> In an odd move, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at an investor conference on Tuesday that the iPad would be primarily a “Wi-Fi driven device.” This despite Apple’s plans to release a 3G-enabled version that will run on AT&T’s own network. > > “My expectation is that there’s not going to be a lot of people out there looking for another subscription,” [Reuters reports him saying](http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6214NY20100303?type=technologyNews). In other words, AT&T doesn’t expect the iPad to have an impact on the 3D bandwidth issues they’ve been plagued with for years. And thus they are doing nothing to prepare for any possible impact.

Never underestimate the stupidity of public statements from AT&T. It’s not that I’m surprised the CEO feels this way. That much is obvious to anyone. It’s that his handlers are dumb enough to let him make statements like this.

Maybe Lewis Black is right, and the only difference between the old days and today is that business and government no longer try to hide the fact that they’re screwing us. They’ve always done this stuff, but they used to try to hide it.

There’s just such an insane sense of arrogance going on these days.

> The report follows a rumor from this week that the iPad is [on track](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/03/02/apple_rumored_to_begin_retail_ipad_sales_march_26.html) for an alleged sale date of March 26. The 3G-enabled versions of the iPad, which sell for an [additional $130](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/27/apple_reveals_long_awaited_multi_touch_ipad_tablet_device.html), will arrive a month later. Whenever you see a story like this one, you can be sure day traders are behind the whole thing.

“A guy told me that Apple won’t ship the iPad on time.” And then the next day, “Oh, nevermind.”

Always reminds me of Jon Stewart skewering Jim Cramer for this sort of behavior.

> The phone is the Motorola Backflip. I presume Motorola and/or AT&T did this because they worked out a deal with Yahoo where they get paid for making them the default search engine. > > Interesting proof of just how much freedom Android’s open source licensing model offers to handset makers and carriers. What are the odds that AT&T and Motorola will be able to make a Windows Phone 7 handset with, say, Google as the default search engine? Fair question. Here’s another: What are the chances that most of AT&T’s customers WANT Yahoo to be the default search engine on an Android phone?

I could have switched my iPhone to search with Yahoo. I didn’t.

Sometimes freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

> The JooJoo uses the Internet as its platform (the 4GB SSD is to store a cache and the operating system), and features no apps as the iPad will. Thus, its major shortcoming is that its use is extremely limited without Internet access, and it does not support 3G connectivity (though later versions of the tablet might). > > Still, it may be an contender for the “iPad rival” position, as Rathakrishnan said that there had been an increase in inquiries since the announcement of the iPad. So the JooJoo (formerly CrunchPad) is the same price as an iPad, now will be released at the same time as the iPad, does nothing but browse the web and yet has no 3G connectivity, no apps, and only 4GB of memory for caching (no long-term data storage), and yet it’s still considered a “rival” to the iPad?

In what universe?

The Crunch Pad/JooJoo is the ultimate story to tell would-be Monday morning quarterbacks who think they can out-Apple Apple. Arrington dreamed this thing up as a $200 couch accessory, gathered a huge following of people who fell for the promise of a totally open, simple, cheap device to do nothing but surf the web. It sounded so great on paper.

But it was a unicorn. A pipe dream.

Apple might make this stuff look easy, but when people try to build similar products, what you end up with is something that costs the same and doesn’t do nearly as much.

I’m trying to figure out who these people pre-ordering the JooJoo are. Are they insane? Are they die-hard Apple haters who are willing to spend money just to prove Apple wrong? I really don’t get it.

Maybe an “increase in inquiries” means five people instead of 4?

> In the end, I keep coming back to the idea that Apple has stayed quiet about the A4 because any real magic or “wow factor” that the iPad delivers will come from the software—the efficiency of the OS, the user interface design of the OS and apps, and the snappiness of the overall experience all come from the software team. > > In this respect, the iPad is actually a lot like the Mac. The Mac combines commodity hardware with great industrial design and a superior user experience. The iPad aims to do the same, but under a new compute paradigm that replaces the venerable keyboard-and-monitor combo with a slate form factor, and the decades-old WIMP-based UI (Windows Icons Menus Pointer) with multitouch. > > Perhaps an even better analogue for the iPad is Nintendo’s Wii, which is another product that relies for its success not on its processor, but on its novel interface and broadly accessible software. I’m sure that if the iPad can do for mobile computing what the Wii did for console gaming, Apple will consider it a resounding success. I can’t figure out whether or not Stokes is trying to criticize Apple in this article. Assuming his sources are correct, and the A4 really is based on the A8 rather than the A9 core, I still think he’s missing the point in saying that the A4 “isn’t anything to write home about.”

The fact that Apple stripped out everything the iPad doesn’t need and produced a chip that is as efficient and cleanly designed as possible is a big deal, if you ask me. It’s good to know that all those extra blocks that the iPad won’t ever use simply aren’t there. Why would it be a good thing for a device like the iPad to have four USB blocks, if it only needs one?

This is exactly why people spend more money for a Ferarri Scuderia than a standard F430. The Scuderia strips away all the extra creature comforts, like say, floor mats and a radio, so it’s lighter and more efficient, and thus ten times more fun to drive. Who cares if you don’t get air conditioning; you’re there for the cornering.

All this nerd talk doesn’t take away from the fact that at the end of the day, the iPad “screams” at 1GHz, and gets tremendous battery life. That, quite frankly, is something to write home about. At the end of the day, few of the iPad’s customers are going to care about A8 vs. A9 Cores; they’re just going to like a fast machine that does what it does well. Where that speed comes from is beside the point.