I knew Cary just from his MacWorld articles and the one time I had a chance to meet with him at a Macworld Boston conference in 1996. In both his articles and in person I found him to be a very level headed person who always seemed to have his feet firmly planted on the ground when it came to the Macintosh industry. Never getting too high or too low when major news came down regarding the Mac platform. It was at the conference meeting with Cary that I first heard about what would become the Powerbook 1400 and 3400 (both were still months away from release as Apple was still recovering from the 5300 fiasco). He said of the two (paraphrasing) "Apple will be coming out with two new Powerbooks in the months to come, all I can say about them is that the one due out in the fall will be the one you can afford and will deliver good performance and the one due out next year will be the one you WANT but may not be able to afford."
His voice of reason IMHO is sorely missed especially in this time of Mac turmoil.