Katie MarsalComedian Seth Meyers on the program's "Weekend Update" segment noted reports from last week that Google allegedly intends to sell its own handset in 2010. That touchscreen device looks to compete with Apple's iPhone.
"It was reported this week that Google would soon launch its own cellphone as a challenge to the iPhone," Meyers said in the mock newscast. "Also a challenge to the iPhone? Making phone calls."
The joke earned cheers and laughter from the audience during the live broadcast, but has since gone well beyond to earn a noteworthy presence online. After being featured prominently on a number of Web sites, the 16-second clip has earned more than 140,000 views on YouTube as of Monday morning.
The joke also came a day after blogger Dan Lyons, under his comedic Fake Steve Jobs persona, had asked readers to overload AT&T's network to send a message to the company about its service. The one-hour event, in which users were asked to use bandwidth-heavy applications on their iPhone, did not have a major effect on the wireless provider's network.
Meyers' joke made no mention of AT&T, which usually receives the blame for dropped calls and spotty coverage on the iPhone in the U.S. Bad publicity was joined by criticism from competitor Verizon, and forced AT&T to engage in a advertising war with its rival to defend its network.
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137 Comments
yo first
Too little, too late, SNL. Besides, the days of SNL being funny are 15-20 years past.
Too little, too late, SNL. The days of it being funny are 15-20 years past.
Unless they're making fun of Microsoft, in that event they would be cutting edge
SNL is still on the air?
My original 2G (or 2.5G or whatever) iPhone worked a lot better before the 3GS was rolled out.
For the first couple of years I owned the phone I can barely recall a dropped call or lost signal that I could not attribute to things like going through a tunnel - or at least in areas where my previous Treo on Verizon had exactly the same problem. In fact, the iPhone with AT&T overall was better than the Treo with Verizon.
However, since the 3.x software and the 3GS came out - about 50% of the time I either cannot make a call or my call drops in the middle of a conversation - even though I am standing still.
I would like to upgrade to the 3GS - and I am supposing that the 3G service is better than the 2G service (at least better than it is now) - but I am not entirely convinced that spending the extra cash on the upgrade plus the increased monthly fee is justified if the service is no better.
Maybe it is better to wait until mid 2010 and see what they do with new hardware - or LTE - or 4G - or whatever is next.
For me personally - the service level for the iPhone has gone from a rare dropped call - to frequent no service - dropped call - and call failed.