David Pogue Quotations

My interest was magic, believe it or not. I became an amateur magician and did something like 400 magic shows through my teen years.

If you continue to improve a product enough, you'll eventually ruin it.

The biggest surprise watching video on the tiny, 2.5-inch screen (320 by 240 pixels) is completely immersive. Three unexpected factors are at work. First, the picture itself is sharp and vivid, with crisp action that never smears the screen is noticeably brighter than on previous iPods. Second, because the audio is piped directly into your ear sockets, it has much higher fidelity and presence than most peoples TV sets. Finally, remember that a 2.5-inch screen a foot from your face fills as much of your vision as a much larger screen thats across the room.

If Apple ever lowers the iPod's price and develops Windows software for it, watch out: the invasion of the iPod people will surely begin in earnest.

The Kindle is the most successful electronic book-reading tablet so far, but that's not saying much; Silicon Valley is littered with the corpses of e-book reader projects.

A running theme in my life is my inability to say no to anything.

For an industry that's built on science, the technology world sure has its share of myths.

My little self-analysis is that consumer technology is the closest thing we have to magic. You push a button and something happens at your command. The things that get me fired up the most have always been the things that seem the most magical.

I travel a ridiculous amount, so I've thought a lot about, and spent a lot of time refining, what I carry and how I carry it.

For the last 15 years, Microsoft's master business plan seems to have been, Wait until somebody else has a hit. Then copy it.

People won't start dumping Google en masse; Google is a habit.

Why is Wi-Fi free at cheap hotels but $14 a night at expensive ones.

Walking is a skill that took millions of years for us to develop. If you wanted to design a robot that could walk as well as a person, this would be fantastically complicated software. It would have to be doing billions of calculations with every step.

Everyones always asking me when Apple will come out with a cell phone. My answer is, Probably never.

Scientists in California have discovered a chemical in the brain that causes use of Windows in otherwise normal human beings. It's called alcohol.

The Kindle is just the razor. The books are the blades - ka-ching!

One day robots may babysit our kids, a job that has always required a human touch.

An international team of psychiatrists has flown to Redmond, WA in an attempt to discover exactly what makes Bill Gates tick. And, more especially, what makes him go cuckoo every half hour.

What is innovation if not our ticket to every business interest in the world? Its the ticket to solving the worlds problems - the energy problems, the pollution problems, the global warming problems. If it isnt for science and engineering, how will we compete in the new world?

The rise of the citizen review site is a sobering development. No longer are you on top of the mountain, blasting your marketing message down to the masses through your megaphone. All of a sudden, the masses are conversing with one another. If your service or product isn't any good, they'll out you.

Now, there's no such thing as a Video iPod. The new model is simply called the iPod; its thicker, videoless predecessors have gone off to the great eBay in the sky. All the debate about 'Will anyone buy a video iPod?' is suddenly moot, because the new model is the same excellent music player plus video.

I'm always surprised at how many people seem to like reading about what hardware and software I use.

He's got to do what he's got to do, ... It's part of his job.

It freaks people out, ... No one knows that a tool like this exists. It's absolutely jaw-dropping.

What is innovation if not our ticket to every business interest in the world? It's the ticket to solving the world's problems - the energy problems, the pollution problems, the global warming problems. If it isn't for science and engineering, how will we compete in the new world?

The biggest surprise: watching video on the tiny, 2.5-inch screen (320 by 240 pixels) is completely immersive. Three unexpected factors are at work. First, the picture itself is sharp and vivid, with crisp action that never smears; the screen is noticeably brighter than on previous iPods. Second, because the audio is piped directly into your ear sockets, it has much higher fidelity and presence than most peoples TV sets. Finally, remember that a 2.5-inch screen a foot from your face fills as much of your vision as a much larger screen thats across the room.

There's very definitely a learning curve, ... I made it work because I absolutely had no choice.

Incredibly, Apple has persuaded Disney, which owns ABC, to make available all episodes of five TV series, including 'Lost,' 'Desperate Housewives' and 'Thats So Raven.' Each show costs $1.99 an easy impulse buy if you missed an episode. They play back beautifully, with no network logo in the corner, no yearlong wait for the DVD, and no commercials. (One 43-minute 'hour' of TV takes 12 minutes to download with my cable modem, and about two minutes to transfer to the iPod over its U.S.B. 2.0 cable.) ...That Mr. Jobs persuaded Disney to dip its pinky toe into these waters is an impressive development and a very promising sign.

I'm the know-nothing. I'm curious, I try to be entertaining, I try to translate the techno jargon, but in the end I'm the audience's representative.

The key to understanding my career is that I was never into technology. From the beginning, I brought an outsider's point of view, which is why I write for a layman's publication.