Mossberg was a professional technology critic and pundit, one of the first of his kind. He paved the way for many others who followed his lead, and he certainly deserves credit for his pioneering efforts. I enjoy reading critical reviews of new products and software, but I'm generally not a fan of tech punditry. I believe that we need fewer pundits and prognosticators, and more hard-hitting investigative reporters along the lines of John Carreyrou.
There were others before Mossberg, and IMO they did a better job. Infoworld used to be a weekly read for a lot of us in the tech community, and they had a number of experienced columnists (e.g. Dvorak, Cringely) that could have easily slid into the job that Mossberg was handed at the WSJ in the late 1980s (after nearly two decades of non-tech related coverage for the newspaper).
If you read his earliest work, you get the feeling that he sometimes had no idea what he was talking about. But he kissed up to the CEOs of the major companies, which dovetailed nicely with the editorial stance of the WSJ and the P/R needs of respective companies.
