Oh Unkie Walt, you toy with us so. Just a couple days after promising that the 3G iPhone would be out within 60 days, the Moss-man is saying that he was simply making a prediction based on the same data as the rest of us: price cuts, dried-up inventory, and all kinds of rumors. That's not at all what it seems like on the tape, but sure. Walt also thinks that a little meta-media-analysis is due here, asking Silicon Alley Insider, "If I knew when this date was, why would I announce it in the middle of a sentence at the Finnish embassy, rather than report it in the Wall Street Journal?" Excellent point, but you might want to be a little more careful the next time you flatly declare "The iPhone will be 3G in 60 days" with no caveats and the cameras running, okay?

While talking up web as a video delivery medium at a Beet.TV executive summit, Walt Mossberg casually yet confidently mentioned that the iPhone will be going 3G in 60 days. Of course, it doesn't take an illustrious position as tech pundit to the masses to figure out a 3G iPhone is just around the corner: price cuts, stock shortages and word from Ralph de la Vega himself have rapidly narrowed down the launch window, but a semi-guarantee from Uncle Walt is certainly icing on the cake. The video snippet is after the break, or hit up the read link for the whole thing.

[Via 9 to 5 Mac; thanks, TedB]

Walt's full review of the Lenovo Thinkpad X300 is now available. As usual for the man, you also get the bonus (or burden) of a detailed comparison with Apple's competing product which in this case is the MacBook Air. For those of you who remember Walt's MacBook Air review, that quote -- "I can recommend the X300 for road warriors without hesitation" -- stands in stark contrast to Mr. Mossberg's take on Apple's beautiful but compromised ultra-portable. As Walt points out, the biggest differences between the two are the selection of ports, built-in DVD or second battery, and a removable main battery afforded by the X300's relatively thick chassis. Of course, the choice of OS is also a consideration since the X300 can't run OS X while the MBA can run Vista. Walt does lament the fact that the X300 is only offered with an SSD. As such, it's limited to a maximum of 64GB of storage and contributes to the X300's relatively high price tag. It starts at $2,500 with a stripped-down, half-sized battery and no DVD -- $3,000 gets you the more popular full-sized battery and DVD config. Walt's aggressive, full-size battery tests resulted in "weaker battery life" at 3 hours and 5 minutes compared to the MBA's 3 hours and 29 minutes. That said, the Lenovo easily trumps the MBA with 5 hours and 15 minutes of juice when configured with both a full-sized and half-sized battery. The choice seems pretty clear at this point: form or function, which will it be sir?

[Thanks, Jacob L.]

Turns out PC Mag wasn't the only one fairly impressed by Dell's entry into the all-in-one desktop arena, Unkie Walt is officially a fan, and while he won't be giving up his iMac anytime soon, he had some warm things to say about the computer and Dell's design direction in general. In fact, as far as actual hardware goes, Walt found plenty of things he likes better about the XPS One than Apple's iMac, like the built-in memory card slots, TV tuner, back-lit touch controls and standard wireless keyboard and mouse. Still, Dell's base configuration loses out on power and price to the iMac, and Mossberg still recommends Leopard over Vista, but this seems to be Dell at the top of the heap when it comes to PC all-in-ones -- and a far sight ahead of the Mossberg-panned Gateway One.

[Thanks, webon]

The short of it is that the Slacker is an intriguing concept and decent product with some serious bugginess in the prototypes -- which is why it's probably a good thing it's been delayed until next year. Walt Mossberg has been kicking around the "blocky" player and related service, and seems to think the idea has some legs. The player is basically a portable WiFi internet radio, but it ties in closely with the free ad-supported Slacker service to give you a bit more of control over your listening experience than a traditional internet radio station. You can navigate the device with either the touch-sensitive strip beside the screen or a scroll wheel on the edge of the unit, and Walt found the sound quality good and WiFi capable. Album art, related photos, artist bios and album reviews are all included with the music and shown off on an expansive 4-inch screen, and the stations are saved to the device for offline listening. You can create custom stations based on artists you like, and if you shell out $7.50 a month for premium service you get unlimited song-skipping (usually limited to six per hour), zero ads, and the ability to pick songs to save to the device and play as often as you'd like. You can of course load your own tracks, but that sort of defeats the purpose of being a "slacker." Mossberg thinks the formula could work as long as Slacker can work out the sub-par battery life, touch strip issues and connection problems before the January 31st launch.

[Via Orbitcast]

Mr. Mossberg just handed down his verdict on the latest series of Microsoft Zunes. Those of you who shout him down with your flaccid cries of "fanboi" will want to turn away... now. Walt considers the new Zunes a "vast improvement" over Microsoft's first generation player. However, "it's still no iPod." Oh, there's plenty to like: the Zune 80's big display, the squircle navigator, built-in FM radio, and enhanced PC software and Zune Marketplace. Annoyances too, naturally. Notably, Walt found the included WiFi to be "nearly useless" in value while providing an unwelcome drain on the battery. In summation he says, "Microsoft has greatly improved the Zune hardware and software this time. But it seems to be competing with Apple's last efforts, not its newest ones." Hmm, this all sounds strangely familiar.

We've seen a couple reviews of the Gateway One already, but when it comes to reviewing sleek all-in-one PCs, we turn to the master: Walt Mossberg. Unkie Walt's been playing with a couple slick desktops lately, and surprisingly, none of them are the iMac -- although he can't seem to resist the comparison. Walt's got the Gateway One this week, and while he praises the machine's design and slick power brick / I/O breakout box, he's not particularly impressed with the machine's 19-inch screen, processing power, or, most damningly, stability -- he suffered two blue screens while testing. Add in the fact that the entry-level One is $100 more expensive than the cheapest iMac and offers a smaller screen, no built-in webcam, and a slower processor, and you've got Walt telling you that the iMac is still the best all-in-one out there. Up next: the XPS One.

Walt Mossberg -- arguably consumer electronics' single most feared and influential tech pundit -- just unleashed poetic fury on the carrier/government cartel which has made the US "the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world." In a glorious rant dubbed "Free My Phone," Walt compares carrier tactics to those of the old Soviet Ministry while pummeling the "shortsighted and often just plain stupid" federal government for allowing itself to be "bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators." He draws further comparison to the innovation-stifling days of clumsy, black rotary phones locked to the monopolistic AT&T wires which once strangled our homes. Then, government interaction was required to break the hold; something Walt believes might be required today in lieu of a disruptive innovation. Now hit that read link and let the revolution begin!

Captain Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal Brigade delivered a pounding frontal attack to the good folks in the Ubuntu bunker today, sounding off about the Linux OS distribution that's been taking a lot of people (but not old Mossy) by storm. According to his review yesterday of the burgeoning (and free) Canonical operating system, Walt Mossberg says that although Ubuntu is, "Relatively slick," he feels that there are too many, "little complications and hassles that will quickly frustrate most people who just want to use their computers, not maintain or tweak them." Apparently, after testing on a stock Dell system with the software pre-installed, Walt argued that the lack of codecs for playing some audio and video formats, trouble connecting iPods, and a trackpad which can't be adjusted, are just a few of the problems that most people will find intolerable in the open-source OS. Mossberg talks about users who, "...simply want their digital products to operate as promised, with as little maintenance and hassle as possible," and feels the answer for them is Windows or OS X, not the new, untested, and unpolished Ubuntu. While we don't agree on every point, perhaps this will push Canonical to tighten up its OS and really target the mainstream. [Warning: read link requires subscription]

[Via Crave]

That's right Walt, kick 'em while they're down. The godfather of tech-soul has given Dell's new Vostro lineup of PCs and services for small (25 employees and less) businesses a thorough drubbing this morning. How bad was it? Well, he found the entire Vostro initiative to be, "nothing special, nothing particularly tailored for small business at all." While the lack of craplets (pre-loaded trial software) was a nicety, the fact that they ship the XP units without any "security software" but with the notoriously insecure IE6 browser (not 7 or even Firefox) was simply inexcusable for machines sold to businesses without IT departments. He even dubs the affordable yet "bulky, plain" Vostro 1500 a "branding-and-marketing ploy." Ouch. See the man throw down the criticism after the break.

The Moss-man has gotten into a down-and-dirty review of Apple's latest version of its Office-battling software suite iWork '08 (which includes Pages, Keynote, and the new spreadsheet program Numbers) and delivers a one-two punch to the new package. Apparently, Cupertino's entry just can't match up to Office's triple power play of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, though Walt says that iWork '08 is an elegant and sophisticated solution for users looking for something with a little less power -- which should come as no surprise to most. Mossberg's not all doom and gloom though, happily noting that Pages has reined in its desktop publishing aspect and become more of a dedicated word processor, Numbers is a "refreshing innovation," that's more "approachable" than its competitor, and Keynote actually bests PowerPoint in ease of use. In the end, however, Mossy says all the flair and high design doesn't make up for the succulent and unbridled power in Office -- but you knew that already, right?

[Via Techmeme]

In parallel to his iPhone review, Uncle Walt also published an email conversation he had with Steve Jobs. While most of Jobsie's "we don't talk about future products" responses could have been foretold, one response is worth noting. When asked about the lack of instant messaging, video recording, and real-time GPS navigation, Steve responded with the following: "I will say that the iPhone is the most sophisticated software platform ever created for a mobile device, and that we think software features are where the action will be in the coming years. Stay tuned." Right, software. Remember Apple's promise of free software updates that will "surprise and delight" both Apple TV and iPhone customers? Well, they've already delivered a v1.1 YouTube update for Apple TV and certainly the most notable of missing features -- MMS, iChat, A2DP, text copy and paste, video recording, MP3 (or AAC in the case of Apple) ringtones -- are all software related. Sure, you can't download a 3G or GPS radio, but there's certainly hope of filling the gaps on the software side.

Update: Page 31 of the AT&T iPhone Launch Training Participant Guide says that "MMS and IM messages are included in the iPhone Data Plan." So go ahead Apple, flip the switch, what are you waiting for?

Catching a collective "Ugh!" from tech media everywhere (except maybe David Pogue), the inimitable Walt Mossberg already has his review iPhone as of this morning, which he apparently wasn't under embargo to discuss since he blurted as much out during The Chronicle's Presidents Forum. Apparently Walt "[doesn't] know whether [he'll] give it a good review or not," but is rarin' to go in testing its touchscreen keyboard, stating, "I can tell you that in the first hour it works a little better than I thought, but I'm still not sure it works as well as a regular keyboard -- and the first hour is not a very fair test, so I'm going to keep going at it." Ok Walt, you keep on keepin' on with that device; you know how to reach your less privileged pals at Engadget if you want to let us hold the mythic machine for a moment, yeah?

Steve "Developers!" Ballmer is set to take the stage this morning at D, but since we don't know exactly what time that's going to happen you all are gonna have to hang tight until he does. We expect he'll be discussing last night's Surface announcement, but we'll see what else he's got planned for us. Stick close!

UPDATE: D has posted video highlights of Ballmer's chat, our original liveblog after the jump.

Not that we'd want to steal the show from the inimitable Walt Mossberg, but we were pretty stoked to see ourselves up in lights in the New Yorker's profile written by none other than Ken Auletta. (Even Engadget commenter Dermot81 got a shoutout in the profile.) Here are a few clips from our mentions:

"On January 9th, when, at the annual MacWorld conference, Steve Jobs, the C.E.O. of Apple, offered the first glimpse of Apple's forthcoming iPhone, a combination cell phone and music player, the blog Engadget.com had more traffic than the Times' Web site."

"Bloggers have taken note of [Mossberg getting Apple products early]. A comment posted in April on Engadget, by Dermot81, read, 'Mossberg may be the biggest Apple fanboy on the face of the planet, so I'd take any review he does of an Apple product with a grain of salt.'"

"Of the blogs that review products, Engadget, now owned by AOL, has the biggest audience; it gets about eight million unique visitors per month. It also has its own office, six hundred square feet on the top floor of a five-story walkup on Allen Street, on the Lower East Side, which doubles as the apartment of Peter Rojas, its founder. Three P.C.s are on his desk, and one of his windows frames the Empire State Building, several miles uptown. Rojas, who just turned thirty-two, studied at Harvard and got a master's degree in English literature from the University of Sussex, in England; like Mossberg, he started as a print journalist, freelancing for various publications.

Also like Mossberg, Rojas accepts no gifts and no junkets, and returns the products that he tests. 'The only asset you have to differentiate yourself from competitors is your credibility,' he says. A corner of his apartment is piled with FedEx boxes. Rojas estimates that he has written more than six thousand posts for Engadget, and another four thousand for his previous blog, Gizmodo. A Mossberg column runs about nine hundred words; posts written by Rojas, three full-time employees, and paid freelancers average between fifty and a hundred and fifty words.

With the reviews he wrote for publications, Rojas says, 'you kind of had to water it down and assume the audience didn't really care about what you write about and you had to 'hook' them into the article. What I realized about blogging is you're not going to read a blog about gadgets unless you're really interested in gadgets. I assume that our readers know that Sprint and Verizon are CDMA networks, and that T-Mobile and A.T.&T./Cingular are GSM networks.' And by "writing up," he adds, 'the higher we aim the more it grows, because the audience responds to that.' Rojas says that what Mossberg does 'is great, because he is able to translate for an audience that may not care, whereas I write for an audience that already cares.' Mossberg says that he has respect for Engadget, but, "like so many of the tech or gadget Web sites, it is more of a product-alert system, mostly printing descriptions, albeit with attitude. It really doesn't do hands-on reviews."

This isn't the first time Monsieur Mossberg and Engadget have crossed paths, and we're hoping it won't be the last. Here's to you, Unkie Walt.