The godfather of tech columnists, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, got some face time with Steve Jobs at the iPad launch and Boom Town's Kara Swisher was there with the shaky cam!

• When asked why people would buy an iPad iBooks book for $14.99 rather than an Amazon Kindle book for $9.99, Jobs said the books would be the same price, and further said publishers withhold books from Amazon because they're not happy about the price. (Could be referring to Apple's standard 70/30 split which Amazon just recently announced they'd match in some cases).
• When asked about battery life, Jobs said the iPad's quoted 10hrs for video/WiFi would actually be a bit longer for iBook reading, and around 140hrs for music playback.
• When asked if 10hrs was enough for iBook reading, Jobs pulled out the "no big deal", said users would just plug it in, and asked if anyone reads for more than 10hrs anyway.
• When asked if Mossberg could write his iPad review on the iPad, Jobs told him he sure could, in iWork Pages, and export it as a Word Doc if he wanted to. (there's been talk it can export as PDF for easy sharing as well).

[via Macrumors]

Yahoo! Finance is running some commentary from WSJ tech-guru Walt Mossberg and while everyone is quick to point out that Apple is not at his All-Things Digital D7 conference this year (that's keeping all our sibling sites CrackBerry.com and PreCentral.net busy), they're still the super smartphone in the room:

With the iPhone and iTouch, Apple is the "tip of the spear" when it comes to the next generation of handheld devices and what Mossberg is calling Web 3.0. The veteran tech journalist notes with awe the numbers Apple is putting up:

• 40M devices sold in 2 years
• 40K+ apps and 1 billion downloads in 10 months

That kind of excitement among developers, he says, hasn’t been seen since the arrival of PCs in the 80s and websites in the ‘90s.

Mossberg also, as per every statement Apple's made to date, expects Steve Jobs back in late June. (Even as rumor has it Jobs paid a visit to Apple's Cupertino headquarters as recently as yesterday!)

(Via MacDaily News)

Ouch. Seems Samsung and Sprint tried to bring an Instinct to an iPhone fight. At least that's how venerable Wall Street Journal columnist and "D" All Things Digital tech yoda Walt Mossberg made it sound in his iClonic "review" (to be fair, the still unreleased iPhone 3G gets more attention -- and love -- than the unfortunately release-timed Instinct).

How does Mossberg sum up his feelings, some several paragraphs and umpteen iPhone mentions, references, and comparisons down?

If you're a devoted Sprint customer, or want to avoid AT&T, the Instinct is an OK choice. But it's no iPhone.

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