Fortune Article

The PBS talk show devotes 23 minutes to singing the praises of Steve Jobs’ latest creation

Rose (right) and Carr. Source: The Charlie Rose Show

In a segment that aired Thursday night, the Charlie Rose Show invited three A-list tech commentators — the Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg, the New York Times‘ David Carr and TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington — to gush about (and find a few faults with) Apple’s (AAPL) iPad.

[UPDATE: A YouTube version of the video has become available through TechCrunch and is pasted below the fold.]

Mossberg was the most viewer-friendly, taking time to define Flash and HTML5 and to explain to the PBS audience how the iPod touch is different from the iPhone.

Arrington was uncharacteristically gracious, complimenting the device — and saying that he couldn’t wait to get one — without mentioning his own failed effort to build a competing tablet computer.

But Carr got the best lines:

On the iPad: “One thing you have to understand about this gadget is that the gadget disappears pretty quickly. You’re looking into pure software.”
On the Amazon Kindle: “It looked like something the Mennonites made 150 years ago.”
On the nitpickers: “I’m sure there are a few fanboys out there who aren’t totally waving the pom-poms about everything about this device.”
On Steve Jobs and Apple: “He may have been thin. He obviously is vigorously engaged in building out his version of the future with this company. There’s been no loss of momentum, no loss of ambition, no loss of scale. Whatever he went through in terms of medical issues or illness issues — which was a significant source of concern to shareholders — seems to have had zero impact on their product release schedule, on their reach into the culture, and their ability to preoccupy conversation.”

Let’s go to the video:

If the video has been removed from YouTube, you can watch it here or here.

Charlie Rose loves the Apple iPad