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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."
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.
Will we see a return to rotary dialing of phone numbers with an iPod-like scroll wheel interface?
Yeah, too bad that Firewire thing never amounted to anything...
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.
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.
Sapere aude!
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?)
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
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.
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.