Slashdot Mirror
Did Apple Sabotage the ROKR?
JPigford writes "The Apple Blog makes claim that Apple sabotaged the success of the ROKR so as to sway public opinion of MP3 cell phones in general...ultimately to drive more sales to the iPod. By mandating a 100 song limit on the ROKR and having the product flop, Apple was able to put a bad taste in the mouths of consumers so that not only do they drive more iPod sales, but they keep competitors from fighting back with their own MP3 phones."
Have you held a ROKR and RAZR at the same time? It's like Motorola can make a gadget pretty, or functional, but not both at the same time.
What's most puzzling is: It's all the same OS. Their cheapest and most expensive phones have an almost identical menu structure. Making a Java/iTunes app shouldn't have taken as long as it did.
Lastly. A RAZR is free with a 2 year contract. A 512mb shuffle (which holds more songs) is $80. The two of them together in the same pocket is a better solution than the ROKR....and will go longer on a charge!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
But "sabotage"?!? Motorola isn't a couple of kids with a lemonade stand, and it's not even a huge corporation operating outside its normal business. Surely they have enough experience with portable consumer electronics to have dealt with Apple with their eyes open.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
this does add up my friend, another article like this was available the day after the crappy rokr came out. apple likely plans on releasing a phone that they design themself in the future.
How does that add up? You claim they intentionally made a crappy product branded with the itunes name and they made it crappy to promote sales of a new phone they plan to release with the itunes name? It's called poisoning the brand and it is not a good thing. People that buy a crappy itunes phone are unlikely to buy another. And will advise others against it, even if all the drawbacks of the first one are solved.
Yeah, no kidding. I can usually make do with a single audio CD's worth of music for a few days before needing to swap out.
If the ROKR is failing, the only reason it's doing so is because the cell phone market is absolutely saturated. Everyone that wants one already has a phone, and phones aren't fashion items anymore. iPod is.
If the ROKR is failing, the only reason it's doing so is because the cell phone market is absolutely saturated.
DING DING DING DING!!!
Look at that! Somebody finally got to the crux of the issue.
I think the ROKR looks like a nifty phone, but there's no way I'm buying one because my current phone (also made by Motorola) required that I subscribe to two years of T-Mobile service in order to get it at a sensible price. That was only a few months ago.
To buy an ROKR, I would have to break that contract (paying an obscene early-exit fee), and sign up for Cingular (another good service provider, but considerably more expensive than my current plan.)
Ultimately, that would mean hundreds of dollars just to make this minor upgrade over my current Motorola phone (which I'm far from 100% happy with, by the way.) I'm far better off waiting another year and a half for my current service contract to expire and see what's out there at that time, or else just attaching a shuffle to my current phone with hot glue if I really need an all-in-one device so damn badly.
I'm sure I'm far from the only person out there in such a position.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
exactly.
that is why I have a treo 600 in my pocket.
I have a mp3 player that works great, interrupts the song with a ring during a call and allows me to answer by pressing a button on my stereo headset nd take the call with the headset. I get the bonus of getting rid of my palm PDA with it and have that legendary stability of palm (the reason why I got the 600 instead of the 650)
plus I can watch tv shows and movies from my replayTV or computer on it as well.
so it doesnt use itunes, big whoop to me and many other people.
this phone is not the first mp3 player/phone to ever exist even though they are trying to market it that way.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.