Rich Jaroslovsky

The main drawback to Fitbit’s wearable activity monitors may be how unobtrusive they are. To hear users tell it, their trackers have taken more unplanned trips through the washing machine than a crumpled dollar bill.

Chances are you can’t run Google Now on your Android phone. That’s because the search giant’s intelligent assistant only works on the minority of devices that use the current “Jelly Bean” version of its mobile operating system.

Makers of portable global-positioning systems are caught in a squeeze.

Does a phone need a soul?

This is for the BlackBerry diehards. You know who you are.

When it comes to books forecasting the future, tech statesmen like Eric Schmidt don’t have a stellar track record. Even Bill Gates, in his 1995 “The Road Ahead,” famously ignored the Internet just as it was about to transform the world.

When it comes to making Android phones, Samsung seems to suck up most of the profits and all the buzz. Meanwhile, HTC quietly produces phones every bit as capable and sometimes considerably more handsome.

Back when Microsoft was still Microsoft, it wouldn’t announce to its competitors, “We want to crush you.” Instead, its soothingly stated goal was to “embrace and extend” whatever the other guy was doing.

Everyone loves a bargain. And right now, Barnes & Noble has one of the best ones going.

The Windows and Android operating systems have had one thing in common: Both are designed to work on many different kinds of hardware.

The one-two punch of Apple’s iPad and Microsoft’s Windows 8 has led to a new class of personal- computer hybrids that look and work like regular laptops, but whose screens pop off to become fully functional tablets.

If TV manufacturers were doing their job well, there’d be little use for the new Roku 3 streaming-video set-top box.