Mossberg | The Verge

Walt Mossberg is writing a book

2017-10-16T09:02:25-04:00

Our friend Walt Mossberg may have retired, but that doesn't mean he's out of things to say: he's signed a deal with St. Martin's Press to write a book about the incredible rise of tech over the past 40 years, and what's to come in the next decade. Tim Bartlett will be the editor.

The book is scheduled to come out in the early fall of 2019. "I'm going to take about a year to write it," Walt tells me, suggesting his final column is "not a bad outline."

"Every single thing that's digital - the iPod, your favorite laptop, your phone - it's all less than 40 years old."

"It's about the unbelievably compressed period in which the personal tech rev …

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Inside Walt Mossberg’s gadget museum

2017-06-12T09:07:22-04:00

Walt Mossberg is retiring this year - he's already written his last column, hosted his last Code Conference, and taped the final episode of Ctrl-Walt-Delete in front of a live audience in New York. But Walt's also assembled an impressive collection of notable gadgets over his two-decade run as a reviewer and columnist, and we asked him to talk us through some of the more notable items as he cleared out of his office.

This isn't everything - there's far too much for that. But there's nothing quite like Walt talking about gadgets and what they mean, and we tried to pick a few that defined their moments in a way few products now seem to do.

I …

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Mossberg: The Disappearing Computer

2017-05-25T15:41:37-04:00

This is my last weekly column for The Verge and Recode - the last weekly column I plan to write anywhere. I've been doing these almost every week since 1991, starting at The Wall Street Journal, and during that time, I've been fortunate enough to get to know the makers of the tech revolution, and to ruminate - and sometimes to fulminate - about their creations.

Now, as I prepare to retire at the end of that very long and world-changing stretch, it seems appropriate to ponder the sweep of consumer technology in that period, and what we can expect next.

Let me start by revising the oft-quoted first line of my first Personal Technology column …

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Mossberg: Samsung Galaxy S8 squeezes more into less

2017-04-18T11:00:02-04:00

If you're a smartphone company and your last major product caused fires and explosions and had to be removed from the market, you'd want to make sure your next big phone model really stands out and is an object of desire. Samsung did exactly that with the new Galaxy S8, which goes on sale this week for the very hefty starting price of $750 at most US carriers ($720 at Verizon).

The S8 is a fast, versatile phone with fine cameras. But by far its biggest benefit is this: it fits a big screen into a surprisingly small, comfortable-to-hold, easy-to-carry body. And the end result is a visual and tactile triumph.

There are some trade-offs that r …

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Mossberg: A plan to preserve the internet

2017-04-12T09:00:03-04:00

Despite the never-ending debate on the question of the role of government in America, there's been a strong tradition of protecting our undisputed, important natural treasures, or taking on great common engineering challenges. Few Americans oppose the policies - many of which originated with Republicans - that bar or limit commercial exploitation of unique places like Yosemite National Park, or the Gettysburg Battlefield.

Even people who opposed Dwight D. Eisenhower liked the interstate highway system, and John F. Kennedy's most bitter political rival, Richard Nixon, cheered on the astronauts who fulfilled JFK's challenge of landing humans …

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Mossberg: Sonos solves TV audio problems for a stiff price

2017-04-05T09:00:02-04:00

Last year, I bought a new, high-end LG OLED 4K TV and wrote about the experience. I talked about the brilliant picture, the tiny bezels, the ultra-thin display, and the overly complex UI. But, over the ensuing months, another feature of the TV has become more and more noticeable, and annoying: the audio.

The sound of "what did she say?"

Like most new HDTVs in recent years, my LG is too thin (even with its bulge in the lower back) to support more than small speakers. They generate volume, but little nuance.

On top of that, modern TV shows and films are increasingly mixed in a way that demotes the clarity of dialogue in favor of cinematic sou …

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Mossberg: Yes, you’ve still got mail

2017-03-29T09:00:03-04:00

In 1998 it was possible to make a big-screen romantic comedy about email. Yep, email - the same medium we often think of now as boring and even annoying. Back then, it was perfectly plausible that two attractive characters played by two attractive movie stars (Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan) could fall in love over AOL email and each be thrilled to hear the service's iconic, cheerful audio alert: "You've Got Mail." That was also the name of the film, which garnered a respectable 73 percent from top critics on Rotten Tomatoes. The trailer feels like a time machine now.

Of course, today, such digital romance would take place using some combination of …

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Mossberg: The old dream of the information appliance is now real — so what’s next?

2017-03-22T09:00:04-04:00

It's often hard to remember that the personal computing era is still quite young. It only dates from 1977, with the arrival of the first mass-market PCs. These were the first computing devices meant for individuals that weren't kits, had screens and keyboards, and could actually do something useful, like word processing, game play, or, eventually, spreadsheets.

The best known of these, the Apple II, which remained on the market in various forms until 1993, will have its 40th anniversary in June. That makes mass-market personal computing younger than the Super Bowl, Starbucks, and Disneyland.

The Apple II is about to be 40 years old

You can …

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After 24 seasons of Top Gear, does a new host lineup make the show worth watching?

2017-03-12T16:00:02-04:00

In moments of downtime or in anticipation of a big debut, the Verge Transportation Slack room transforms into a fan forum of sorts, where passionate Top Gear fans come to square off. With the 24th season of the show airing at 8PM ET on BBC America, the Verge staff answers the question: Is the new Top Gear worth watching?

Jordan: The Clarkson / Hammond / May Top Gear was a fun show with three people having a good time, and the backdrop just happened to be about cars. This new one is close. Top Gear wasn't a car show under Clarkson for years - it's about three friends. That's why Chris Evans didn't work, 'cause he was a one-man band. Chemist …

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Mossberg: Tech’s ruling class casts a big shadow

2017-03-09T09:47:53-05:00

Back in 2011, I was talking with Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, backstage at our D9 conference, when he made a casual reference to a "Gang of Four" companies that he believed ruled the consumer tech industry. Once on stage, I asked him about that term.

He explained that, in his view, there were four giant platform companies that dominated consumer tech: Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook. "We've never had four companies growing at the scale those are, in aggregate," he said.

"Each of the companies that I've mentioned," he continued, "has managed to use very modern concepts of computer science [and] very, very aggressive sc …

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