't. Surprises ranged from ...

CES is probably the best example that folks who work around tech are just a tad insane. While no big product has yet emerged, there will be a ton of crazy stuff to see. Yes, there will be robots, smartwatches, tablets, PCs, smart appliances, exoskeletons, body monitors, head thumpers, drones, self-driving cars, augmented reality, virtual reality...

Next week is CES, and I am so looking forward to coming home from that show. It used to be a lot of fun, but it covers such a massive amount of space that just getting around takes up much of the time. Given that most folks do prebriefings if they are smart, and that most of the really cool stuff is behind closed doors and not on the show floor,...

This year has offered some brilliant lessons from a variety of vendors. Among them were a lot of lasting lessons like we had with 3D TVs, which pretty much bit the dust, and 4K TVs, which are doing reasonably well in light of what people actually learned. After reflecting on the lessons of 2015, I'll end with my product of the week: an offering...

As I'm writing this, a few more hoverboards have caught fire, and they now are banned on most domestic airlines, suggesting that shipping these things fast could be a problem. Australia even has put out a specific warning on hoverboards. ...

Steve Ballmer last week presented an interesting plan to kill Android -- or at least compete with it. What's ironic is that Ballmer's tenure at Microsoft wasn't short of good ideas -- it was short on execution. In contrast, Satya Nadella has shown strength in execution but (so far) hasn't come up with anything that represents the kind of risks that Ballmer was willing to take. ...

What I find fascinating is that with all of the focus members of the intelligence community place on violating our privacy, they still aren't able to stop attacks like the one in Paris. Currently they are complaining that it is our fault for implementing encryption that blocks their often-illegal views into citizens' personal lives. I think that...

I started planning to escape the Valley a long time ago, due to very high taxes, a crumbling infrastructure, worsening crime, a massive increase in traffic, and a rather nasty water shortage problem. My wife and I originally planned to escape to Belize but found the unreliable infrastructure, lack of good medical care, and massive crime problem t...

Given that it is basically a big iPad with a better keyboard option and stylus support, the iPad Pro has been getting decent reviews. It can be classified as a first-generation product -- and as such, it does far better than most. However, there have been a huge number of companies in Apple's space that have gone under or stalled when they switch...

Boy, we really have gone full circle on tablets -- and not just once. Back when the Windows tablets first came to market, a whole bunch of us predicted it wouldn't be long before they replaced all of the notebooks. I don't think they even made it to 10 percent before the tablet market collapsed, and the pre-existing forms reclaimed their shares. ...

I watched with interest last week's Republican debate and realized very quickly that whatever that was on my TV, it sure as hell wasn't an actual debate. The idea is for us to be able to compare the qualifications and positions of a variety of candidates and then make a more informed choice -- but if every candidate is asked a different question, then how do we compare the answers? ...

Why do some big mergers succeed while others fail? This seems to be a common question, and some of the research I've read about the Dell-EMC merger tries to connect it to the HP-Compaq merger, which apparently cost Carly Fiorina her job. I covered the HP-Compaq merger at length, and I was not a fan. I actually spoke to Compaq's CEO and argued he ...

Elon Musk must have been channeling ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week, when he commented to the German Press (he does get that this Internet thing takes his comments global, right?) that Apple wasn't poaching Tesla's good employees, it was getting folks who couldn't cut it at Tesla. Apple apparently has been paying a lot for ex-Tesla talent...

I can understand Linux in the 1990s. It was backed largely by folks who didn't do well with others. The fights between the Linux and BSD folks were as legendary as they were juvenile, and Linux's existence seemed defined entirely by the revolt against Microsoft. Now, though, the platform is backed by huge brands. It is mainstream -- it is the bas...

The best smartphone on the market is the iPhone, right? That is the conventional wisdom. However, if I were to ask about the best shoes, shirt, car, boat or TV, the answers likely would be all over the map -- not just on brand but on type. When it comes to cars, for instance, I personally favor convertibles because they remind me of my youth when ...

One of the ironies of my technical career is that when I first went to work for a tech company, I specifically wanted to work for a firm that was breaking the mold -- not representative of it. So, in my initial interview, I was concerned that IBM was going to buy the firm because it was the mold at that time. I was promised it wasn't, and that the...

Watching the Republican debates has been a fascinating experience for me, because I started following Carly Fiorina when she first took over HP. I thought then and I still think that Steve Jobs was the only one to match her on-stage presence and skill set. History has proven her assertion that it was HP's board, not it's CEO, that was the primar...

My big takeaway last week, when Apple launched the iPad Pro, was this: Apple just admitted Bill Gates was right and Steve Jobs was wrong. You see, years ago Steve Jobs went on about how the early Windows tablet, which was designed for work and had a stylus, was stupid. Steve was not a fan and pretty much dissed the entire tablet idea and then again dissed the whole idea of a stylus when he launched the iPhone. ...

Apple will be launching some interesting products on Wednesday. The timing is nearly right for its Intel Skylake laptops and PCs. The iPhone 6S is also due, and typically the smart Apple customers wait for the S, because S models have fixes to the earlier model's problems that most annoyed users. At the very least, the iPhone 6S is expected to avoid its predecessors' bending issues. ...

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the launch of Windows 95. What people often forget about Windows 95 is that it not only kicked Apple's butt, but also kicked IBM's -- and it wasn't even a complete product. The thing was an operating system. Most of us can see lining up to buy a complete product, but lining up to buy the software that makes a product complete would be kind of like lining up to get the latest software patch for your car or TV. ...