> The second report in a week claiming Apple has experienced iPad production delays surfaced Thursday, with the latest suggesting the company is currently able to produce between 200,000 and 250,000 devices per month. Here we go again. Didn’t make enough money on the first phony report of iPad production delays, so they go for another one. This time, the delays will only be temporary and minor, as to make them more believable.

> 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?