Gadget Lab Podcast: Motorola Xoom, iPad 2, Intel?s Thunderbolt

This week’s Gadget Lab podcast zooms in on the Motorola Xoom tablet, the upcoming iPad 2 and Intel’s new Thunderbolt connectivity standard.

The Motorola Xoom is a neat piece of hardware. It’s got a 10.1-inch screen (slightly bigger than the 9.7-inch iPad), front- and rear-facing cameras, 32 GB of storage and a 3G wireless connection. Oddly, the audio speakers are on the back, which makes the sound rather poor.

That’s a solid feature set, but the cheapest Xoom costs $800 ? which is a pretty disappointing starting price compared to the iPad’s $500 sweet spot that nobody can seem to match. To be fair, the most-comparable iPad is the 32-GB model with 3G, which costs $720. But I argue the starting price will be the most important factor for new adopters who are still figuring out why they need a tablet in the first place, and $800 is way too high.

Nonetheless, the Xoom’s feature set puts Motorola’s tablet ahead of the iPad, so we’re interested to see what Apple has in store for us at next Wednesday’s iPad 2 event. We’re expecting an iPad with two cameras, more memory and a faster processor.

Speaking of Apple, the company introduced a major upgrade for its MacBook Pro family this week, adding the newest Intel processors and a brand-new connectivity port dubbed Thunderbolt. What’s Thunderbolt? Dylan explains it’s a versatile connectivity port that will eventually enable you to plug in just about any type of peripheral, potentially eliminating the need for desktop towers in the future. When was the last time you heard of a connectivity port this cool?

We close the podcast with a quick look at the iPhone game Tiny Wings (sorry, I called it Little Wings thanks to an on-camera brain fart), which soared to the No. 1 spot in the App Store’s bestsellers this week. It’s a cute game that perfectly executes the Angry Birds formula, so no wonder it’s a hit.

Like the show? You can also get the�Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don?t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the�Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab�video or�audio podcast feeds

Or listen to the audio here:

Gadget Lab audio podcast #105

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0105.mp3