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"Wait Wait" goes after the iPad
We love Peter Sagal and the gang, but they certainly jumped ugly with the iPad on this week's episode of NPR's quiz show Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me. In a segment of fake confessions from public figures, announcer Carl Kasell stood in for Steve Jobs and admitted "It's just a big iPhone without the phone." Tell it to the NPR iPad app team, why don't you? They seem pretty excited about the new device... in fact, quite a few NPR listeners are potential iPad buyers, although you'd be hard-pressed to know it from the cranky comments on this post. The funny business continued as Sagal skewered the iPad: "Fans of the new device say it is just a little more expensive than other computers that do a lot more things. But it has the advantage of being slightly more difficult to use. See, in a regular laptop, sending an email is no big deal. But on the iPad, it's a personal triumph over adversity." Spoken like someone who hasn't used one yet. Just to put the icing on the cake, the contestant actually had an iPad in hand while she called into the show, leading Sagal to comment "Yeah, it's amazing; immediately we go from like, you know, posture of mockery to, ooh, you have one?" How quickly they turn. Of course, when he asked the contestant how she liked her iPad, she replied "I love it very much" -- but then when he pressed her on what she could do with it that she couldn't do before, she promptly admitted "Nothing." Oy. This week's WWDTM features panelists Luke Burbank, Kyrie O'Connor and Adam Felber (a personal favorite). You can read the transcript here or just listen to the opening "Who's Carl This Time" segment, but we recommend subscribing to the weekly podcast. P.S. Did you know that NPR listeners, compared to the average US citizen, are twice as likely to be Mac users? Intriguing.
NBC and NPR feature iPhone humor
Thank goodness that mainstream comedians have jumped in with bits on the iPhone introduction; us funny geeks are deeply grateful that the cavalry has arrived. While CBS's Craig Ferguson weighed in with an iPhone/Zune comparison, the competition at Late Night with Conan O'Brien gave us Thursday's slightly risque iPhone advertisement above (it's a sonogram! It's a prophylactic! It's Mace!). Today, NPR's tongue-in-cheek news quiz Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me! featured an impression of Steve Jobs' now-legendary prank call to Starbucks (4,000 lattes) by newscaster Carl Kassel. The coffee quote comes in the show intro and again in the "Who's Carl This Time" segment (about 45 minutes in) -- too bad the player misidentified it as the launch of the "Microsoft Phone." Host Peter Sagal suggested that the second version of the iPhone needs to come with a vital nerd-friendly feature: a woman who would be really, really impressed with it. Sagal also asked the panelists how cell companies would compete with the iPhone: best answer was from Adam Felber, who suggested that Verizon would introduce a new music player where you could play your favorite song "by pressing only a dozen buttons, and get to listen to almost half of it before it drops out." Wait Wait is a personal favorite of some TUAW team members (we love panelists Felber and Paula Poundstone), so check the schedules page for your local broadcast time or haul down the podcast from iTunes.Thanks, Eric!
