Rich Jaroslovsky

This is for the BlackBerry (Nasdaq: BBRY) diehards. You know who you are. You’re the ones who scoffed at those new-fangled iPhones back in 2007, and still do. You turned your back when BlackBerry launched its touch-screen Z10 phone earlier this year. Your motto is “You’ll take away my physical keyboard when you pry it from my cold, dead thumbs.” For you, and only for you, there’s the new Q10. It’s a sometimes uneasy combination of the company’s modernized BlackBerry 10 operating system, which is designed for touch screens, and a traditional design modeled after the iconic (at least...

BlackBerry has done a lot right with the Z10, the first smartphone to run its new, bet-the-company operating system. The touch-screen phone – a version with the traditional BlackBerry physical keyboard is expected, too – is handsome, intuitive to use and a whiz at multitasking. The key question, which the market will answer, is whether all that will be enough to rescue the company after years of mediocre products and corporate floundering. At first glance, the Z10 could be an iPhone 5 clone –same rounded corners, same thin side bezels. On closer examination, though, differences become apparent. The Z10...

See, here’s the thing about the new iPad mini. It’s an iPad, only… smaller. Beyond that, there may not be much more to say about the latest addition to Apple’s tablet family. But I’ll think of something. OK, how about this? Apple’s most important products created their own markets: People didn’t know they wanted or needed an iPhone until Steve Jobs & Co. showed it to them. The iPad mini, by contrast, is an attempt to follow competitors rather than find a new audience. Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7, to name two, have shown that users want...

 It’s the most-asked question by consumers about any new tech gadget: “Should I get this now or is something better coming along soon?” For buyers of Amazon’s Kindle Fire, we now have the answer: You should have waited. Google’s new Nexus 7 is aimed directly at the Kindle Fire, the seven-inch color tablet that was the runaway hit of the last holiday season. The Nexus 7 obliterates every reason for buying the current Kindle, and sets a high bar for whatever Amazon comes up with to replace it. The Nexus 7 is Google’s first foray into selling a tablet...