Poor Mitchell Ashley. He’s now being remembered for writing one of the worst tech predictions ever, in 2008.

“Apple iPhone Doomed To Failure — Windows Mobile 7 Plans For 2009 Leaked“. From the unfortunate article:

You might assume from this blog post that I’m very anti-Apple. Actually I have a very long history using Apple products, beginning with the Apple II Plus and the Mac Plus. There was a long period where I was an Apple zealot and evangelized the benefits of Mac over Windows. But as both the Mac and Windows matured, Apple products became no less complex to use and maintain than the Windows platform. The gaps between them closed and the hassles just weren’t worth what you have to give up to be a Mac user.

Apple’s inability to gain any significant market share means the options for software products are much more limited and hardware is much more expensive. That’s still true today, despite my friends efforts to try and tell me a Mac Pro notebook or desktop isn’t much more expensive than the comparable Windows machine. Just price them and you’ll see what I mean.

Apple iPhone. Enjoy the limelight because it won’t last long.

Yeah, I’ll go charge up my Windows 7 phone now. As Neils Bohr famously said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”

An old friend from my time in Akron OH (1979-1987ish) shared a photo with me today, and it brought back so many memories, almost all of them good.

Those years in Akron were some of the best of my life. Great job with horrible bosses (plenty of stories there). The peak of health in my adult life. Playing Go at lunch with the other aerospace engineers every day, playing basketball most evenings after work, golf with my work buddies. Getting to work on world-changing technology with people smarter than me. My best friend in those days, in the picture at top left, was everything I wasn’t. Worldly (he had been a lot of places I hadn’t), from a family of means, confident, and emotionally mature. He and I spent a ton of time together, great times I still remember. I’m thankful that he was thoughtful enough to share that picture (and others) with me.

In that period my Mom died and late in that period, Emily was born. The worst and the best of times. In retrospect, I can see that Mom dying sent me into a tailspin that took years to recover from. I ran away from people and places who would have supported me, but I was too dumb and broken to make good decisions at the time. 20-20 hindsight.

Taking a cue from the photo, here’s to old friends!