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Why the Rokr Phone Is An Important Failure
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian has some interesting commentary on the new iPod cellphone." From the article: "The music-player module works like an iPod - though it lacks the clickwheel that makes its big brothers function so slickly. But overall, the impression is distinctly underwhelming. The word on the streets is that far from being the revolutionary device that will bring about media 'convergence', the Rokr is, well, just the sum of its parts. And that, it seems to me, is the most interesting thing about it."
Apple's lucrative discovery and exploitation of online music transformed its image and its corporate prospects. But the assets it acquired in the process are now so valuable it would be corporate madness to do anything that might undermine them. And yet that is precisely what radical innovation would achieve. So Apple cannot do it. So true...
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
The article mentioned Rokr lacks the clickwheel that makes its big brothers function so slickly.
I wonder if Apple is able to pull such a trick where it uses its Mighty Mouse technology to provide both keypad and clickwheel on the same surface. Icons/numbers will be displayed accordingly through this LCD-type surface.
Now that will not only change the way we interact with mobile phones. For example, on game-playing mode, this Mighty-Panel will switch to a gamepad; On net-browsing mode, it offers scrollbars, back/forward buttons.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
"The word on the streets is that far from being the revolutionary device that will bring about media 'convergence', the Rokr is, well, just the sum of its parts. And that, it seems to me, is the most interesting thing about it.""
Well that beats "bag of parts" as a selling point.
They're failures. People try again. Silly article, based upon a premise I'm not particularly interested in. There will be another Rokr if this one fails, made by Apple alone so it gets all the 'core business.' OR, buy THIS one or not, there will be ANOTHER company (Nokia maybe?) which just builds something better. Apple has no patent on innovation itself.
My little site.
A phone based on Al Roker was destined to be a failure anyway.
I thought that when I saw the 512 MB - 1GB capactity...whatever the "100 songs" was supposed to be.
I always cringe when they state the number of songs. While it's always easier that way for consumers to understand, I am thinking: "hmmm...100 songs at 96kbps AAC?"
No thank you!
JB
Is something users are ready for but technology is not. Why must we continue to integrate multiple technologies in really shitty ways? Just wait 5 years for technology to catch up and things will be a lot better. There's already proof Apple should have waited. Look at the nano, it's got such tiny flash chips which are huge storage-wise. Wouldn't it have made sense to wait just a little while longer and put those in the ROKR? Yes, I know that technologies have to come out at some point, and that someone has to be an early player, but perhaps these players are a bit too early.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
and ignore all of that, make some minor modifications to the industrial design hellhole that are the mobile phones of today, and still try to tell people it's an ipod.
that, to me, is what's wrong with the Rokr.
Not to mention that having an MP3 player and a cell phone sharing the same battery is a stupid idea.
This is one of those 'high concept' ideas that may have looked good on paper but will not connect with consumers.
But that's not the way it works: instead, you have to connect the phone to your computer (using a slow USB connection) and get songs from your iTunes music library - just as you do with a conventional iPod.
Strange, I seem to get about 3KB/sec most of the time off Cingular's network here in Maryland. I really don't see the benefit in downloading 4MB files off Cingular's network, especially if you don't have the unlimited data plan. What's USB 1.0 rated at? Over 1 MB/sec? That seems to be about 300x as fast as downloading off the phone network.
Granted, it's not as portable for downloading files, but is it really worth waiting half an hour for downloading a song where there isn't EDGE or EVDO? (I haven't yet found a place where I get "EDGE" speeds in the Baltimore area).
Besides this phone being bulky and ugly, I think it's silly that they forcibly limited its capacity to 100 songs regardless of memory card size: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000570057877/ I understand Apple's iTunes/iPod efforts are limited by the contracts they sign with the record companies. Lucky for me Palm has no such shackles, and my Treo 650 holds as many songs as I can squeeze into a standard SD card. The 1Gb one I have now handles about 200, and as soon as 2Gb cards get cheaper I'll easily double my storage.
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
That it's DRMed to death.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
Something like this won't truly get recognized until it "does it all." A phone-plus-MP3 player is just that, as the article says. It's not a revolution. It's about as much of a revolution as a PDA-plus-MP3 player is.
I don't think that a product will get recognized unless it does everything the user wants. It's gotta be a PDA-plus-phone-plus-MP3 player. Make it as cool-looking as the iPod, and then *everyone* will want it. Maybe throw in movies just for effect.
i looked into it today, and although it has gprs and itunes, it's too expensive ($250), AND one must use cingular wireless w/a 2 year contract (cheapest plan @ $40/month).
i don't really need a cell phone, so i'm looking at a payasyougo plan, so this phone is a no go. and, itunes isn't really a big seller for me either.
overall, it does look like they did duct tape iTunes on top of a stock cell phone.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
...master of none. You'd probably have more space for flash storage if they had forgone the camera or the bluetooth connectivity. Either you have lower less capable modules or it's put together rather cheaply...one reason I avoid mp3 players with voice recording and FM playback shoehorned on.
But this will get better as stuff gets more and more minaturized. In 5 years we might have phones with five megapixel cameras and 20 gigs of storage. I also wonder how the U.S. phone industry will criple them.
1) Apple comes out with a phone.
2) It plays music and is a phone.
3) Millions of fashionable heat-seekers buy it.
4) Apple gets to sell songs and ring-tones, which is, inexplicably, something like a 347 billion dollar a year business worldwide (go figure).
5) Apple makes a lot of money.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Of course the iTunes mobile phone is limited. Steve Jobs knows what he's doing, and wants to dip his foot into the water of mobile phone music players without cannibalizing the iPod sales. He was less than enthusiastic about the phone - calling it "pretty cool", rather than his usual over-the-top evangelizing, and he looked a bit uncomfortable when using it. He made it pretty clear that this is a Motorola phone with some Apple software, and not an Apple product. The artificial 100-song limit adds to the feeling that this is a plan to get a limited presence in the mobile market, without Apple committing themselves wholeheartedly.
The iPod nano was the real star of the show. If I was from Motorola, I'd be a little annoyed that Apple upstaged the ROKR with the nano. The message seemed to be: "If you want to have music on your phone, here's a decent option, but why would you, when there is a tiny device like the iPod nano that will fit in your pocket with a normal phone, and is better in every way".
Sure this is an important phone cause of iTunes, but I already have a phone that does everything this does and more in a smaller form factor and have had it for a year. (The Audiovox SMT5600) Sure you might groan that it runs windows mobile, but it actually runs really really well. I stuck a 512M miniSD card and walk around with 200 songs on it in full mp3 stereo. So the capabilities of the phone are really just old news cept for iTunes.
It's not the panel that's the failure, its the fact that it is limited to 100 songs max. I can't imagine people wanting this, when we already have phones with expension slots holding 500+ songs. The itunes logo isnt enough.
big business has ruined what could have otherwised been a great product. And why is that? DRM, restrictions, and feature lockout.
Can't use the songs as ring tones? Just to appease the cell phone companies? Do cellphone companies really think they can continue to make money on a gimmick forever? Where's the creativity?
How could apple fix this? The same way they do with all there products. Control the entire thing. I don't think partnering really works for Apple. They should have developed the phone themselves from scratch, maybe with a minor partner, not someone like Motorola. Furthermore, what if they could offer their own cellphone service and make something like downloadable songs over the wireless network feasible? I guess the problem with that is that Apple does not own such a network. I think Apple should give the iPhone another chance, and do it right.
This seems again like a lot of empty hype: just like when Apple came out with their ipod, some three years after the advent of mp3 players, and everybody congratulated them on their "innovation". Except the innovation couldn't even play ogg format files.
Isn't it a little premature to call Rokr a failure? I mean, sure, it wasn't the Apple-designed mana-from-heaven iPod phone many wanted, but other than that, wh
Seriously this device is sweet. With pocketmusic player, it makes a good mp3 player (they have a winamp skin); you can put an SD card in it (right now I just have 1 gig), which although doesn't match ipod storage, is enough to convince me to not carry three devices around (ipod, PDA, phone). Betaplayer (now called something else) makes a great divx player (and is free). So I can watch movies, listen to mp3s, have a full functioning PDA, and a nice phone. It's much more bulky than an ipod, but it beats having to carry three devices around.
Quite the contrare. Many faliures, although failures, pave the way for other things. The Apple Lisa was a failure due to price, but look at computers today.... all based on those concepts such as GUI's, icons, windows, etc. It is really hard to say if a product is a *failure* because it might lead to bigger and better things. In the middle ages, there was a process that used material and lighting to etch a pattern onto the material. such a process was said to create the Shroud of Turin by skeptics. Although it was not popular because it was a lengthy process, its general idea led to photography. this phone may lead to the next big craze.
I don't see why Apple would want this product to do well. What's to stop Apple from making phones of its own to its own designs and standards and keeping all the profit for itself?
Minus slick Apple design and marketing I don't think cell phones taking over the MP3 player marketspace is a serious threat. Now if ITMS was a money maker and wireless purchases were available I could see this sort of liscenseing scheme making sense, but I think the safer bet is to expand Apple's hardware reach.
Look at the nano, it's got such tiny flash chips which are huge storage-wise.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I just hope it doesn't go the way of the failed Apple Newton. Just because it fails, doesn't mean it's not a great idea. I hope they continue to work on bringing the iPod/iTunes service to cellphones.
And bring back the Newton!
Didn't we all learn that it is never a winning strategy for companies to hide beneficial technology? For example, one often hears conspiracy theories that GM could make a car that gets a zillion MPG, but big oil pays them to keep it in the dark. About three minutes of economics refutes this, by demonstrating that GM could make more selling the advanced cars than big oil would be willing to pay.
The same holds true for the iPod phone. Whatever the reason for its lack of certain features, it is clearly not to protect other companies, or even other divisions within Apple. If these features could be included at a competitive price, Apple would make more money by including them than it would lose elsewhere. Despite the looney theories, any MBA and Apple executive would know this.
Can you buy it from Apple or its retail outlets?
Did Apple design it?
Is ROKR an Apple phone?
The simple answer to all these is NO. Apple is simply harnessed in front of the publicity bandwagon. So it is pretty hard to see this as an Apple failure.
And about the article - how on earth is it easier to download music via cellphone than with a computer? And how is that faster than "using a slow USB connection" or even BlueTooth, that the author forgets?
Clearly this article is a dud.
In fact you need to be interested in this article. It makes a really keen obversation about Apple; that Apple is too scared to damage itself in order to imporve itself. This implies that Apple viewes itself and its current business posture as weak, and thus must do everytihing in its power to keep the status quo. Look at its move towards Intel chips for its next generation hardware; they realize that Intel is the status quo and they are putting themselves in that stream. It takes effort and cunning to successfully be different, and Apple is now showing a reluctance to do just that.
There will be another company that will build the next iPhone, but they will do it better because of the failure of the iPhone; they will learn from mistakes. The point to be gleamed from this is that in fact it will NOT be Apple.
Similarly, there's no obvious reason why tunes stored on the music module couldn't be used as ringtones for the phone module. But that would undermine the mobile operators' lucrative trade in ringtones.
Seems to me like restrictions from Cingular brought about the limits in songs (100) and the inability to use said songs as ringtones. I haven't seen anything to debunk this, so reply if you can use uploaded songs as ringtones.
The music-player module works like an iPod - though it lacks the clickwheel that makes its big brothers function so slickly. But overall, the impression is distinctly underwhelming. The word on the streets is that far from being the revolutionary device that will bring about media 'convergence', the Rokr is, well, just the sum of its parts.
While I do agree with design, I wonder who was the head of designing this phone? Did they get in contact with Johnathan Ives? The nano shows that a clickwheel can be put on, but how are you going to do it while making the phone sport the usual keypad and look great? This sounds like a great problem for Apple to tackle, and I hope they get some control.
In the end, Apple wins anyway. You load 1 or 100 songs onto the phone. You'll probably still go buy songs off of iTMS anyway. Motorola is probably the loser who will feel the pinch if phone sales are bad.
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
[sorry about the unfinished post]
Look at the nano, it's got such tiny flash chips which are huge storage-wise.
Storage size isn't the problem. There's no shortage of phones with a lot more than the 100 song capability of this one - including the Rockr. Note that Apple actually limits the capability to 100 songs, no matter how much memory you have.
Which to me basically says that Apple does not want a phone with music capability to succeed, and this device is deliberately underwhelming, and an attempt to deflect that trend for a while. It goes under the assumption that people will want to choose an Apple device, and faced with a bad phone, they will choose an Ipod instead.
I think that is a mistake. I use mhy phone as text reader and radio already, and I'd really hate going back to carry a separate device for that. I don't know what mp3 player will be my next one, but I do know it will be labeled as a telephone.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Given that, while pricey, most cell phones are seen as things to be thrown away, and the ipod is seen as something you never want to get rid of, it never made sense to me to marry the two. One of the biggest issues is that most people I know have no great loyalty to any cell phone company (they all treat you like dirt, so you switch according to where you live, which is cheapest when your contract is up for renewel, etc.). If it was possible to switch your mobile across companies, this might have a better chance, but as people have noted, the d/l rates are still bad. But consider people who *don't* have internet access -- it makes sense from apple's POV to try, as this provides coverage that the previously did not have.
.. so my predictive powers aren't so great.
In the end, however, spending that much money that is tied to something you will likely have to ditch in the near future just doesn't make sense.
Of course, ipod minis didn't make much sense to me either
From the article:
...There's no technological reason why the music module in the iPhone couldn't hold 500 or 1,000 songs rather than the current measly 100; but if it did, then sales of existing iPod models might be undermined.
Similarly, there's no obvious reason why tunes stored on the music module couldn't be used as ringtones for the phone module. But that would undermine the mobile operators' lucrative trade in ringtones. (And, boy, is it lucrative: you can buy a Coldplay track from iTunes for 99 cents; but the same track bought at ringtone rates would cost $25.)
And as for the idea of downloading tracks directly to the phone via the mobile network - well, don't even think about it. Apple makes money from selling iPods, network-ready personal computers and online music. Using the phone network would bypass the first two of those cash cows.
The difficulty stems from a simple, unpalatable fact - namely that radical innovation generally threatens your existing business model. Or, in MBA-speak, it cannibalises your core business.
Here's a good lesson in how your own innovation can easily help you shoot yourself in the foot later. Apple could possibly innovate around this, but sadly since they didn't this might make the product hurt their bottom line and not improve it since they don't want to innovate around their own imaginary product boundaries.
The iPhone is considerably less than the sum of its parts for one reason: it was designed by a company that has become a prisoner of its previous success at innovation...It's a sad, but true, fact of technological life.
It's sad how true the article is. This is exactly why you don't any company function as a monopoly over any particular technology regardless of who it is (yes, not just MS). Companies release new products in what they think won't clash with their other products and would benefit themselves primarily and not the benefit of the consumer. You can't really blame the companies -- we'd all do the same thing, but we shouldn't let them choose imaginary limitations just because it might hurt their bottom line. This is a lesson that all companies should learn and as consumers and we, as consumers, would be good to be aware of this in our technology choices!
That's an assignment. You probably meant to use the "is equal to" operator "==".
Isn't it a little premature to call Rokr a failure? I mean, sure, it wasn't the Apple-designed mana-from-heaven iPod phone many wanted, but other than that, what's so bad about it?
I ordered one yesterday at the Gold Coast Cingular store in Chicago (about two blocks from the Apple North Michigan Ave store) - one guy was already in there playing with the one demo model, and right after I walked in, two people walked "wanting to see the Rokr". From the looks of it, Cingular is special ordering all these, or at the least, can't keep them in stock in stores just yet.
Remember iPod mini's debut? Who would pay just $50 less for a mini iPod that had (at the time) 16GB less space? Or what about the iPod itself? $299 was just too much for a 5GB MP3 player. Yet both flew off the shelves, each at their own pace, but both were doubted at their beginning.
I wanted a new phone, with Bluetooth to use my Prius' hands-free system and the ability to use at least some of my iTMS songs on it. So I can't load my entire 6.5 GB music library, but my main playlist only has 80-90 songs, big deal. It doesn't look like an iPod, but quite frankly, I'm glad. Phones are primarily for making calls, and I like to use numbers to call people, not swing a clickwheel around to rotary dial - why should there have to be a clickwheel on the phone when I know of no one today that would prefer a rotary dial over touch-tone phone.
Let's wait at least until mid-week to decide if this was a failure - iTunes Japan surprised everyone in just a week, and most of the buzz has been about the nano all this week (which absolutely rocks, but is too expensive to just replace my iPod as my car's jukebox). If sales numbers are where I think they might be, this "failure" might surprise everyone just like the last two mispriced, misplaced Apple pieces.
1) Apple partners with Motorola to come out with a phone.
2) It plays music and is a phone.
3) Nobody buys it, because...
4) Apple sells the songs via your PC, not directly to the phone, and Motorola still sells you the ringtones separately.
5) Nobody makes any money.
It's like AOL/Time Warner all over again...
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The article mentions how the ROKR doesn't do what it should, because Apple, Motorola, and Cingular all have their own existing businesses that they don't want to see get bypassed by new technology.
I saw a picture of the ROKR on the web, and the menu looks exactly like the existing menus on my Motorola phone. I was expecting the famous Chicago font that you see on old classic Macs, and iPods nowadays. But its just the crap font used in Motorola phones. Also there's the input situation with no click wheel type of thing (or even an iPod Shuffle kind of interface)... the ROKR looks just like a standard issue cellphone, that has "iTunes" added as an extra application to the system, along with the calculator, mini browser, address book, and a java game.
The obvious thing to do would be for Apple to make the phone entirely themselves. I suppose it's possible since they ARE also a hardware company. Frankly, I'm surprised Apple allowed another company to have so much control in designing something that would be associated with the Apple brand. It doesn't end up having the Apple look or feel at all.
Apple could even launch their own cellphone service, instead of pairing with Cingular. They wouldn't even need to build their own network. Virgin Mobile is just re-branded Sprint service. So I suppose Apple could do something similar with an existing cellphone company... Offering an Apple phone to use on Apple's cellphone network.
Perhaps then Apple could truly innovate on this thing, instead of falling victim to the situation the article describes when multiple businesses try to cooperate.
Not sure where this post came from, the whole thing is a couple posts down from here...
Please, please, please, stop mucking about with castrated hybrid iPod phones and just move into the smartphone market proper. Partner with Motorola or whoever, but please make me a smartphone with an interface that doesn't suck, a decent processor and that doesn't look like an industrial designer threw up on it.
So the ROKR proves Apple doesn't do well with collaboration. Tell us something we didn't already know.
It is so obvious this phone is a checklist of specs:
- Hundred song capacity - check
- iPod library navigation software - check
- Dedicated iTunes button - check
- Pause song on phone call - check
- USB sync - check
It's like Apple made some demands on what the phone must do, and the rest Motorola did. Clearly if Apple was allowed design considerations on this phone, they got nixed in a very intense way. The phone itself is no other than an existing motorola design with iTunes shoehorned in.
Perhaps this is some stop-gap device to satiate the critics until a built-for-iTunes phone can be built.
I doubt it though.
The real deal will be Apple's take on the Treo devices that will mend the PDA, phone, and of course support multimedia too, all with Apple's great Ink Well technology. But that's another post.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
I see the ROKR as proof that Apple has become much more adept at business strategy than it was back in the 1990s. People have been screaming for a hybrid phone/iPod for some time now, and Apple has given them what they want. They haven't placed a huge bet on it, and they're letting Motorola do the heavy lifting (which is a long time coming). I say smart move Apple.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
So what if the first generation sucks? They'll improve it for the next version of the firmware or when they make the next version of the phone. They'll say "OK, here's why consumers didn't like it, and here's what we can do about it."
www.linuxpenguin.net
A critique from someone who hasn't actually seen the product in person! Isn't that amazing?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This was SJ's biggest non-event in history and the first indication that transitioning Apple from bootstrapping an Industry to stewardship over a monopoly isn't scaling well.
Nano will not be the revolutionary form factor SJ wants it to be. Once novelty wears thin. People will want bigger than a credit card for their tune player.
SJ is back to pedalling Kool-aide, again.
Well, for me they aren't. I had a Nokia 3650, and regardless of form-factor oddness the interface was just dubious. Very slow, took ages and many button-presses to just get it to understand I wanted to send a text. Something like Phone book->Pick name->confirm number->create message->SMS message (as opposed to picture or what have you. Or there was another way starting from Create Message that required just as many button presses before you started typing.
I switched to the Motorola V3 to give something else a try - specifically to get away from the Nokia interfaces. The Motorola interface has proven better in some areas, the same in others. Not worse in any, except the god-awful default ringtone.
It's still not great however. Years ago, I had an Ericsson T38, and that had a great interface. Purely text-based, to create a message was just one option at the top level - 'New Message'. If you regularly sent to one person (which I did - my then-girlfriend-now-wife), you could specify person as being the default recipient. So creating an SMS consisted of three button presses - cursor down, select 'New Message', hit select to confirm default recipient and then type. And the response was instance - none of the large lag that seems increasingly common with graphically flash phones.
There's not one of the new phones I've found that's anywhere near as quick as that. I like the V3 as a phone for its size, audio quality and size of keypad. I can't help feeling that in some of the basics however phone interfaces going backwards fast.
Cheers,
Ian
Isn't this the first non-PDA cell phone, candy bar form factor, that has a fully-featured MP3 interface?
Granted, it seems like they could have done a lot better, but 512 MB and 100 songs is still pretty good, considering the competition.
I bought a Motorola e815 flip phone, with 40 MB built-in and a transflash adapter for another 256 MB. It plays MP3's, but has no jukebox interface. For me to play music on it, I have to select the songs one at a time. (There might be another way; I've only had it a month, but I haven't seen another way.)
I'm sure once the hackers get the ROKR, they'll break the 100 song limit.
I'd trade in my e815 in a heartbeat for this thing.
-- lol pwned
Cingular still makes boku money, just like they always have. And Motorola still makes whatever money they always have. So the phone isn't a failure at all. But it's nothing like the spectacular success that iPod was either. What do you expect from two huge companies who are trying to hang on to their revenue streams?
If you by a cell-phone with the iPod software in it, don't expect the iPod experience to rival that of a regular iPod.
However, what you can expect is some cross-functional benefits, such as downloading songs via the cell network and storing them into the iPod portion of the phone.
I thought the phone was interesting, but not interesting to me. I immediately noticed on the specs that it supported bluetooth specifically only for voice.
I can't tell you how many people I know can't get their laptops to sync to their bluetooth phones in the one way they want them to: to be able to connect to the net
Why can't they sell a phone specifically for this market? All it would do is make phone calls, and wirelessly connect your laptop to some dialup speed connection. No bloody video camera, no lame on phone email thing, no songs, no extra ring tones... just easy net capability. I guess that would just be too obvious, and never sell well in Japan.
The Admin and the Engineer
When you purchase the licence (yes, you only ever purchase a licence) to music it comes with certain restrictions. One of the standard restrictions is over public playing. You are not granted the right to play the music in public places. I suspect that one of the main reasons that the iPhone doesn't let you use itms songs as ringtones is it is against the licence. In many ways drm doesn't reduce your rights, it just enforces the limitations more carefully.
I like the 2nd argument, "Enumerating Badness"
I remember one think I learned from my 500 level network security class was something very basic, don't let users execute unapproved binaries.
Even in Windows as far back as NT you could use the NTConfig.pol to create a list of approved binaries that the user could execute. In more modern XP/2003 system, you can use Group Policies, but the principal is the same.
Sure word.exe could get replaced by a malicious program, but the only way for that to happen is for the user to have rights to replace word.exe and that shouldn't happen with the proper domain setup and systems that are kept up to date with patches.
Home systems are harder. It would be nice if we could adopt the same model. At home I use nothing by Linux systems and use a regular user account daily, only going to root when I need to. On corporate systems you can also take the extra step to limit the regular users abilities to compile and execute their own binaries.
With XP Home edition, we see the complete suspension of NTFS permissions as well as a host of other things that would save a lot of users a lot of trouble. If people used XP Pro as a regular user and only ran programs as administrator when necessary (and that involves the discretion of not installing tons of free programs that come loaded with spyware), we'd have a lot less security problems on home system.
Windows Vista is supposed to add in a lot of stuff that defaults to this functionality which should help, however what's really needed is more education for home users, in simply straightforward means, to help prevent a lot of these problems.
Hm. I don't know if I trust Apple to design a cell phone all by themselves. It might only have one button.
Hey, wait. They could use their IPod's scroll wheel like a rotary phone. You'd have the world's first touch-sensitive _rotary_ cell phone! That might be cool. It'd be like something out of Back to the Future IV: Marty Screws Up the Future Again.
(Cue the smarm with a link to some clever hacker's rotary cell phone. Come on, I know you're out there, waiting to make me look stupid. This is Slashdot, after all.)
Apple doesn't want the ROKR to compete with their iPod line!
Hence, the 100 song limit, the lack of a click wheel, etc.
I'm sure Apple gets some sort of licensing fee for the ROKR, but I bet they get significantly more profit off of their own iPods.
The fully-featured iPod phone isn't going to roll off the assembly line until some other MP3 phones hit the market. I have no doubt that the completed next-generation phones are already occupying a shelf somewhere in Motorola's labs.
Apple partnered with Motorola not because they think Motorola can design a better phone or a better interface, but actually to insulate themselves from a horrible failure, should that happen.
Apple will probably make its own cellphones eventually, but right now the conservative decision (and the correct decision) would be to go with someone who is already in the phone business, see how the product does, see what its flaws are, then improve with its own Shiny Apple iPodPhone.
Did it really say that Apple is entrenched with its iPod line and won't make changes near the end? In an article about a phone that was colaunched with the iPod nano that completely replaced the top selling iPod mini line?
ROKR will not be a 'hit', but there are enough people out there who will be tempted by the device. It'll make its money back, and hopefully Motorola will let Apple design the next phone.
I think alot of people are going to reach for this product simply because the two devices are bundled together. I personally carry a pager, cell phone (razr), ipod (4th gen 40g), headphones, keys, wallet, badge(s) and all kinds of crazy other things in my pockets and would crap a brick if I could get rid of some of the extras, but absolutely not at the cost of features . I don't want a smaller drive, less battery life, and host of other trade-offs. Also, the writer is correct, motorola still can't design a decent interface. It also isn't a clam-shell design and *everyone* knows that the candy-bar designs suck. In short, suck it, rockr.
Seeing as how it had more features and only a slightly higher price tag, this should fail, too. ...Although, applying logic to the actions of the masses rarely works. *stares at Windows*
This failure is arguably the most important man on earth.
I think it's too early to tell whether the phone is a failure or not. Personally, I have to see it in person to judge it. I can't go on anecdotes. The idea is good and the idea is feasible....however I think apple just needs to do one thing.....make a version of iTunes for Pocket PC. Pocket PC's are pretty good at playing music and while the battery life sucks, a Pocket PC is a good backup for when the iPod or iRiver is dead or when you forget to take it out of the dock/USB hub. PPC phones can do all of what Apple wants and Apple would have way more control of things. So I think Apple can get this right. I mean the first iPod was called lame by our CmdrTaco. I bet he has a third gen one or better now....I have a shuffle....and love it. Sure, there's iRivers and Creative Zen Nano's that are better then my shuffle at the same capacity, however my shuffle does one thing well....play music. That's it. This is why I got it.
Gorkman
The phone uses TransFlash. Yet another flash memory format. At this time, 512MB is the largest denomination of T-Flash. Assumingly, there will be a 1GB chip sooner or later but there were reports that the phone itself limited the number of songs in the library to 100 REGARDLESS of free space available. At least, that's what the report was on the "preview" version of the phone given to some reviewers.
I haven't seen a report one way or another if the final version of phone does this.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Motorolla and Apple are just second raters.
It's strange to see Apple a followuper instead of a leader.
Yes he was saying that Bush actually is a monkey, not that he's merely equivalent.
I think the original poster was more correct.
And know you know everything about every programming language out there? I can think of at least two languages where = is just that, test from equality
Has this even been fore sale yet? It just debuted less than a week ago!
Secondly, this isn't an iPod phone. This isn't even an apple phone! This is a Motorola phone with itunes software for mobile phones on it.
People will probably still buy this, and other phones will come out with itunes on it.
I think its funny how fast everyone is like hurr hurr no scroll wheel, too small space, it doesn't meet my nerd needs so it is a failure.
you can't say it's a failure until you find out how the sales figures are. surely cingular will heavily advertise it, and just the fact that it has itunes will mean it will be somewhat popular.
what other phone do you know of with built in stereo speakers? the phone is alone in a class, it has itunes, and it's a pretty good value, i don't see how it will be a "failure"
don't forget it takes pictures, videos, has bluetooth, and onboard flash memory for music. it has plenty of features for a decent price and to me it looks like a hot item.
some of you were expecting some kind of amazing do all ipod device with 4GB of memory, or something, and that's not going to happen (yet) with a phone especially because apple didn't even make this device, motorola did.
It's clear that the designer of the Apple products, Jonathon Ive, had absolutely *nothing* to do with the 'Rokr', right down to the inept name. What we see is a dog's breakfast of engineering requirements, packaged together in button filled generic plastic box. I can't tell this from any other cell phone, who cares about the music function. Whoever did this clearly doesn't 'get' it, preferring instead to make it 'feature filled' instead of *useable*--and yes, there's a huge difference. That's why Dell's mp3's have failed, why Sony and every other Asian competitor failed, by letting engineers instead of designers (who know something about UI) design useful objects. Dell's mindset is that more buttons = higher technology (=higher prices). Wrong wrong wrong. Hint--it's *not* about throwing everything in, but about what to throw out.
The most noteworthy result out of this absolute design failure is that Apple instead of Motorola may get to design the next version. Nothing out of Motorola, and that includes the much lauded Razor, comes close to the elegance of Apple's designs. In distinction, as if to make a point, the iPod nano was clearly the thing everyone was watching that day, even though the phone was supposed to be the star of the show.
I fear unfortunately that this falls on deaf ears, as tech companies prefer to add more crap on the outside (Alienware) and inside (Windows, and Linux too), without spending any time in thinking about real functionality, i.e. less extraneous crap = more useability.
Let's face it, it's not an Apple product, it's a Motorola. Sure, it's a cellphone with iTunes support, but that's where the connection ends. Apple merely supplies the media player part, much like my POS Palm PDA has a built-in Real Player. So, if this thing fails it's Motorola's product, they pick up the tab and get to lick their wounds afterwards.
Hell, if Sony's Clie Windows CE-based PDAs fail it's not Bill Gate's flop now, is it?
Your knowledge of copyright law is grossly wrong. The copyright statute itself (you don't need to find court cases or federal regulations) sets out exceptions to the public performance monopolies, and a cellphone ringtone would fall squarely within it. One of the exceptions (there are several -- for church worship, etc.) is that a stereo no more powerful than a typical home stereo is acceptable, and we'd all agree that describes a cell phone speaker. A problem you didn't mention is that in documentary filmmaking, ringtones now need to be "cleared" while previously a telephone ringing did not. The reason isn't what you expect. It's not that documentary filmmakers are worried about losing a lawsuit and paying huge damages, it's that the film distributors won't touch a film if their lawyers see any potential liability. A documentary filmmaker (except for a few like Michael Moore) is likely to be flat broke and not be worth suing, but the distributors have deep, deep pockets and they don't want any liability.
The filmmaking problem comes not from the public performance right of a cell phone, but making a derivative work (the movie) and showing that in theaters (the public performance). The issue of whether the standard copyright defenses (fair use, implied license, first sale, etc.) apply simply doesn't come up.
With great power comes great fan noise.
They cost so much because phone companies and the record industry are greedy, greedy bastards. And other than that, unless you are using iTMS songs as ringtones, it's really not Apple's responsibility if your tones are properly licensed or not.
Honestly, I have yet to figure out how this whole Music/Phone convergence is supposed to work.
Consider cameras as an example. Pictures are things we share with others and that fits in with a phone, which is a device for communicating. Needless to say, the RIAA would prefer that we didn't share music, so there goes the whole music sharing part.
So essentially, what has happened is that you've attached an MP3 player to the phone. Why? So you don't have to carry two devices around. Wonderful, I suppose. But when you have things like the iPod shuffle and iPod nano, what's the big deal of carrying two devices? It's not like you're "weighed down" carrying a 1.5 ounce (42 gram) device.
I suppose you can make the argument that you're getting a deal--you're spending $250 for a phone, a crappy 640x480 digital camera, a pocket organizer, and an iPod shuffle. Figure that all of those together would probably run you about $400. I suppose that might be nice, but I'm going to end up gradually ignoring one or more of those features. I'll want a better camera or a music player that holds more songs. So I might buy one of these "converged" devices once--but I'll get smarter when I realize how bad all of the pieces really are. The next phone I buy probably won't have all that stuff attached--or, if it does, it will be because the price came down so dramatically that it was a wash.
Heck, I already hear adults saying all of this is stuff--"I just want a phone." While I don't hear this as much from kids, I'd also point out that kids aren't buying the phone--Mom & Dad are--and when Mom & Dad are pulling out their wallet, you try to get the most out of them that you can. Like the above "deal", it's easier to get Mom & Dad to spring for a cell phone with all that stuff than it is to get Mom & Dad to buy you a phone, PDA, camera, and iPod.
That's not a fault it's a mousephone!
What everyone fails to remember is that the ROKR is a Motorola product. The only collaboration that Apple did was in creating a version of iTunes to run on the device. Collaboration in general doesn't work. With one company, the protectionism is more limited. In a collaboration, such as this, Motorola, Cingular & Apple all had to make comprimises on the design to fit their goals. Apple didn't want to cannibalize their own products, thus the 100 song limit. Motorola didn't want to spend money on design, which is why it's a rehash of older products, especially the software. Cingular wanted exclusive rights to the device, thus limiting the ability of people to use the device on other networks.
It'd be great if Apple produced their own phone, with their renowned design ability, but given the dynamics of the cell phone industry, particularly in the US, where carriers have manufacturers cripple phones to create an artificial requirement to use their more expensive network features, I doubt it's a market Apple would want to be in.
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Apple is just milking it like they did with HP. It's going to fail, Apple will make some money, and their brand nonetheless won't get tarnished.
Argh. For the the last ten years companies have been been pushing convergence gadgets on the public and yet they consistently fail. For some reason they seem to think having a gadget that acts as a PDA, cell phone, audio player, remote control, and camera would be the ULTIMATE device, but they fail to realize how wrong they are:
1. Convergence makes things more complicated. By having your device try to do everything you have to add more menus, buttons, etc... which degrades from the usability of the device.
2. Convergence costs more. People don't want to pay for a dozen other features when all they really care is if they their cell phone can call people.
3. You're putting all your eggs in one basket. When the device breaks you lose everything.
Of course Apple is just doing this to milk some more money off their iPod empire but the PHB's who embrace this stuff need to get a clue.
I'm very disappointed in the phone. I'm astonished Apple didn't use the Moto 680 as the hardware base for the phone. It is a decent phone, a decent music player AND a decent pocket video device. A review is at http://www.howardchui.com/modules.php?name=Section s&op=viewarticle&artid=186.
The 680 runs a fast Intel CPU, is Linux based, has stereo speakers, stereo Bluetooth, FM radio, GSM phone, SMS, MMS, EMail, WAP, Opera, Samba, telnet, Java, 3D graphics, camera that records video, MPEG4, 320x240 screen that plays video in landscape mode, mini USB, 2GB memory, decent battery, smaller than the SE P910, simple iPod-ian sort of controls, headphone jack on top, already out in other countries, well under $400 without subsidy, and has a cute multicolor light up logo.
The nice thing for Apple (and us geeks) is the phone is modular, a great blank slate for putting in your own software. Apple could just drop an iTunes player in there, or strip it to the kernel and redo the whole OS, or just the UI, or anything else. You can even start slow and push firmware updates to it as you write new stuff.
This is the phone I expected. A good start with tested hardware, but able to be fully customized. I suppose it could still happen.
Mike from www.myallo.com/blog
I've been doing this for almost a year.
;-)
This phone is crippled in it's OBX implementation, but it works fine as a BT modem, and for once, Verizon has made something pretty consumer friendly.
Maybe it was a mistake
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Convergence sounds so logical when you put it into a business plan. It sounds so great when you ask people if it's what they want. "Do you want one device that cooks your meals, washes the dishes AND entertains you while you eat?" Sure, they say. In the real world, though, convergence devices almost never work in the long run.
I used to believe the convergence myth just as much as the next guy, but a marketing guru by the name of Al Ries convinced me otherwise. If you'd like to see his take on why convergence isn't going to happen, go to this page and click on, "The Convergence Bubble."
http://www.ries.com/Articles/index.cfm?Page=adage
Apple has done a lot of interesting moves, but none of them have been unquestionable financially, and that's what makes a daring move in the eyes of a company. Call me a heretic if you will, but I think this is another example of Apple not being brave enough. If they were brave, they would allow more than 100 songs, they would allow purchases from the phone, and they would allow the songs to be ringtones, exactly as the article said.
Of course, because it doesn't run Linux!
You don't even need to see the phone which is bad enough. ROKR? What the hell is that? Is it supposed to be "Rocker" as in sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I'm a ROKR! Or maby rocker as in to rock to and fro? And what's with the CAPS? I'm not clever enough to come up with what acronym that might stand for.
If a wireless iPod is what you want I would put my money on a bluetooth adapter for the iPod that would connect to the cellphone that you already have before I would invest in this thing.
even it very gut-reaction type experiments. For example, if I drop a cup of hot coffee, and you are standing next to me, you are more likely to catch it if you think the cup is valuable. No time to think, but your economic reasoning is spot on. Even rats have been shown to obey the laws of supply and demand. Yes, there are demonstrations of irrationable behavior but they tend to be minor and exist in rather unusual circumstances - not in long-term strategic thinking of groups of professional business planners.
Ultimately, you are simply trying to claim that because the model isn't perfect (what model is?), that you can ignore the results if they contradict your beliefs. Of course, those who deny global warming use the same logic. Heck, you could even deny the laws of gravity.
If you have a specific theoretical model as to why Apple and Motorola executives would not be acting in their own long-term interests in such a scenario, we could have an interesting dicussion. However, simply pointing out "the model ain't perfect" is meaningless unless you have a suggestion to why its imperfections matter in this circumstance.
No clickwheel. Less vowels than a city in Slovenia. Lame. ed
How can a reply be a first post? The trolls are getting even more stupid.
ipod: great product developed without a partner industry. made its mark through novel technology: a new hard drive form factor that apple held virtually exclusive access to for an extended period. well-built overall system, too.
ITMS: good product developed in partnership with the music industry. DRM withholds value from the consumer, though, in order to avoid creating a product that takes control out of their hands.
ROKR: uninteresting product developed in partnership with the music industry (ITMS integration) and the cell phone industry. Both are interested in protecting their existing business. The providers don't want to undercut their ringtone business, nor attract high-value subscribers down to pricing that'll be used to market this to the yuppie demographic.
As more subscription industries get their fingers in a product, it gets worse and worse. The article is right in that the ROKR sucks because of a desire to protect revenue streams. But not by Apple: who cares if they sell ipods or ipod phones? They'll price it accordingly and make a bundle. It's the businesses that rely on a subscription model that have an interest in avoiding innovation. They're the ones who've neutered ROKR.
I sent this e-mail to the author of the article. I think he missed the point.
John,
I think you are missing a few of the points of the phone. First off this is
not a phone built by Apple. This is a phone built by Motorola with some
software by Apple thrown in. This is not an iPod. This device is not as
cool as an iPod and a such was named otherwise. This was not to dilute the
iPod brand. However this is an expansion of the iTunes brand.
Previously you were only able to play FairPlay songs on either iTunes or an
iPod. This is the next major expansion of the iTunes brand. The first
major expansion was expanding iTunes to Windows. The second major expansion
was to build the online store. There were several evolutionary expansions
with more international stores but these were of lesser importance. The
ROKR is the expansion of iTunes and FairPlay to other devices. This is a
big deal for Apple to licensing out it's technology at all, even if it is a
partner. This is also a big deal for Motorola to be working with Apple
again after their previous licensing debacle.
At some point probably next year a new much bigger expansion of the iTunes
phone will probably happen, possibly to other device manufacturers that may
blow your mind.
On your other points. Do you really think that Cell phone users want to
download music at today's data rates for cellular networks. Unless you feel
like dropping $99/month for unlimited download access and whatever else the
cell phone companies would like per song to buy music. So let's look at the
breakdown of the money from the purchase of a song on iTunes. I think I
read that the labels get $0.71 per song leaving Apple with about $0.28 per
song. So now Cingular wants their share for using their network to get the
music. Over the internet you are already paying your share for your access
to the internet. You will end up paying to download music as well as paying
for your music. Whether it is your $20-40/month for broadband (you get the
other benefits of the internet as well) or the $1/song for Cingular to
download the track. Now let's add another $1 so each song and cost twice as
much. Let's see, do you work for Napster. Are you trying to help the
labels distribute the wealth to a number of online retailers that are not
being supported by the consumer. Think about how long it will take to
download that song at approximately the 90kbps that is at the upper edge of
the Cingular data networks' speed. On to your USB point, let's come back to
reality USB2 while more limited than firewire is certainly faster than any
Cellular network EDGE or otherwise.
Look at this device as it is meant to be. A first generation iTunes phone.
Their will be more. Their will be a lot of focus group research. And they
will figure things out. Look at this move as it is meant to be. Other
manufactures devices able to play FairPlay songs. Long for iTunes
convergence on other devices. Maybe not this year, but if it pulls in a 33%
margin Apple will sell it.
I personally am glad that Apple had the cajones to stand up to Cingular and
the other cellular networks and recognize that in the same way people don't
want to rent music, people also don't want to pay a retailer, wholesaler,
distributor, and producer of the music as well. Let's cut out all of the
middle-men.
Overall I agreed with much of your article, but I can't help but think you
missed the big picture.
i have limited rotational mobility in my right thumb (and poor coordination on my left), and find it very difficult to select features without "overshooting" via the ipod wheel. i wish they had a version with two arrow keys, so that i could navigate without looking at it. that's why i like the idea of arrow keys on the phone.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Beaucoup.
A Boku is a kind of drum shaped like a truncated cone and meant to be played with bare hands.
I had a chance to play with the ROKR at a Cingular store in Tampa, FL, over the weekend, and the music feature, even with "surround stereo," was not enough to want to switch from my Nokia 6620 (which still has an old AT&T Wireless plan and unlimited mMode). It's a nice phone overall, well-designed, sounds good, but I've never liked Motorola's GUI on any of their phones (except for the MPx200 that I had for a while, but then that was Windows SmartPhone, and signal quality was awful). Nokia still has the market on intelligent UI design with SymbianOS.
As for me, I can get pretty much the same functionality with a 512 MB MMC card, OggPlay for SymbianOS, and a couple of scripts to transfer a playlist to my phone and rename them from *.m4a to *.mp4 so OggPlay can find them. Oh, and a stereo headset that sounds just as good as an iPod's. For the extra time it takes I get back a very nice UI.
Steven Buehler | swbuehler@gmail.com
Convergence devices are, in the words of (I believe) Peter Rojas, a single concentrated point of failure. Right now, if my MP3 player breaks, I send it off to get repaired, and I'm deprived of the use of my MP3 player for a while.
When my convergence MP3 player/cell phone/camera/video recorder/Tivo/PDA breaks, I lose pretty much everything.
Also, with a convergence device, if want to upgrade one part, I have to upgrade/change everything. The new device might have a better MP3 player, but a worse PDA OS. With separate devices, you just upgrade the functions you want.
It looks exactly like the e398 i have had for 6 months. The only difference appears to be an itunes button and an itunes application.
The only groundbreaking idea about this product is that motorola and apple have the audacity to rebadge an old product and sell it.
Most phones out there now that have mp3 player capability have the same or similar limits on how much music you can store. Many with proprietary services that require you to buy music to put on the phone and some others that require expensive cables to add music.
Apple will not canabalize thier ipod's with a phone that rivals their products. You have to remember they're getting royalties not commission on sales. They may make a few bucks per phone.
Okay 3 things.
considering point 1 the rokr is actually a good deal since it's with a good service, not proprietary past itunes bought music and has a goo dinterface.
The article is worth reading and, as you've indicated, makes solid points. My favourite was that you couldn't use the MP3s on the phone as your ringtone because these companies are all about avoiding undermining their existing profits -- hard to blame them, but it restricts their products and services.
Apple may have been better partnering with someone who wasn't scared of compromising their ringtone income so that people could buy a tune for 99c and use it as their tone.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
The article is right in its premise that the ROKR is crippled because a real iPhone threatens existing core business. But not Apple's: they don't make that much money from iTunes (maybe 4% of revenue, probably much less). No, the threatened companies are, you guessed it, the phone companies and the record labels. Every Slashdotter can guess how the labels are threatened, by every possible business model that isn't limited to conning content producers into giving away most of the value in their products, and reselling it on easily-controllable plastic discs. But the phone companies are the real problem here, as the article points out when it describes how a $1 Coldplay download costs $25 as ringtones.
Those ringtones are the most profitable (percentage yield) product the telcos sell. They didn't even really have any right to get any real take from them, but they did get their hands on the first generation of deals, when people were used to having a single ringtone for their whole lives, and didn't think hard about spending $1-3 to get it. Even if they already owned the song from which the ringtone is sampled, they could see it as a convenience fee for the sampling/installation process that put the sample into their ringer. The companies that originally offered the service fought the copyright holders, the record labels, for the chance to offer that service on existing content. And telcos backed the upstarts, in return for getting to do the charging. Now they make most of that money.
Back in the Spring, when Motorola was getting hassled by developers to whom it had announced availability of this ROKR phone, one of their VPs blurted out at a conference that the telcos were blocking it. Verizon, he said, was addicted to getting $3 every time one of their customers got a music sample as a ringtone. Even though Verizon wouldn't be in the loop on a song downloaded from iTMS to one's PC, then synced with a ROKR that just happened to be sold to its user by Verizon, Verizon still wanted to get a cut every time one of their customers used a device that Verizon had sold them to get a song.
Apple, Motorola and Verizon/Sprint/Whoever spent 6 months negotiating, and finally the ROKR is out. I believe that the real deal has been cut behind the scenes, to cut Verizon in on the real iPhone. That phone will let the iPod half actually download songs over the phone half's Internet (radio) connection. Which will allow Verizon to justify getting a cut of the revenue. Maybe Apple got Verizon to fight with the labels over who controls delivery of those copyrighted songs. Maybe it somehow leverages whatever license Verizon gets from the labels to do ringtones. Maybe it's got some kind of DRM that expires old songs - like the current ROKR's 100 song limit, which will discard many songs, many of which will be repurchased.
I expect this is all leading towards Verizon charging users every time we listen to a song, regardless of how it's delivered, or what we "bought". The simplicity of packaging creates a black box, and most consumers (especially in this exploding market of less sophisticated users) won't even realize that there's little justification for charging them so often for the same thing "under the hood".
The ROKR is the thin edge of the wedge. It's just songs now. Within 2 years it will be videos, then all multimedia content. It will all be funneled through these "phones", not necessarily because that's better for consumers, but because another little chunk of plastic that can be controlled by a "copyright controller" has finally been found to replace LPs, 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs/DVDs. If we thought getting screwed by record companies sucked, we'll be reminiscing about "the good old days" once the telcos are the new boss.
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make install -not war
I really missed Al when he was having his surgery, I'm glad he's BACK (ha ha). I also really like the "On The Road" series on the Food Network, it amuses me a great deal.
No sooner do I get over one, then you put a better one right next to me. Bastards.
For the last time, Apple designed the iTunes client but not the phone itself. Apple's press release was careful to say that it had created an iTunes client "for mobile phones," not just this one. The hope is that Motorola or someone else will do it better next time. This is not an Apple phone. This is not an "iPod phone." This is a Motorola product, running new mobile phone software from Apple. Period.
On my new Cingular phone, I tried out the web surfing just to see what it was like.
They built in a gopher-like menu system to help you navigate the internet.
Each menu has about 5 items to choose from, each item is ASCII text with no graphics. Each menu is apx 18kb.
I'll say that again just in case you blanked out...
Simple ASCII Menu of 5 items -> 18,000 bytes transfered.
They charge by the kb, so they pack shit into the stream.
to wrong decisions. But the market is even good at dealing with the minimization of that issue. For example, the people making these decisions were selected to do so precisely because they have huge amounts of information about the subject, particularly compared to the average /. type. Maybe they will be wrong, but they are on the whole less likely to be wrong than you or I. Personal tastes influence decisions, and the best way to minimize this is to have group input, which I expect is going on in this case. A corporation who left major decisions to the whims of one person would be out of business pretty quickly.
However, this is tangential to my original point, which is that when a company possesses useful technology, it is to its economic benefit to release it, not "hide" it to protect its other sales. If the new product is truly better, they will make more money from selling the new product than they will lose from declining sales of the previous product.
I wasnt trying to be like a fanboy for Apple (I am), just saying, I dont think you should call it being "scared", dont bring up ammunition (=remember the Nomad?) if you also dont want to get into a flamewar. Im sure you can think of many wise gambles Apple has taken, and some risky ones, think about introducing the floppy to mainstream (I do know the history about it , twiggy drives etc), then removing the drive once it got too small for everyday usage, was that not risky financially? Would the consumer want to use floppy disks at this time? You bet! But Im glad that someone had the COURAGE to remove that old drive, it prompted us onto USB flash drives...OH WAIT! Apple also "introduced" USB! How could we forget!? My posts DO have a point, that being, that cowardice had nothing to do with the decision to restrict the amount of music files. I blame Motorola (Being a Apple Fanboy, strange considering that Im buying a RAZR), other posts have pointed it out that this is a E390 with iTunes. Just wait till better Motorola/"Apple" phones come out...they have been confirmed...
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The previous poster said that he likes having a Treo 650 smartphone because in one gadget you can use it as a phone and as a PDA with email, an organizer, messaging with web access and even keep some pictures of the kids. No too mention Bluetooth. Its also a digital camera that captures video, with an ok color screen and oh yeah, its an mp3 player too.
One device, small enough to fit in your pocket.
I have one and I like it. Im not married to it and one day I will get something else which will be better but never again will I have multi-device toolbelts like batman.
Your answer is....get an other device.
Atta boy,....who cares what anyone says, the fanboy answer is buy an Ipod!
Btw, what is this about people insisting on carrying their whole collection with them. How many people have that much free time to listen to mp3 players apart from students or those who take public transportation. I lived with the orginal cassette walkmans when I was growing up with public transit but now with an mp3 player in the car, one in the home system and the computer and laptop most people dont have the time for or need to carry 2 millions songs. What are you,...squirrels?
I emailed my Mac zealot friends to ask them how many songs they listen a week. With a 1Gb card in the Treo, I too get like earlier poster about 200 songs which is about 13 some hours of music. Only one out of a dozen of the Mac'ers listent to more and she's on those cardio machines 1.5hours a night at the gym and she rollerblades in the park.
Apple didnt even try to match the versality pf the Treo probably hoping that buyers wouldnt be even aware of other products or even that Palm is alive with all the mistakes theyve made.
And that my friends, is why the iPod is doomed.
Like it or not, handheld technology is converging. People want diaries, address books, phones and music but don't want pockets full of gadgets. Hell, half the cell phones you can buy in NZ now do PDA functions and music.
Any tech company can knock off an ogg player or PDA, but to design a cell phone you need an established telecomm network. This puts cell phone companies well above pda and ogg player manufacturers in the race for creating a multi-purpose handheld.
The frequent argument against convergence is that you can't upgrade/replace separate components without replacing the entire unit, but with phone/pda/players now under $150 there's not much argument there. When you get tired of your old unit, buy the next model up, pop in your 2GB SD card and you're away.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/products/wireles s/whatiswap.cfm#cost
The following call charges apply for WAP GSM & CDMA Mobile calls*:
16.5 cents per 30 seconds for calls made in peak times.
8.25 cents per 30 seconds for calls made in off-peak times.+
All WAP calls will incur a 22 cent call connection fee.
This is what we get charged for GPRS, either PAYG or Subscription, it's outlandish, forget downloading a song! that'll cost you around $40 AU: http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/networks/info/gpr s.htm
There is no way in hell I will ever use gprs other than dire emergencies (so far, that's consisted of a scrabble argument and dictionary.com, once) I am never going to use GPRS until Telstra come to their senses.
I haven't looked into that iMode thing yet, which looks like yet ANOTHER subscription service, but knowing telstra, it will be overpriced and generally useless.
It's the Apple Newton all over again. Pioneers in new (converged) technologies don't typically succeed until there's a killer app. It seems like in this case, the app itself has been killed. But the promise here is that some day in the future we'll have converged connectivity in our devices. Envision a bluetooth cell phone that can communicate with your car stereo and play your music through your phone. That's just a small example of an application, but this is where it needs to go.
Mobile broadband on Three is fast and cheap, charged by data only and not time or connection. The most you can pay is 0.4c/KB - even cheaper if you choose a Capped Plan.
I use them and think it's great.
Motorola has never made any "cool" gadgets, even the RAZR is simply the same old awful UI packaged in a slim device, not even particularly well made. I doubt Apple approached Motorola over this, I suspect it was the other way around and that Motorola are attempting to learn something from Apple about design and usability. The nano certainly upstaged the ROKR, nearly everyone I know that does not follow this is closely as myself has not heard of the rokr yet, but are all over the nano. Expect apple to not really care much about this.
go to this page and click on, "The Convergence Bubble."
http://www.ries.com/Articles/index.cfm?Page=adage
This brings up a pop-up window that is set at 120-point width, in huge text. I am not going to read through a long article in a huge font in a little bitty pop-up window 120 pixels wide. I am not going to bother to change my settings to fix this, much less edit the raw HTML. Ain't that important to read this guy, whatever he has to say, if he can't present his content in a palatable form. Whatever else this guy has going for him, a user interace guru he is not.
On my browser, I grab the lower right corner and drag the window to whatever size I want. Maybe your browser doesn't have this advanced feature? :-)
I think Nokia's are close to the best. The thing I love about them is also what I hate. They have wonderful one hand thumb navigation. Even with 50 or 60 contacts, I can easily and quickly scroll through the list one handed. Usually while driving. It's easy to use but I think it almost encourages using it while doing other things, usually driving.
Ericsons are just shit.
Samsungs are okay, a little clumsy and the buttons are too sensitive.
Motorolas are okay but pricy, I'd rank them a close second to Nokia.
LG has the motorola like clam case and seems to make a robust product, I think they are medium.
Danger phones are cool but big and clunky and they have no battery life, not like my trusty nokia. Phone use is okay the other features work but it's freaking slow, while I like the concept of a mobile web brower it's painfully slow at times.
The mixed breed palmpc and palmpilot phones are pretty lame, cool geek chic but lame. I really wanted palm to integrate with a phone too. Palmpilots are big and phones are small though.
Like I said, I think Nokia pretty much owns the interface here but they are fucking dangerous and it's still pretty weak; you'd never use the things for anything other than a phone, I know of nobody that's put time and effort in to the calendars and crap they have on there becuase the only thing they do well is scroll through a list of contacts and dial them up with one hand.. I do like the sidekick but since I really use it as a phone, I'd rather have a smaller one with a longer battery. Maybe, apple will start to fix it, if they make a phone 1/4 as good as the iPod is. I'll drop everything else and buy it in a second. It's a wish.
Apple! Please don't put iPod in to a phone! Put phone in to iPod, please!
For what it's worth (and I'm not saying it's much) here's what I think will happen:
Apple will eventually come out with an iPod that integrates a cell phone chip set. I don't mean a cell phone that also functions as an iPod, I mean the vice versa. Gone will be the speaker and mouthpiece, an archaic throwback to the cell phone's ancestral roots as a telephone. In its place will be in-ear buds (like the ones they sell now which also have an integrated mic (this is old technology). The form factor will be the same, it will just happen to make and take calls. There will be no number keys. (For the odd time when you actually dial something not already in the phone, you'll just have to scroll around to get the numbers using the scroll wheel.) Maybe they'll add a camera, if they can manage it without destroying the form.
I'd love to be listening to music on my walk to school, and then hear the music dim and the iPod's synthesized voice announce the caller's name. If I answer it by hitting the center button, the music is paused until the conversation is done. Otherwise the music keeps playing, maybe only to be briefly interupted for me to be told of a voicemail. The iPod is an audio device, and it wouldn't be a stretch to make it a two-way audio device without mucking with the nice design of it.
I know this sounds far fetched, but I'd buy such a device in a heartbeat. I'm sick of carrying around a bunch of devices, and between my cell phone and iPod, I wish the former would go away, not the latter.
so in other words, apple will reinvent the rotary phone. :P
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
Heh heh. I didn't think of that. :-)
I don't even see why the ROCKR is an interesting product.. there are numerous alternatives which are much better. Case in my point, my new phone, the Sony Ericsson K750i. Fantastic phone. Pro's - Bluetooth - MP3 - Radio - Fast interface - All the other features you could want in a phone - Large capacity (via the Sony Memory Stick Duo) - Can sync with Windows Media player etc - Can sync with Outlook - Memory stick appears as a mass storage device Con's - I need to use Sony Memory Stick, I prefer SD cards.. - need to use the damn proprietary connector for the headphones (although this has been "fixed" in the after-market arena just my thoughts, but there are definately better products than this new motorola thing.
I'd love to be able to carry only one device in my pockets. It would combine my cellphone with my iPod, AND be able to use the cell network to get things right from iTMS. Sadly, data transfer costs suck, the phone's interface sucks, and there are only 100 songs when it should be able to hold more. I think Apple would do well if they made their own phone based on the iPod. Partnering up with Motorola only gave us a crappy device that could be SO much better.
It's scary being a Flash and Flex developer on Slashdot. You guys are unnaturally rabid.
I guess since the W800i is a GSM phone without the 850MHz band, it isn't sold much in the US. But rest assured in GSM countries the ROKR looks like the piece of crap it is, a Motorola E398 with an extra button.
(Though personally I'm holding out for the Samsung D600 instead of the W800i.)
..does ROKr mean "Republic of Korea"?
You want to find out whats out there? ping and see what happens.
It applies to investment and r & d.
Theres probably little risk in this rokr gadget.
Just a ping. See what happens, see what reflects back.
Its a risk they can afford to take and the intel you get from watching carefuly what happens now is priceless.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
and so would you...
In any case, Whole Foods margins will be coming down, as a number of competitors are lining up to force them to compete. They will either race to the bottom or lose market share. This is not a bad thing.
Isn't the point behind this phone that it can play iTunes music store music, which others can't? If you really want a single device to carry around, than that would make it your only choice, wheel or no wheel.
I recently bought a Sony W800 phone. Wow, all I can say is great sound, easy enough to get my music on there, menus very similar to iPod and easy enough for a phone to play music, great camera with LED flash, and even the speaker does not sound that bad in worse case scenario no headphones. Also, the phone allows any MP3 to be a ringtone or message tone. Fast menus, not quite as intuitive as Nokia but much better than Motorola V3, etc.
Sony did a great job here. Not sure why there is no "buzz" around the phone. Only drawback is it looks like a toy phone with the silly white / metallic orange only case option. Great screen though. And memory stick can provide storage expansion, it came with 512K which is pretty good to start.
Another drawback, can't seem to transfer files over bluetooth, need to use USB cable for that.........
And yes, they do have "store" interface but have not figured out how to use it yet!
Real men don't need signitures!!!
What about the Motorola SLVR? It seems Motorola dis just as much to undermine the iPhone by not making it one of their fancy new RAZR generation phones...
Looks like the SLVR will have MP3 playback capabilities as well...but as somebody else mentioned, putting hte mp3 player and phone on the same battery might not be the brightest idea.
In any case, i just picked up a Nano and then felt a bit of buyer's remorse when i was looking at the SLVR earlier today--until I thought about the battery situation.
I wouldn't call it a failure, just a huge disappointment. It seems like it would be an awesome $100 phone, but at $250 with a two year contract, it's a colossal ripoff. That's $50 more than the Razr, which has like ten times the hotness factor of this thing. Why the hell would anybody pay this much for something that's really just software? It's your run-of-the-mill phone with software that's kind of like an iPod, and nothing more. And it's got an artificial 100 song limit, on top of that. Bah.
I need to get a new phone next month, and I would have gladly forked over $100. It's not even close to being worth $250, especially since it takes everything that's awesome about the iPod and throws it right out, while combining it with an otherwise unremarkable and overpriced phone.
I hate to sound like too much of an Apple fanboy, but this really reeks of Cingular and Motorola more than anything else.
Slashdot: 24 hours behind every other site or your money back!
like the screen lock working via the dial equivalent of an old safe! :-)
gets me an iTunes phone driver.
I suppose that it shows that Apple is investing _some_ resources into this thing.
Lousy update also started up QT on reboot. I had forgotten I was logged back into the admin account, so if Gretchen had any malware on her front page for her new video, the malware may have had a chance to execute.
One thing the Mac OS really needs is a way to turn off apps for admin accounts. (You can do that for non-amin accounts.) At least all the auto-execute gadgetry should be shut off by default when you click the "allow this account to admin the mac" button.
It is not an iPod.
It is not designed, marketed, or sold as such.
It is a Motorola phone, that has iTunes.
It's not even designed by Apple for christ-sake. Steve Jobs called it "pretty cool". No RDF to be seen in action.
The chief purpose of this phone is to be there before anyone else, license the iTunes software and patent rights (common, does no-one except me remember the iPod patent with an antenna on the side?), and establish Apple as jointly the first to market.
The real news was the iPod Nano. Now quit bitching. And remember, if it's successful, there will be more to come (but not for awhile).
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
I - POD !!!
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my confirmation word is :
reefer
upto 512 mb of expandable memory?? any nokia symbian could do better than that...i have my 6670 expanded to 2gb and have installed a quality audio manager s/w..which makes it a lot better than the rokr... why would apple make such a mistake? common steve..even my granny can do better than this...
I don't want to pay $5 bucks a song so they get 75 percent of the revenue. And agreed with previous posts, convergence might happen someday, but for myself, i don't want to be tied into once device to do everything, so when it breaks, i can't do anything.
http://www.thosebastards.com
Some idiots have no idea Viet Nam was colonised by the French. His 'boku' was almost as bad as some American friends I know who spell 'voila' as 'walla'
It seems to me that the biggest drawback for integrating your phone with ipod / camera is you can't use it on a plane. so sayonara to taking photos of mountain-tops out the window of your flight, while listening to funky beats.
I read somewhere that the head of motorola was bragging about the battery life of the ROKR, saying he used it to listen to music all through a 4 hour plane flight, and then made a 1 hour conference call and the battery was still almost full. This made me wonder if this phone is designed to be usable on flights, of if he's just an arsehole who enfdandered the lives of his co-travelers by using the phone illegally, or perhaps he's just a liar.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
it is a phone with a mini version of iTunes software tacked on, that does not make the phone an iPod or a Mac. in theory that iTunes app could be added to a lot of cell phones. if they wanted, Verizon could allow a version in their Get It Now thing (they won't).
at least one article has speculated that his may be Apple testing the waters before making their own handset. i have no idea how likely that is (i would not hold my breath). this is far from an iPod phone or iPhone or whatever.
Except it isn't at all pioneering. It's a phone that plays MP3's and you've been able to buy those for years.
From reading that article, can anyone explain why this phone is significantly different to other phones that you can upload mp3s to and listen to them on the phone? A friend of mine had one of those at least two years ago, iirc.
Is it simply that it plays protected iTMS AAC files? The 'iTunes' on your phone doesn't seem that radical - I'm guessing (from pictures I've seen) that it's simply the hierarchical genre/artist/album UI of iTunes and not much else. (I'm not sure how necessary that is for 100 songs, of course, but presumably that will change over time).
Am I missing something? Is it just the DRM'd AAC support?
Ok, my last post to you, how old are you buddy? you really have to learn to sell original for one thing. Steve Jobs only has one 'b'. I'm hardly an Apple fanatic, as I said before, if you actually read my messages, Im not using a mac. Im typing this well thought out literary masterpiece on a NEC Versa m400. I dont know what kind of backwater town you are in, I myself live in Invercargill New Zealand, a city with a population of 50 something thousand, and I know that many iMac G3s used USB flash disks, normally something around 16MB from (my)memory. "Apple is a small time player" Ok, from a non biased, un-kool-aid-ed perspective (just because we dont have your precious kool aid in my country), If you ever read the speeches of the great Steve Jobs, you would realise Apple basically controls the markets it DOES enter. Media usage has always been quite mac orientated, schools are starting to get into eMacs in a big way (throughout australasia at least), and now look at the iPod. Yes, I had to bring up the iPod. I guess thats because its my only example (NOTE: THIS IS SARCASIM). The Apple iPod controls roughly 70-80% of the market. The next closest player (i believe creative, dont quote me on this, or anything else really)is at something like 8% market share. Dont try and be a comedian, your poor spelling lets down the act. Im not criticizing you, or your ideas, please respect others free will. Maybe you would also notice I hardly ever participate in Slashdot, I find theres always some "American Idiot" who misreads comments, and slaps on a big fat stereotype. Have a great life! p.s. Im clicking submit with my ONE BUTTONED APPLE PRO MOUSE to prove how much of a fanatic I am!11!!!
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Heh, I love you guys, really I do. (NOT SARCASIM, ok ill stop YELLING) I used Caps for that comment, so to make it easier for my critics to understand, you realise that Capital letters look different from lower case? Dont repeat yourself, I understood the first time. Post aborted? How come its still there? Golly G, maybe the comment passed muster, or p'raps Im just an angry little nerd? (last comment on this, Some of us feel for the poor slashdot servers which have to store this garbage thats hurled at poor little me)
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[1] From the Apple website.
[2] Whether it supports higher capacity cards will be discovered when someone makes TransFlash cards bigger than 512MB.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
...then they might have produced something like this :
http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/5944.html
Here in the UK, people pay about £0-50 for a phone which is heavily subsidised to tie people in. They are also prepared to often pay £200+ for an iPod (almost no-one buys a full price phone because people just choose the alternative).
But, give people an iPod+phone, and they'll start comparing it not with another phone, but with an iPod.
How much would the extra electronics be to turn an iPod into a phone? My guess is not that much. If it could be done for £50 per unit, I think it could generate sales.
That's from the Observer, not the Guardian.
Because not everyone is a technophile geek that likes to carry around 29384729347 gadgets 24 hours a day.
I recently spend an extra $150 dollars on a phone *expressly because it had an mp3 player and a transflash slot, because I don't want ot be carrying around both a phone *and* an mp3 player when one can do the job of both.
Not everyone wants or needs te ability to carry their whole music collection around 24/7. And I have never hard a problem with battery life on this phone, I can talk for a few hours in a day and still listen to music for a few hours, no problem. And more importantly, I only need one bulky piece of plastic in my pocket (yes, an iPod is a bulky piece of plastic when you don't wear a jacket).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
News for nerds : nred is soon to be replaced by consumer.
Stuff that matters : I can't see why this "news" matters to anyone? This is an opinion more than a review, on a product with nothing special or interesting. And if you by a cell phone for it's music software, you got a serious problem my friend!
I mean come on ./ ... their enough bad review sites don't promote those or try to do the same. An what's the hype for this particular product? Apple brand makes you wet?
Oh boy... that's sad, but hey, that's my 2 cents.
I don't have a TV, a stereo and a DVD player in my bedroom. Instead, I have a well-equiped PC. Not only can I listen to my CDs and watch DVDs, I can also listen to MP3s, webcasts, DivX movies... I don't carry a MP3 player, a PDA, a camera and a radio with me everywhere I go. Instead, I have a SonyEricsson K750, which has all of those in one! (and BTW, I *can* sync contacts and calendar, *and* use MP3 as ringtones - this is really not up to the carriers like someone wrote here) Now, this is me, in Brazil, where gadgets cost a fortune, where we don't have Tivo, and where EDGE and EVDO are not more than embrionary. If you can't see convergence happening, it's probably because it's right under your nose.
I'm getting a Nokia N91 when it comes out. Has a 2MP camera, 4GB HD, Wifi, Bluetooth. The interface looks good enough, especially since I'm already used to the Series 60 platform on my 3650. I have installed mp3 software for that phone too, though I've been using it with only a 512 MMC. Definitely good enough for me, and looks much better than this apple thing.
Give someone a Treo 650 and Sprint's $10/month unlimited data plan, and watch 'em go nuts. Cell phones that have web browsing capabilities can be extremely powerful if coupled with a reasonable data plan.
/. while in the passenger seat of the car.
The Treo 650 is the purchase I've ever made. There's nothing quite like reading
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The question isn't whether a product is available. The question is whether adequate numbers of people WANT it.
Well, they came close. I already have an iPod, but carrying around one device instead of two has its appeal. I always use shuffle mode anyway, so the fact that it works like a shuffle is OK with me. The capacity is a bit small, but OK.
In the end, it came down to two factors:
1) I really prefer flip phones
2) I want to be able to use my library for ringtones. Let me tell you about ringtones. I basically don't care all that much about them. I certainly wouldn't pay for a ringtone. But it would be kind of cool if I could select a ringtone from any song in my library (or even if limited to the first few bars)--that would get me interested in ringtones. Unfortunately, it looks like you can't use a song for a ringtone. For me, that is a killer non-feature.
It's a motorolla phone. It's been bred to suck nuts.
Every motorolla phone i've had I've wanted to chuck out the window of my car at highway speed directly in front of a tractor-trailer.
Those phones bite. What'd you expect a quality product from the most inept designers ever? They can't even make a PHONE interface straightforward for chrissakes.
I'm just gonna glue a black nano to the back of my black RAZR. Coulda been great, but the ROKR is just, meh. My cingular contract is up in 3 months so i was able to apply my discount to a new phone on saturday. Good timing, didnt have to keep wondering about the iTunes phone. Saw right away how much it suked and stuck with my original choice, a black RAZR.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Picked one of them up from the Cingular store on Saturday and returned it Sunday afternoon. While it's a nice concept, the execution left this Mac-head cold. Some observations: - Definitely an iTunes interface "bolted" into a standard Motorola phone - Being notified/interrupted by phone calls while listening to MP3s is a cool idea. I used this while riding my bike Sunday morning and it was quite handy. - The included headset is terrible. Sound quality though those earphones is poor and ruins the music experience. - I don't know if the phone is underpowered or what, but the screen-to-screen navigation through iTunes was very, very slow. - The phone requires all music to be converted to 128-Kbps AAC format. This is fine for music purchased on the iTunes Music Store, but not for high-bitrate MP3s. Anyway, I'd give it a 4 out of 10. I realized that I'm better off with my current cell phone and an iPod nano.
They'd have to be really partnered with whoever really made the RAZR and pitch it to them so that they'd actualy make some dough on the hardware.
Yes, Apple is now in the process of bigness. The iPod and iTunes and the music store, makes them big money. They aren't interested in innovation anymore. They can't afford it.
Look forward to their advancing into the video distribution business.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
And it's a horrible name, too.
I've had the ability to play MP3s on my cell phone for years. In 2001 Samsung had a phone available through sprint called the "Uproar". It held 64megs of MP3s. This was before customizable ringtones were widely available, so it couldn't play the MP3 for a ringtone. It had a set of earbuds that had the player controls and volume on a fob that hung about 1/2 way down your chest or could be clipped onto a sleave. MP3s were copied on using MusicMatch Jukebox. If you recieved a call while listening to music, you could press the center button on the fob and it would pause your music and answer the phone. Once your phone call was complete, it would resume your music where you left off. I upgraded to a Motorola MPX200 in 2003. This is a Windows CE phone so it has Windows Media player built in. It can accept a Compact Flash card. Simply fill the CF card on your PC with your favorite music and go on your way. You are only limited by the size of your CF card. That the Motorola Rokr plays MP3s via an iPod menu interface is just an interesting footnote. It isn't remarkable technology in any way.
http://www.CelloFourteGroupie.net
Opera 8.02, Linux.
The javascript on these articles sets the size as fixed and shuts off the resize tab. The quote marks and other elements of the document do not display correctly because of CSS errors. Your browser may respond differently to these commands; YMMV.
I can change the sizing, restore toolbars, etc in menus or (if this had been done worse) I can view source, edit out the offending code, and open the resulting document. Both are fairly inconvenient ways to get things done. Bottom line: the formatting of this is a barrier to people reading it.
I am fairly familiar with Reis and his ideas, which are posted elsewhere than Adage. I pretty much agree with each of his articles except this one on convergence. Darn it, it just doesn't make sense for me to carry a PDA, cell phone, and MP3 player!
That doesn't make any single device such as the Rokr sucessful; MP3 phones have been here for years, and I could give less than a flying fuck about iTunes integration. I've been settling for the Sony Ericsson P800 for two years-- with a 1GB card, it holds a few MP3s or a movie, can control a remote desktop, etc. But the interfacing is poor; the phone is awkward to use; as a PDA, it's not a Palm. And to boot, Cingular just shut off most 1900MHz equipment in my area, so rather than buy a 910a (=American, =850Mhz instead of 900, = won't work too well in Europe or Asia), I'm probably going to try a Treo. Oh what fun; another, inadequate interface, just different. My hands are to big for a laptop keyboard; why the #$(*& do I have to carry that... whatever it is that the Treo has below the screen...
The original post's contention that the Rokr should use cell phone downloads (at 5kbps, that's about an hour a song!) instead of USB is one indication of how ludicrous the first article is. The other suggestions probably make more sense, I just can't take the author seriously after reading that.
Cheers.
The post by TheRaven64 is wrong. It is indeed limited to 100 songs period. If a theoretical 4gb transflash card was put in the ROKR, it would still limit you to 100 total songs, no matter the length.
See this picture thanks to this post from a person who actually uses the phone, instead of relying on Apple.com information.
Ironic my first "Troll" mod turns out to be due to an uninformed poster. yeah.
You are not, however, correct in blaming this limit on DRM. No DRM scheme is required for this kind of limit, and so I would still categorise your post as FUD. It is far more likely that the 'phone keeps the song meta-data in an index structure with a fixed size. This is bad design, but not uncommon on mobile telephones - mine has a limit of 70 SMS messages in spite of the fact that each message is 160 bytes (+ a timestamp and maybe 10 bytes for the caller's number) and the 'phone has 1.5MB of internal flash storage.
To paraphrase a popular saying, do not attribute to DRM that which can be adequately explained by bad design.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alto_(computer)