WALT MOSSBERG

Taken as a whole, consumer technologies have made startling advances, but they still are not as easy to use as they should be.

I've been on the Web from the beginning of the Web. The good part about writing about technology is that you never run out of ideas, because it's changing so fast. The bad part is that it's changing so fast that there's a million new products and ideas every day and every week.

We need a wireless mobile device ecosystem that mirrors the PC/Internet ecosystem, one where the consumers' purchase of network capacity is separate from their purchase of the hardware and software they use on that network. It will take government action, or some disruptive technology or business innovation, to get us there.

There's no other major item most of us own that is as confusing, unpredictable and unreliable as our personal computers.

I actually looked at an Apple ad from 1978. It was a print ad. That shows you how ancient it was. And it said, 'Thousands of people have discovered the Apple computer.' Thousands of people.

People always worry that buying tech products today carries a risk of obsolescence. Most of the time, that fear is overblown.

Whether you are a consumer, a hardware maker, a software developer or a provider of cool new services, it's hard to make a move in the American cellphone world without the permission of the companies that own the pipes.

Man, he could sell. As he liked to say, he lived at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. But there was a more personal side of Steve Jobs, of course, and I was fortunate enough to see a bit of it because I spent hours in conversation with him over the 14 years he ran Apple.

I think Steve Jobs is a historic figure. He's not only a historic figure in business, but really in America.

I try not to make snap judgments. I never, ever make conclusions about products I've never tried.

I have on my wall right now a front page of the 'Journal' from January 1991, when I co-wrote a front-page story about Iraq firing missiles at Israel. By October, I was writing about tech products.

Apple is all-in on Apple hardware and still wants you to be all-in, too.

Who have I picked fights with over the years? Bill Gates. Google. Mark Zuckerberg. Even - despite everything that's written about my relationship with Steve Jobs - we had yelling matches.

I see retirement as just another of these reinventions, another chance to do new things and be a new version of myself.

Microsoft's Windows 3.1, released in 1992, was the first truly successful edition of Windows and juiced the Redmond juggernaut. Apple's Macintosh System 7.5, released in 1994, was another in a string of versions that lacked key architectural features that the Mac didn't have until Steve Jobs returned and brought with him the code that became OS X.

In 2007, everything changed with the iPhone. As crippled as that first model now seems, with its lack of apps and glacial cellular connectivity, the iPhone was a practical, useful, self-contained computer a child could understand. It was an information appliance.

Jeff Williams, Apple's senior vice president of operations, has been called 'Tim Cook's Tim Cook' by some.

In general, while Trump has been a master of Twitter, he has shown an aversion to, and ignorance of, technology itself.

Apple's iTunes program was once the envy of the world. A combined digital music store and player, it could also sync your iPod. And it worked on both Mac and Windows. It was reasonably fast and very sure-footed.

I was an early user of AOL - so early, I didn't even have a number after my user name. For me, email was once vital, both for personal and business uses.

Amazon's 'Twitch' appears to be creating a service that operates like Twitter.

A great laptop running the new kinds of user interfaces and apps that people now love on phones and tablets would be a big, exciting event that would help seal the deal. But there hasn't yet been a product that emphatically suggests the era of the traditional PC is fading.

What we did with 'AllThingsD', though, was very different. We weren't taking a newspaper and putting it on the web; we were creating a digital native product, and we did it inside of a very old, stuffy newspaper company at the time.

Classic cable TV may have hit its peak, but it's still a huge force, and the streaming apps of many cable networks still require you to authenticate that you're a paying cable customer every time you want to use a new such TV app.

I don't accept any money, free products, or anything else of value from the companies whose products I cover or from their public relations or advertising agencies.