Slashdot Mirror
Major Hangups Over the iPod Phone
chadwick writes "It seemed like a sure thing: the iPod mobile phone. What could be more irresistible than a device combining the digital-music prowess of Apple Computer (AAPL) with the wireless expertise of Motorola (MOT)? Motorola sent its buzz machinery into overdrive in January when it leaked word that the product would debut at a cellular-industry conference in New Orleans in mid-March. Well, hold the phone. At the New Orleans confab, a frustrated Edward Zander, Motorola's chief executive, stood before a roomful of analysts and reporters and said the handset's debut would have to wait. "
At the New Orleans confab, a frustrated Edward Zander, Motorola's chief executive, stood before a roomful of analysts and reporters and said the handset's debut would have to wait. "
Showing precisely why pre-announcement of products only leads to problems, frustrations, and customer dissatisfaction.
Only announce products when they are done and ready to ship and you avoid this sort of garbage. Everybody is speculating on just what the hold-up is. It could be that the phone is not ready or that the wireless carriers are trying to extract every last cent out of somebody else's (Apple and Motorola) hard earned work. But the point is that there is now a consumer expectation and they are complaining to Apple and Motorola saying "why can't you get your $#!t together and release the product?" when it may actually be the fault of Verizon, Cingular et. al. The problem of course is that on sales of the songs themselves, Apple's profit is next to nothing. So having other companies try and muscle in on very thin margins means 1) either somebody has to take it in the shorts or 2) we all lose. Of course if the record labels would allow more access to the music for Internet delivery, it would be treated as the commodity it really is and there would be more room for profits from higher volume, but that is another post.
Oh, and it would be nice if people who are submitting articles would actually summarize the story rather than posting verbatim what the writer of the referenced article says.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I visit India and other contries, and i must say that the phones and technologies people use there is WAAAY superior than what we use in US.
Synchronizing the phones with computer is standard there, and so is "SMSing" ringtones. If one person buys a ringtone from the carrier (which is around 8 cents), that ringtone can be SMSed to all the friends. There is a nominal charge for SMS also, basically its a huge market which people simply love.
What sucks here is iTunes sells whole song for 99c, and the f**** cell phone carrier sells the MIDI file for that song for 3 dollars, that expires in 3 months!!!! No wonder people use sites like 3guploads.com or PitPim to put ringtones on their phones. The carriers are simply killing the technology by locking too much stuff.
Will you dial by twirling your fingers in a circle on the rotary sensor like an old pulse dialing phone?
I could get behind that.
Now instead of hearing a crappy sounding ring tone you can hear the most annoying 50 cent song in CLEAR digital quality.
A person walking down the street with some white ear plugs, talking to themselves, about the mac cult taking over the world... or some such, I will assume they are just on the phone.
This signature is part of a balanced post.
The problem isnt the feature rich phone, the problem is carriers have some how got people to pay $1-4 for STUPID RINGTONES!!!! Itunes charges me $1 for a song whether its 1 min or 10 min, but a 3 second repeating ringtone costs me $2 or a 12 kbps 30 seconds clip of a song cost me $4...wtf is all I can say.
The phone companies wont let people do what we want with our phones until we stop letting them rape our wallets! $1.50 for a 32x32 pixel background image! Why cant i just send myself a custom made BG for free? Easy because stupid people pay, and they keep paying.
Change wont take long, if we all stopped buying ringtones and bullshit for our phones then change would happen pretty quick, its a broken buisness model made to screw the customers out of even more money, dont fall for it!
Mabel: "Henry!"
Henry: "What, dear?
Mabel: "It's one of those calls again.
Henry: "What calls, dear?"
Mabel: "Every 20 minutes or so, the phone rings and I pick it up and I hear some of that damn rock music"
Meanwhile, somewhere 5 states away, Jason is grooving down the streets, buds in ears, with one hand on the iPod phone as he hits the controls and surfs through his really impressive Led Zep collection. Every once in a while, he presses a button and the song does not change. No idea why.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It was idiotic even trying to launch this thing in the USA. Carriers have a strange-hold over this market. Nokia has a range over over 100 handsets - you can buy about 6 of these on US carrier contracts, not including decent phones with WLAN and Bluetooth.
I cannot understand why Apple is sodding around with Motorola on this. They should have partnered with Nokia.
As an aside, Apple should also partner with Shazam. The best thing that an iPod/phone combo could do is recognize music from an online database and buy it for you.
I see nothing but dark clouds in the future of cell phones in America unless we take back control from the corporations. We must divorce the hardware from the service, just like we did for wired telephone service. You should be able to buy whatever phone YOU want, with whatever feature set YOU want, and connect to whatever carrier YOU want. Verizon in particular has already shown us exactly how they want to control us.
A device combining the digital music prowess of Apple, the user interface design of Apple, the build quality of Apple, and the wireless expertise of Nokia.
Frankly, Motorola's user interface is a hideous piece of crap that doesn't seem to have improved since the 80s: menus that SHOUT AT YOU, and a phone book that still can't cope with people having more than one phone number (duh!). No matter how good the RAZR looks, it's the same craptastic software on it, and that's why I'm not gonna touch it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak