TUAW interviews Walt Mossberg

One thing kept popping up in my mind while i was watching this. Grumpy ... old ... man. He comes off like that asshole neighbor that bitches and moans over every little freakin' detail.
I think it might be a good plan to start thinking about retirement Walt. Let's face it, the reviews haven't been very good lately. You do score some great points on shallowness though.

Kudos to Scott, i'm sure this wasn't a very nice experience.

At 13" the MacBook Air is NOT a sub-notebook.

It is light and thin but a sub-notebook = smaller than 12".

This product is right for business & elite use as a secondary or tertiary machine, but the completely wrong answer by Apple to the real consumer & enthusiasts request for a 12" PowerBook replacement and 10" sub-notebook.

Shrink the PowerBook 12" or MacBook to a smaller footprint using a smaller & better matte (!) screen, stick to regular thickness, replaceable battery, standard notebook drive standard connectors and more I/O ... and I guarantee you it would be on my desk in two weeks.

Mossberg is a fuddy-duddy. Scott was trying, but response from status-quo is tame at best. Or rather, frankly nothing, zip, nada.

Ha ha, Walt. My first SF MacWorld I interrupted him talking to like the head of laptop development with some stupid question and he looks at my made up title and made up company on my badge and stares me down like he was remembering my face for later. I had no clue who he was at the time.

"Watch and learn"??? Oh, for goodness sake, just tell us, at least in brief. I read a blog like this exactly to save me having to trawl through lots of stuff before knowing it will interest me or not. So save the teasers, which are just annoying. Tell me roughly what it contains, then I'll be able to decide whether to devote whole minutes of my life to watching it! Thanks - this is intended as constructive criticism by the way.

Mossberg: "It's very hard to predict what Apple's thinking about."

Yes, oh Karnac, who would've predicted a movie rental model for iTunes and Apple TV? Who would have predicted updates to the iPhone? Who would have predicted a sub-notebook?

Nice job with the interview. Mossberg didn't strike me so much as jerky or annoyed, as *cautious* and unsure how to approach an interview with a tech blogger. The hostility between establishment media and bloggers who cover politics is evident and the subject of much interesting commentary, but tech journalists/reviewers and bloggers have the same issues learning how to regard each other. What may be different is that tech journalists understand that there isn't much division of their audience between online vs. other media, so they have to find a way to play nice. That's what I saw - Mossberg trying to play nice, while still being protective of his establishment privilege.

scott seems like a nice guy. walt on the otherhand must have had a macbook air shoved up his a**.

Boy, this Walt was annoyed. Obviously he hated the whole interview...

mk

Dude. I *hate* watching needless video and listening to needless audio. Plus, I'm at work anyway. Can someone post the big "surprise" and save me 3 minutes?