Quotes from Walt Mossberg

Samsung has drastically altered the rule that big screens mean huge phones. Even this smaller of the new Galaxy S models has a larger screen than the biggest iPhone, but it's much narrower and easier to hold and to slip into a pocket.

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

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.

Apple's advantage is that it designs and builds software together, so if the software isn't excellent, it does the superlative hardware a disservice.

Our lives and our culture have been significantly changed and improved by hardware, software, and services developed by immigrants.

The products I review are typically lent to me by their manufacturers for a few weeks or months. I return any products I am lent for review, except for items of minor value that companies typically don't want back. In the case of these items, I either discard them or give them away to charity.

It turns out that CVS is one of about 40 merchants in a consortium that formed in 2011 to develop their own mobile-phone-based payment system. The consortium, called the Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, is in large part all about eliminating, or at least reducing, the fees banks charge retailers for swiping credit cards.

As for the device we now call a TV or a cable box, I want it to be fast with a clean interface and seamlessly upgradeable to the latest software. I want it to be the primary source of all TV, not an ancillary device.

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

Streaming TV shows, movies, and other types of video over the Internet to all manner of devices, once a fringe habit, is now a squarely mainstream practice. Even people still paying for cable or satellite service often also have Netflix or Hulu accounts.

There are lots of reasons email persists, even as faster and simpler forms of communication proliferate and your personal communications likely have mostly migrated elsewhere. But one big one is that new types of media channels rarely totally kill off old ones, even though everyone predicts they will.

The car is the ultimate mobile device, isn't it?

I wrote a lot about the need for an information appliance. I think we've pretty much arrived at one: the iPad. A child could figure out how to use it quickly. Compare it to a DOS computer or even an Apple II; it's no longer nearly as much of a hassle or a mystery.

If Apple, Amazon, Netflix, or somebody else can ever blast away all the ridiculous vestiges of decades-old TV content and technology we live with today, I'll buy whatever they come up with. Until then, I'm settling for a Caavo.

No computer or smartphone can ever be considered 100 percent 'safe.' We're all engaged in a perpetual battle with criminals and hostile governments trying to use computers and the Internet to steal information and identities.

My Safari bookmarks only sync intermittently across my Apple devices. Unlike Amazon's Kindle app for Apple products, the company's iBooks doesn't remember where I left off unless I set a bookmark.

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

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.

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.

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.

Slack users I know, including me, love many things about the service. As the company likes to brag, it's fast, it's transparent, and it's great for brainstorming.

Though the S8, like all premium Samsung phones, runs Android with the basic Google suite of apps, Samsung keeps trying to duplicate Android functions with its own software. It wants to be a software platform like its rival Apple, but it uses someone else's operating system and core apps. Awkward.

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.