Chase just announced a massive annual fee hike for their popular Sapphire Reserve card—from $550 to $795/year, a 45% increase. A second card on the account jumps from $75 to $195. That makes it $990 for a card for both my wife and myself. With this jump, the card now carries the highest… Read More »Is the new Sapphire Platinum card worth $795/yr?
If you’ve ever searched online for the “best laptop under $1,000” or “top travel gadgets,” you’ve probably run into one of those awful review sites full of long, useless introductions, vague recommendations, and more ads than useful information. Their real goal isn’t to help you,… Read More »AI Is Sounding the Death Knell for Junky Review Sites
I was back on the road this week traveling to Massachusetts from San Diego to visit old friends and take my wife to her college reunion. While we’ve traveled internationally a few time last year, this was the first cross-country trip within the U.S. San… Read More »Notes from my travels
When I wrote a column a few weeks ago about how the Apple iPhone had stagnated and was falling behind some Android phones, several readers asked for examples. So I did a bit of research as if I was looking to purchase a new Android… Read More »Pixel phones overtake the iPhone
If you travel often for business, you know the routine—new cities, new languages, last-minute meetings, and piles of receipts. It can be exhausting and isn’t always the fun others think it is. Fortunately, Google’s newly announced Gemini AI, paired with your phone’s camera, brings some… Read More »How Google’s Gemini Live can help us while traveling
There great new business book, Apple in China, is currently number one on the business bestseller chart. Check out John Stewart’s interview with the author, Patric McGee. As noted in my review of two-weeks ago, the fast-paced book traces how Apple’s first foray into Asia,… Read More »Apple in China – it all began here
There was a big announcement this week from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, that his company is buying a device startup called io, launched by former Apple designer Jony Ive, for $6.5 billion. Altman said they will be “figuring out how to create a family… Read More »The Whisper: Imagining the Device Jony Ive and Sam Altman Might Be Building
It’s the time of the year when the rumors begin about the new generations of iPhones due out in the Fall and whether it’s worth upgrading to a new model. Let me get to the point. Absolutely not. The iPhone is falling behind in incorporating… Read More »The iPhone upgrade question answered
Throughout my product development career I’ve used Asian resources to supplement the work being done in the U.S. to bring new consumer tech products to market more quickly. When designing cameras at Polaroid in the 80s, I worked with Japanese camera manufacturers. Years later when… Read More »Apple in China – How Apple was captured by China
Low cost manufacturing in China has taken manufacturing jobs from this country, but that doesn’t tell the real story of its economic impact. It misses one of the great benefits of China manufacturing: by being able to have China produce products at lower costs, it… Read More »How China manufacturing has actually created American jobs