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.

Arguably Apple's least successful core hardware product in decades, the Apple Watch could have been nursed along, like a terminal patient.

My first computers were a Timex Sinclair and an Apple II.

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.

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.

Though many people mistakenly credit IBM with the first PC in 1981, the Apple II came out four years earlier, in 1977.