Walt Mossberg, that wrinkly goateed goblin hired by the Wall Street Journal for some reason, is known as the world’s most powerful Apple fanboy, at least to him. The latest Mosspuppet video, featuring Muppet Mossberg, includes a not-so-friendly Gizmodo shout-out.
Walt Mossberg of the WSJ is known for getting iPhone hardware weeks ahead of time, so did he unintentionally confirm twice, in his Palm Pre review, that Apple will launch new hardware at WWDC?
We showed you some of the video from Dean Kamen’s appearance at the All Things D: D6 conference back in May and it included some demos of the amazing Luke Arm prosthetic limb. Now All Things D has made the three-part entire interview available, and it includes detailed explanations from Kamen about why he got into the research and development of the limb, and specifics of the development process from early prototypes up. It’s fascinating, and Kamen makes for compelling watching.
Mossberg has rolled out an in-depth review of MobileMe backed by a week of testing in today’s WSJ, and if you’ve been following our coverage it won’t come as too big of a surprise that he’s not a fan. But his problems with the service go well beyond the launch hiccups you’ve read about. So what’s got Mossberg so riled up that he’s thrown down his big badhammer on MobileMe?
newVideoPlayer("/iPod_3G.flv", 506, 423,"");WSJ tech guru and new Fox Business channel talking head Walt Mossberg was on TV this morning talking about the new iPhone 3G, waving it around just to reiterate that he has one and all of us do not. He doesn’t give us any new info on the device, but you do get to see the nerd king of gadget mountain holding your precious iPhone 3G two days before anyone else, so who are you to complain? Interesting positioning, thanks to Rupert Murdoch’s recent acquisition of the Wall Street Journal. Look for Walt to show up on Fox Business on Thursday mornings starting on the 17th. [Ed note: Does Mossberg really need Fox news?]
The first iPhone 3G reviews have just hit. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ has been testing it “for a couple of weeks” and sees that surfing on the faster 3G is between three and five times the speed of the original iPhone. However, Moss found that browsing on the 3G network drained his battery much faster than browsing on the original. Externally, he says the speaker was “much louder” (YES!) for both music and speakerphone, but otherwise pretty much the same as the original. One bug/feature he ran into was that you can only sync your calendar and contacts with either Exchange or your personal accounts, not both.
Bow to Walter the Merciless, for he definitely influences the market and can decide if a product is worthy of living or not. At least according to “The Value of Quality: Stock Market Returns to Reviewed Quality of New Products,” a new research paper that has analysed Mossberg’s product reviews and their effect on companies’ valuations during a 10-year period. The conclusion: He could make stock prices tank or soar by as much as 10%. And that’s without using his mental control powers.
Walt just tested GoGo, the in-flight Wi-Fi service, on a bunch of laptops and smartphones during a flight from San Francisco to Denver. The service distributes, via Wi-Fi, a high speed mobile phone data signal pointed at airplanes, which Mossy rated at around 600kbps down and 250kbps up. This was quick enough for Walt to browse the web, send emails with iPhone rumour attachments, and talk on IM to his ladies, but it couldn’t keep up with streaming video on Xtube Hulu. Also, VoIP is blocked, and mobile calls aren’t possible either. Still, Mossy thought it did well enough for someone who can’t stay off the grid for a few hours. GoGo costs US$10 for flights under three hours, and US$13 for longer ones. It’ll begin rolling out in the next few weeks on American Airlines, with Virgin soon to follow. [AllThingsD]
