Apple, Motorola Plan An iTunes-Friendly Phone

PabloJones writes "Apple and Motorola have come together to create a new mp3-enabled cell phone, according to this Reuters article. It says that the device will be capable of storing about 12 songs, and will be fully integrated with iTunes. Perhaps this is a beginning of a new relationship between the two companies, after the PowerPC problems between the two in recent years."

Comments

Sounds Good...

[Dozix007]

It sounds like a great idea, I have to say I have been wating for such a cellphone for a while. I do have a few potential issues though. Battery life and size. While the Palm Cell phones were cool, they would eat a battery in about an hour and were about as sleek as carrying a forty pound rock.

Re:Sounds Good...

[mothz]

Sure, it sounds like a good idea now, but you won't be too happy when poor yields force Motorola to "roll back" the phones to hold only seven songs, just like Apple's 500MHz G4 fiasco.

Re:Sounds Good...

[cynic10508]

It sounds like a great idea, I have to say I have been wating for such a cellphone for a while. I do have a few potential issues though. Battery life and size. While the Palm Cell phones were cool, they would eat a battery in about an hour and were about as sleek as carrying a forty pound rock.

What would be really cool is if this was integrated with Bluetooth into a Motorola phone. Since my Powerbook has built-in Bluetooth the phone could then just stream from the Powerbook and use the 12-song space as a cache.

Re:Sounds Good...

[NothingToSeeHere]

they have that. it's called a Sony Ericsson P900.

That's what I was thinking. I'd like to own an Apple phone as I'm expecting it to be easier to use, better looking, well integrated with iTunes and nearly bug-free.

But right now, I've got a Sony Ericsson P800 with a 64 MB Memory Stick. It plays OGG Vorbis using OggPlay, and I can convert any song or entire playlists to OGG directly from iTunes using an AppleScript I wrote for that purpose. It internally uses mplayer and oggenc for conversion.

For mobile use, oggs are the BEST! I figure with all the background noise while commuting, 32kHz @quality "-1" work just fine. This setting results in bitrates around 32 - 48 kbps, or song files between 1 and 2 MB in size!!! No problem getting two albums onto my phone...

Uh, woo?

[i_am_syco]

I thought that the whole reason Apple was winning because they weren't selling 12-song devices.

Re:Uh, woo?

[Al Dimond]

Hey, I'm not selling 12-song devices and I'm not winning... must be something else...

Re:Uh, woo?

[bedouin]

Apple has nothing to lose from this, but a great deal to gain. There's people out there who don't know, or think they want an mp3 player -- this will get them hooked not only on the idea, but on Apple's intuitive interface. When it comes time to upgrade to something that can hold more than 12 songs, chances are they'll consider something iTunes compatible (i.e. an iPod).

And even if it means no iPod sales, it still gives Apple stronger brand recognition.

Re:Uh, woo?

[GoofyBoy]

>Apple has nothing to lose from this, but a great deal to gain.

Not sure what they have to gain from this.

Half an iPod with an interface which I'm not sure how its going to work with a cell phone, doesn't sound like a strong product.

And they have alot to lose. Its called watering down a brand-name.

>There's people out there who don't know, or think they want an mp3 player

So why would they buy it with a cell phone? Why not go for this nicer/cheaper/better cell phone?

Apple should do the next step 100% with their iPod. No half PDA or half cellphone combos. Full working PDA/"Son of Newton" and a full blown iPod with a cellphone.

Re:Uh, woo?

[mewphobia]

Apple should do the next step 100% with their iPod. No half PDA or half cellphone combos. Full working PDA/"Son of Newton" and a full blown iPod with a cellphone.

Apple isn't a stupid company. The PDA/cell phone market is already saturated. They would just be adding another competitor to an already saturated market. Creating a new cell phone isn't cheap. Apple doesn't like doing things in halves and the R&D cost for a new mobile phone would be huge.

This decision is effectively getting more clients for their music store for very little R&D cost. They are just leveraging their platform as THE solution for online/mobile music.

Re:Uh, woo?

[RedWizzard]

Not sure what they have to gain from this.

Obviously sales via iTunes. Possibly increased iPod sales.

Half an iPod with an interface which I'm not sure how its going to work with a cell phone, doesn't sound like a strong product.

Yes it does. I don't have an iPod, I don't know that I want one and I'm not paying that sort of money to find out. But I'll probably upgrade my phone in the next year or so and an mp3 capable phone is something I'd be interested in (certainly more than the camera phones that sell so well). One album's worth of songs is a good start. If I find I want more I'll buy an iPod, then I'll have two devices that use iTunes, and I can have music without carting both phone and iPod around if I don't want to.

And they have alot to lose. Its called watering down a brand-name.

It won't be an Apple branded product, it'll just carry a version of iTunes. Nothing to lose, unless Apple are paying Motorola. You're not in marketing are you?

So why would they buy it with a cell phone? Why not go for this nicer/cheaper/better cell phone?

Because this is a phone+mp3 player, not just a phone. It's one less device to carry round. Cost is certainly an issue, but I'd be shocked if this phone cost more than a similar phone plus an iPod.

Apple should do the next step 100% with their iPod. No half PDA or half cellphone combos. Full working PDA/"Son of Newton" and a full blown iPod with a cellphone.

Not happening yet. Phones and PDAs have radically different screen size and input requirements. They've been tried and don't converge that well. Your combination device is going to be expensive and large and that'll put people off. It's also a much larger gamble for Apple.

Re:Uh, woo?

[AtomicBomb]

Many people pointed out battery life is one important factor. I would say the UI is another one. It is pretty to get a combo mobile/mp3 player right. It is inconveient to include a separate headphone, but dumb to listen to music as if you are talking to someone.

If they can sort both things out, it will be a hot item on the market and I will want one too... Apple's involvement at least gives you some hope that they may get the UI right.

Re:Uh, woo?

[bedouin]

If you were used to and familiar with another companies products, Apple's products would seem very strange and alien to you. They would not even be recognizable as a pattern at all, and certainly not an expected one.

Dunno about that really. I wasn't a Mac user until 2002, but had OS X running to my likening within a few hours of taking the machine out of the box. I remember asking a friend a few questions, but 95% of it would be self-explanatory to anyone who's used a computer in the past 15 years.

On the other hand, I can remember encountering huge hiccups just migrating from one Linux distribution to another, or even upgrading Windows. There is definitely such a thing as unintuitive design; I've encountered it numerous times.

You will not have the knowledge of button placement encoded into your DNA

No, but there are certain UI designs that are more sensible to known human tendencies than others; Apple's done a great deal of research on it, and I think it shows when my dad (whose new to mp3s and computers) can figure out how to use iTunes within a couple minutes without me standing over his shoulders.

Please, there is no such "intuitive"

Sure there is. It's doing things like putting the power switch to say -- a monitor on its front, not the back. It's taking into consideration what most people expect, as opposed to what's technically the easiest thing to implement (which, in some cases -- may be a power switch on the back). Just an example. There are plenty more.

Re:Uh, woo?

[OS24Ever]

Funny, my wife who had a hard time with Windows and getting outlook to run took 30 seconds to figure out her iMac when I got it in 2002.

She had the iPod mini for 5 minutes and was completely enthralled. She'd burned half my spool of 100 CDs once she figured out the iTunes Music Store to the tune of about $130 worth of songs within four hours...

This is coming from someone who had trouble turning on her Windows PC and only used it for virus laden email.

So maybe you ought to rethink that statement? Maybe it should be 'people set in their ways don't find it intuitive' but defintitely not the people new to computers, you know, about 80% of the population of the planet.

Re:Uh, woo?

[AmericanInKiev]

The PDA/cell phone market is already saturated

I would beg to differ. Sure there are some entrants - but there is not IMHO a great deal of variety in features or form factor.
My suffeciently portable Audiovox/Verizon camera phone has the guts to do navigation, mp3, voice recording - but it does none of that.
Models with features are too large.

mp3 is an obvious feature, but personal communications should be extended - to near network applications, such as for use in meetings, voice conferances, and local data exchange.

If I'm in an airport, why shouldn't my bluetooth phone display departure gates and delays?

If i'm in court - why not scroll the transcription in real time?

why not bus stops that beacon the bus schedule?

In short - there is a world of information wanting to be real-time and personal. Creating large electronic displays everywhere is expensive and obnoxious - whereas bluetooth (WLAN) beacons can be very cheap and environmentally friendly.

So I suggest the PDA/Phone market has a great distance to go before realizing its potential.

The weakness of products now is largely a problem of vision, and permitting the industry to define its own features - for some services - we need a technology czar who will define the service - open the protocal, and set standards - it could be that free market economies only do SOME things better - say industry - but other things - such as ubiquitous connectivity very poorly.

(Do I get extra points for rambling?)

AIK

Why doesn't Apple just make this the iPhone

[adzoox]

I don't know why this couldn't be the iPhone. Co-branding is in Apple's past.

Then again, one could read that this announcement came from Motorola's web site as an indication that it won't be the last deal with a phone manufacturer. Maybe the iPhone is just further down the road.

Apple has done this before.

The Quicktake 200 Camera was a Fuji DS7 camera - they were no different. The Apple Quicktake however used a better JPEG compression technology (read as quicktime) - that was especially developed for the Quicktake. Apple also created it's own system level camera reading and editting software.

I think this could represent a possible new hardware direction and unlike many have suggested I think this DOES possibly mean an Iphone from Apple could be in the works. Except this time, unlike the iPod that is Windows and Mac; the iPhone will be for Macs ONLY, the Moto version will be for everyone else.

Semi unrelated - a smaller footprint of iTunes would also be easier to emulate - possibly giving Linux a better shot at a quality iTunes solution.

Looks like Apple learned a lesson...

[Amiga Trombone]

...from their failure to license the Mac technology. This time around, their going to license their iPod technology to every Tom, Dick and Harry and establish it as an industry standard.

Good for them!

Re:Looks like Apple learned a lesson...

[speleo]

Yeah, too bad that Firewire thing never amounted to anything...

Re:Looks like Apple learned a lesson...

[sirsnork]

Just for the record, while USB is theoretically faster, in the real world Firewire will destroy USB2 in data transfer tests

Wow.

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

The multi-million dollar cell-phone ringer market just SHIT ITS PANTS.

*squirt* *plop*

If people can pop some songs onto their phone, why pay a dollar or two for a 10 second clip that sounds like it was recorded on an 8-trak?

hehe. Fuck'em.

Re:Wow.

[PabloJones]

Yeah, it's truly a shame those satellite phones never took off... just think, you could have Musak beamed down to it when you needed to put someone on hold, and then people could listen to an instrumental version of "Walkin' on Sunshine" while you used the can.

Hmmmm, well maybe that's not such a shame after all.

I'll Wait ...

[angrist]

until I can get ALL the functionality of both devices in one package.

With only 12 songs, I'd still need my iPod for real music needs. Will the phones have headphone jacks? I sure don't want to listen to music from a single crappy phone speaker.

While this is a step in the right direction, it's not enough.
When I can fully replace my iPod, cell phone, and PDA with one device, i'll buy.

Re:I'll Wait ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Will we see a return to rotary dialing of phone numbers with an iPod-like scroll wheel interface?

12 Songs?

[MBCook]

I can understand the appeal of holding a few MP3s on your cellphone (to a degree), but only 12 songs? Now Apple considders a song to be a 128 kbps AAC file 4 minutes long (off the bottom of the iPod tech spec page). So that means that this thing must hold 48 minutes of audio, 48mb of storage (since 128 kbps is about a meg a minute).

First of all, the 48mb seems a little odd to me. I guess it's a 64mb device, with 16 used for the phone's OS/address book/ringtones/etc. But more importantly, why not make it hold 74 minutes of music. One full CD. I think that would be ideal for tiny storage. That would be 74mb, and if you include the 16 for the phone's other requirements you get 90 megs. That means that using 96 mb of memory on the phone, you could hold the OS and such, and 80 minutes of audio. Seems fantastic to me.

That said, I have three other comments. First, how 'bout bluetooth so you can use your Bluetooth headset to listen to music? Second, will the memory be expandable? That would be great. Third, can you use your files (MP3, AAC, etc) as ringtones? Those would be three nice things.

It will be interesting to see how all this pans out.

Press Release from Motorola

[Saxton]

Press Release from Motorola

Yes, I understand that might be considered karma whoring, but at least it's informative. Enjoy.

-s4xton

On hold

[moberry]

Now how freakin' cool would it be, when you put a freind on hold to take another call, poop, etc. It would play the music (in a somewhat reduced qaulity) like companies do when they put you on hold. just remember to properly liscense it.

if they allow too many

[Anonymous Coward]

songs on the phones, what's the point in buying an iPod?

Quite sensible really, if they want to continue with the iPod, which I'm sure they do.

Not that exciting

[localekko]

The Nokia 6230 (and the forthcoming 6260) are somewhat more impressive, using interchangeable MMCs to store up to and above 128Mb of data. And I don't think iTunes compatibility is a great reason to endure such lousy storage capacity.

Re:But iTunes is not mp3 ?

[wbd]

The iTunes MUSIC STORE uses AAC encoded music (an open standard) with Apple's proprietary FairPlay DRM.

The iTunes APPLICATION, which is usuable with our without the iTunes Music Store, supports MP3, AAC, AAC+Fairplay, WAV, Audible audiobooks, Apple Lossless Compression (ALC), possibly more I can't remember. It can rip to MP3, AAC, or ALC.

Battery life???

[droopus]

Um, my phone barely makes it through the day on its extended life battery. How the heck is it going to last all day if I use it as my music source as well?

I might be alone, but I really prefer a Sidekick (or Blackberry, I spose...) for my net, email and PDA functions and my cell for phone calls and little else. Other than the occasional game of Jeopardy, I rarely use my cell for much besides a mobile phone.

Re:12 songs? does it play pong also?

[Graff]

12 songs? like an... album? what do they got in their, a hamster? it can't possibly be that hard to find somewhere to stuff a couple more MP3s in a cell phone. why so stingy?

The poster of the story got it a bit wrong. It's not a dozen songs, it is dozenS of songs. So think more like a couple of albums worth, not one album worth of songs.

Remember that most songs will probably be full 128 kbit iTunes Music Store AAC files. Judging from the songs I've bought from the iTMS each song will take up around 3.5 MB so a dozen will take 42 MB. That adds up pretty quick. You could fit about 36 songs onto a 128 MB flash card, which sounds reasonable for a flash-based cell phone/MP3 player.

Everyone is complaining about 12 songs already

[chia_monkey]

It's funny to see so many people griping about the 12 song capacity of the phone. Lets not forget all the cries of "why the hell would anyone want to buy an iPod when you can get something so much cheaper?" Then the iPod Mini came out and instead of griping about it competing against the product from another company, they cried "but who will buy this? Why not spend $50 more and get a full size iPod that holds so much more music?"

C'mon people. Have faith in Apple. They seem to know what they're doing (finally...we'll just forget about the Cube...). When your son or daughter (who probably helped put the iPod Mini on the 25 year (slight exaggeration) waiting list is at the wireless store comparing phones, are they going to be looking at the phones that have no ring-tone options, crappy ring-tone options, or the cool new phone that plays music from iTunes (considering they probably already own an iPod and iPod Mini).

I see a lot of "12 song only" complaints but I bet three months after release, this will be a wildly popular phone.

Who can out cynic the cynics?!

[berniecase]

Welcome to Slashdot, Cynical haven.

Remember, Slashdotters panned the iPod when it was introduced. They're doing exactly the same thing here. I really get a kick out of reading some of these braindead posts.

Battery life!
OGG!
What? Only 12 songs?!
It's not a Newton!
Apple is dying!
I won't buy it until it has X feature
AAC sucks, X format r0x0rs yo!


Okay okay, so some people are posting positive comments, but they seem to get lost in the pointless hand waving from the haters. Thanks everybody - In a years time, this phone will be a success and you'll STILL be bitching about not having OGG support on X device.

The "New" Motorola

[stox]

Two years ago, Chris Galvin was at the healm of Motorola, now it is Ed Zander. To say that the difference is night and day would still be an understatement. Ed Zander actually works for a living. The market knows this, and so does Apple.

if only motorola make a phone that meets my needs

[aardwolf204]

MP3 player with iTunes support

Browser that supports WAP, HTML, Frames, Flash, Shockwave, Tabbed Browsing, and thumb-guestures

8 MegaPixel camera with 6x optical zoom that takes SLR lenses

Calander and contacts that syncs with microsoft exchange

2.2" display with 65K colors and 480x640 resolution

802.11g and bluetooth (that works) with kismet

12 cell LiIon battery with 14 day standby and 6 hour talk time

media player capable of playing MOV, MPG2,4, AVI (divx and xvid), RM, DVD,

HDTV that syncs with your tivo, direct-tv, XP-MCE, or mythPC (sorry MyHTPC and freevo, not enough room in ROM)

Direct TV connection with 400 channels

Cheap custom ringtones that dont suck (no more paying 99 cents for a 50 cent ringtone)

Vibrate, Pulsate, Ultra-Vibrate, and Orgasmobrate (for her pleasure)

authentic TOS trek sound for when the clam shell flips open

Walkie-Talkie function that be used without speakphone

SDIO card for memory expansion

4G 1MB/s internet connection

RSS feeds on your "desktop"

9 button thats not pre-programmed to 911

full QWERTY thumbboard with touchpad

VNC, TightVNC, and Terminal Services

Vi, Emacs, Notepad, and that thing macs use

Powerpoint support with included VGA dongle for presentations

SMS, MMS, EMS, and PMS

synchronization support for pop3, imap4, and active-sync

drivers for linux (source included)

dual boot mode with windows CE and linux (2.7)

included sample cowboy neal ringtones

j2me, perl, and C# support

graphing calculator

Included USB cable makes phone act as USB flash drive on any PC (w2k+)

GPS with included geocaches

ability to turn reciever into promiscuious mode with ethercap

SSH (1,2) and Telnet clients that work!

1GHz Transmeta processor

Via Eden 600 MHz backup processor

dual blue cold cathodes with case window

Support for CD-R / RW, DVD-R-RW+R+RW-RAM, MMC, SD, CF, PCMCIA, and 5.25" (double density)

Did I miss anything...

Oh yeah, Phone. Maybe next revision, until then you can hook it up to your vonage box.

Ok, so I was only joking on a few of those things, but seriously some of these features need to be considered. I want an open platform phone that allows me to put RSS feeds on my "desktop" and can SSH and VNC into boxen (sp?)

iTMS Mobile

[Frogbeater]

Why does no one mention the possibility that this implies the ability to download songs from the iTMS directly to the phone.

A cell phone has the internet connection that the iPod lacks. The two can not be compared. Small capacity, yes, but I can download a song I want to hear RIGHT NOW.

Having the iTMS in my pocket is a groundbreaking concept. Considering the number of songs they've sold from PCs, imagine how many songs they would sell if the store was in your pocket all the time!

Defenisve action

[Johnny Mnemonic]

There were some rumors that Apple would sue Motorola for breach of contract once Apple fully migrated to the IBM processor; I don't think that's happened 100% yet, but Apple's pretty close. The suit would've been based on the grounds that Moto didn't give Apple the year warning they were required to that they were going to end their desktop PPC chip, which necessitated Apple scrambling to find a replacement--originally, IBM didn't have a lot of interest in supplying Apple, and only bolted on the AltiVec co-processor at a later date.

I strongly suspect that this relationship is related to terms to arise out of an out of court settlement between Moto and Apple--it's clearly no longer in Apple's interest to sue Moto, so this was worth something to Moto (if the suit had any merit; but it sounded like it may well have.)

I don't know if it's better for Apple or for Moto to play iTMS music on Moto phones; but it does mean that QT is there instead of WMA, which is indeed worth something to Apple. My hunch is that Apple was awarded this privilege for free, and in return they'd drop the suit.

Overkill?

[SteveM]

Yeah, I had to use google to find the Terminal app in OS X.

Couldn't you just have used the OS X find command? Isn't Google a bit of overkill for this?

SteveM