Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Greetings, crackheads!  Time for another round of everybody’s favorite game: (shout it with me) Who’s on Crack.  Since we last spoke, more and more companies are showing they might be on the rock by taking some rather unusual steps.  Let’s dig right in:

• Apple makes a mistake (gasp)
• Sprint speedballs into loving everyone
• Ms. Wood calls me out for mocking Walmart shoppers
• The iTunes versus Palm Pre saga continues.  Dad is going to get on the phone soon.

Apple trips up iPods

This whole time, maybe it was Steve Jobs’ liver that drove him to make the right decisions?  Now that Jobs has had a transplant, Apple is no longer at the top of their game.  Their choice to leave off a camera is going to hurt iPod touch sales.

If we can agree that many iPod sales are upgraders, Apple’s decision to leave off the camera is going to hurt them.  By believing touch sales would hurt iPhone sales, the camera got left off of Wednesday’s announcement.  A lower model got the nod with the iPod nano receiving the camera.  Now many iPod touch users that would have run out to buy the next thing Steve sells, just aren’t.

Take Charlie Sorrel over at Wired’s Gadget Lab: “If Apple had piled the features onto the Touch, the decision would be made, and Apple would have $400 of my money. As it is, I think I’ll wait.”  That sentiment is echoed all over the net.  Whoops.

Sprint goes off wagon, gets delusions of grandeur

Sprint’s made a bold move to allow their most favored customers (the ones paying the most, of course) the privilege of calling any mobile number at any time for gratis.  Take that Fav Five.  Suck it A-List.  Sit on it, Friends and Family.  Sprint is going for the jugular. 

Imagine the meeting this came up in: 4:30PM on a Friday.  Jimmy is two beers in when his boss asks, “So if you ran the company, what would you do differently?”  Jimmy looks up at his peers, feeling the beer prop up his self worth and says with a half-smile, “Do what they are afraid of.”  Beer or crack - you decide.

The move goes so far as put Sprint back in the hunt.  Even more impressive, Sprint is throwing this at current customers for free, automatically.  Will Sprint force Verizon or AT&T to expand their offerings or will they let Sprint go this one alone and see what damage they can do.  As it stands now, Sprint looks more and more tempting.

People watching on the net

I love nothing more than to sit and watch people all day long.  Strike that, I like to sit and make fun of people all day long.  Now, the net helps my addiction and make it a little creepy - I don’t have to leave home to do it.

Thanks to sites like People of Walmart.  Our Heather Wood explains, “When you log on the site, you get the pleasure of seeing a collection of photos of real life Walmart shoppers.  Some examples?  An overweight woman in a motorized scooter with an ‘I Like It From Behind’ t-shirt, a car in the parking lot with Confederate bra decals, and a guy dressed up as Tony the Tiger roaming the aisles.”

The result: I just lost a half hour giggling at the site.  Combine this with Lamebook and you’ve got a fun lunch break.  Points to Heather for correctly pegging my humor: grade school.

iTunes kicks Palm to the curb, again.

There was this girl in high school I had a crush on.  I found her phone number and proceeded to call her.  After deciding she wanted nothing to do with me, she wouldn’t take my calls.  So I pretended to be someone else from class, that worked once. 

That anecdote pretty much sums up the Apple/Palm relationship so far regarding the Pre syncing with iTunes.  iTunes 9 again hangs up on Palm so what is next?

Well, back to my story, the next time I called, her dad got on the phone and suggested I find a better way to spend my time.  So, will we soon hear about Mr. Jobs picking up the phone and telling Palm to go take a hike?  Or will the role of “Dad” be played by the Apple legal team? 

After all, I didn’t call her back again after that.