AT&T's latest evil idea: it's evil

Hi, everyone, I�m Molly Wood and welcome to the Buzz Report, the show about the tech news that everyone is talking about. This week, double the gadget goodness, iPad buyers are made of money, and the time-honored and torturous tale of trying to get TV online. But first, the gadget of the week. Let�s do TWO gadgets of the week, since it�s Mobile World Congress week in Barcelona and the fun phone news is cracking. First up, the HTC One X, which is approaching phablet territory with a 4.7 inch screen. But it�s got a quad-core processor, an 8- megapixel camera, and wonder of wonders, it WILL run Android Ice Cream Sandwich at launch! Plus it comes with Beats Audio built in, so it can be your little hotel room stereo, plus 25 gigs of free Dropbox cloud storage for two years--you won�t even miss the expandable memory. Nice. ALSO getting a lot of buzz, the Nokia 808 PureView. A phone with a 41-megapixel camera. FORTY ONE. Not only does it have a 41-megapixel camera, but also five blades for a closer shave... Anyway, the phone WILL have a bigger camera sensor than most phones, so the megapixels aren�t a complete joke. But it will default to 5 megapixels for normal shooting, and let�s be honest. It�s OBVIOUSLY a marketing stunt to distract us from how it�s a Symbian phone, and it�ll be six hundred bucks in the U.S. when it launches in May. And now for the news. Apple sent out invites to an event next Wednesday that we all think will be the iPad 3 announcement. The latest crop of rumors, plus the invite, suggest some new touch technology--maybe getting rid of the physical �home� button on the bezel. Plus, rumors say there could be three versions of the iPad--which should feature a Retina display and a faster A6 processor. And some reports out of China EVEN suggest that the new iPad could cost 70 to 80 dollars more per model than the iPad 2. MORE. The top of line model would be 900 bucks � about a hundred dollars less than a MacBook Air. UNLESS the new touch technology refers to a new touch-screen MacBook Air. Which would probably be two grand. But whatever, I�m in. AT&T this week floated the idea that hey, maybe mobile app developers could pay AT&T for the data that their users consume! It would be like a fun benefit for the user, because we�d download an app that didn�t count against our arbitrary and way too low data caps, imposed by AT&T, and then the app developer could pay AT&T to provide that data, which we all already pay for anyway! What an ingenious new business model, AT&T! Needless to say, response has been � tepid. Speaking of bad news, if you had Toy Story 3, Tron: Legacy or Mars Needs Moms in your Netflix instant streaming queue, prepare for disappointment. Starz is taking its 800 streaming titles out of the Netflix library because the two companies can�t agree on terms. See, the problem is, Netflix wants to stay in business, and Starz wants to ride the sinking ship of controlled distribution and content withholding all the way to its early grave. It�s exhausting, really. But just in time for Game of Thrones, Season 2, HBO Go is coming to Xbox! So you can totally get HBO on demand through your Xbox as long as you pay for the Xbox Live Gold account, which is like 60 bucks a year, AND HBO access on your cable system, which is like 60 bucks a day. And by the way, good luck finding Game of Thrones on demand ANYWHERE else. ANYWHERE. And that, children, is how the pirates win. And that�s the Buzz Report for this week, everyone! I�m Molly Wood, and thanks for watching.