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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."
Just another company following the tyrany route?
It's never just a game when you're winning. - George Carlin
So it's a feature! And you thought it was only Microsoft...
Step 1: Make a decent product
Step 2: Poison the market for other products/combo devices
Step 3: Profit!
to notice the distinction?
"This phone sucks, iTunes sucks."
Their name is still connected to this product, by way of iTunes. So, logically, if people's only experience with iTunes comes by way of the ROKR and that experience is a negative one, logically that's going to lead customers to respond by going elsewhere for music and for a portable music player.
The idea that people might get a ROKR and say "wow, this is cool, I want to buy an iPod now" seems more plausable - as does the idea that more people than you might realize are going to shy away from the all-in-one gadgetization of the phone (with cameras, mps players, video / TV etc.) I am one of those people who would rather have three devices that do their respective functions very well than one that does three different things in a mediocre way.
While it's entirely possible that Apple did help sabotage it, I think it's more likely that it was a crappy product that's caused it to fail so far...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
I guess the nano scratches were premeditated as well. And the cube cracks. And the exploding powerbooks....
I think people are perfectly happy with "only" 100 songs on their phone. I've seen several people with them already, and they just came out... In my observation, it took longer for the "razr" to "make it big" than is has for the "rokr." Maybe I'm wrong, but that seems to be the case to me...
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."
There's as much of a chance (if not a greater one) of Apple damaging the iPod brand image as there is of driving people to standalone iPods. The potential gains don't seem worth the immense risk. I'd chalk this one up as a crackpot conspiracy theory.
Regardless of Apple's intent (real, false or perceived) Motorola didn't have to accept the ROKR design nor build it. Motorola's also at fault and clearly didn't do enough consumer testing to learn that the product wasn't desirable before going to production.
Apple made OSX 10.0 as a way to drive people to Windows.
Seriosuly, how did this post make is to the front page of slashdot? Its a first attempt, they will get better over time, especially as technology improves. That aside, apple certainly doesn't want its good name attached to things that flop. Its bad PR.
O RLY?
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...
Does anyone really believe that phones won't be a catch all device soon, regardless of what Apple does?
Phones continue to add features, and consumers seem to want this feature. I doubt Apple can stop it regardless of what they do.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
BillG to SteveB:
Steve, do you still have our playbook? Would you check, please.
Any iTunes phone has to go out with Apple's approval, since the song format is proprietary. I'd blame this problem on some legal wrangling with the RIAA's members before Apple. Apple has nothing to make but money off of a successful MP3 phone, and they don't stand to lose much by a rival phone that doesn't support their format. iTunes users will get the Apple phone or an iPod, period. If there's a conspiracy under all of this (and I don't think there is), I'd be more likely to lay it at the feet of the RIAA, who probably thought, "MP3 player + wireless communication = internetz song swapping! Oh noes!" and put pressure on Apple to cap the song limit or otherwise cripple the device to the point where it technically does exist but is functionally useless. Sort of like today's Democratic party.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
But this is not an iPod phone. This is a phone with iTunes - big difference. If they had made an iPod with phone capabilities, there's no way it would've flopped. Heck, I'd be stanind in line for it the day it came it out.
While I'm not sure if I believe it, it does make sense in a way.
At the same time, however, I'm sure a lot of uneducated consumers link that phone directly to Apple and then assume if it sucks then the rest of the stuff can't be as good as everyone claims either. It would have been quite a risky move on Apple's part so I'm going to leave this as speculation for now.
To me it seemed more like they just rushed it out the door without really trying too hard, just to get the idea into people's heads and see if it would take off...
Macrumors reported yesterday that motorola has announced the razr v3i with expandable memory and itunes. I think apple has rethought their phone mp3 plans and decided to lisence itunes for better phones.
This is such a fresh dupe you can still smell the packing material of when it was posted the first time.
Who cares about the candybar form factor anyway.
Jobs: "Our product wasn't a success so lets say its failure was a planned tactic!"
I doubt they would risk doing such a thing, but if they did, it will not work. Clearly the market is moving toward devices that "do it all" or that can at least combine the functionality of multiple devices. I, for one, am getting tired of carrying around a bunch of different gadgets.
End transmission.
What a great way to try and cover for a perceived perfect track record.
Any misstep, just start the rumor (or have your zealot minions do it for you) that any mistake was on purpose. Apple really CAN do no wrong.
even though they are nice and unix, it would seem they are indeed borrowing from bills book of business practises of stifling competition. Hopefully as long as they have an open source version of something for their hardware though you should be able to avoid allthat dial home nightmare of microsoft products
There are no alien abductions, there are no chemtrails, we really did go to the Moon and all the big problems in the country- from 9/11 to Katria relief- are the result of chaos, sloppiness and stupidity unguided by secret cabals or ninja assassins or Skull and Bones members.
I bought the ROKR for my Wife because she needed a new phone (Cingular was telling her that her old one was being obsoleted and would be shut off eventually) and because I wanted her to stop stealing my iPod all of the time.
Overall, I think people have been too harsh on this little phone. It does have some flaws, but overall it's pretty nice. It even has some surprises, like the phone speaker good enough to use the little guy like a tiny boombox. Also, people are focusing on the wrong things when they complain about the phone, the 100 song limit isn't the real issue (think of it like the Shuffle, not a regular iPod), it's the USB1 interface that makes loading songs an almost overnight affair. Also, the battery life seems a bit short to me, although I suspect there will be a firmware upgrade for it at some point to keep it from draining the battery after only 1 day of sitting idle. The lights on the side are kinda cool, but really touchy and better left disabled. The camera is surprisingly good for a phone though. The 100 song limit is not a huge deal because the phone only comes with 512MB of memory anyway and 100 average length songs does a pretty good job of filling that up. It's only a big issue if you don't believe in listening to any song longer than 30 seconds or something.
Despite the drawbacks, the phone does a pretty good job of what it's supposed to do, and the interface on the phone is quite nice.
Quick tip for anybody with the ROKR: Enable the option in iTunes that downcoverts all songs to 128kbps. If you don't do that, it will just silently refuse to load any song encoded higher and make you pull your hair out in frustration while you try to figure out why half of your playlist is being silently ignored.
I read the internet for the articles.
I don't have the quote, but one Motorola exec (CEO?) made a statement along the lines of "Who need more than 100 songs anyway?" It's exactly this kind of short-sighted should-be-good-enough-for-anyone crap that causes products to fail, and the companies that continue to put these kinds of products out continue to not get it. Meanwhile, mp3 players with massive multi-gig drives are rocketing off the shelves like chairs in Redmond.
I can't find and data anywhere that can qualify why the ROKR is being considered a failure? As compared to what?
Blame Motorola and they're ugly, hard-to-use phone. It feels like iTunes was just tacked on. Apple was clearly testing the waters, but it's Motorola's phone and they did the hardware design. Apple just provided the software.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Interesting theory, but probably dead wrong.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
The Moto offering was, over a year late to market, very lackluster, and didn't have all the features promised (like connecting to the ITMS to download songs). The nano is elegant, works well and does what it's supposed to do AND wasn't a year late to market. Had the phone actually hit market on target it might have sold.
I think it is far more likely that this story is a creation of an Apple zealot who can't reconcile that Apple is capable of making a bad product. They already know apple will make business decisions they don't support (150mil from MS, Intel Chips), and it's easier for them to believe Apple is brilliant/sneaky, then incompetent in an area.
The fact that it was so big and chunky, not to mention limited in song capacity... I mean, you could literally tape a nano to the back of a RAZR and have a phone that had more functionality in a smaller package!
It's like they weren't even trying very hard.
I'm more inclined to believe the "Apple uses Motorola as a whipping boy to get iTunes on a commercial phone to bolster their strategic position for launching an Apple branded cell phone" theory.
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
I would think that Apple would be shooting themselves in the foot if this were the case (as previously stated). What seems like a more likely option would be to get your name out there as much as you can, much like if you want someone to search on the internet, you tell them to "google" it. That is what the iPod and the Apple name have come to, if you want a portable music player, get an iPod thingy. It seems to me that the more the solidify that, the better off they are and therefore I do not seem this as a purposeful move. They have had flops before, just like every company, and they recover with something better in the end. I am sure this is the same that will come out of cell phones. The advantage to cell phones, you have carriers that are willing to subsidize the cost of the machines, so I would think that this is a big driving point for Apple to help long term profits...as always, just my $0.02...
What is? The fact that on an iTunes phone you can't use an transfered mp3 as a ringtone!
That is so much more obviously a needlessly cripling item, similar to camera phones with mini-cd cards that don't let you transfer photos to your computer using it!
If apple is to change something, change these silly restrictions first. 100 songs is a good start for my mp3 player, just get with the basic functionality so it is not so obviously crippled first. Then I'll complain about 100 songs.
- August
A bit sensationalist for this article to claim "sabotage", isn't it? Makes it sound Apple sent ninjas to the production factory at night to secretly reprogram the ROKR firmware.
The design was no doubt evaluated by Motorola many, many times before production. If they deemed it worthy for release, then it's no fault of Apple's if it flopped.
...pass my tin foil hat!
If you think about it..
If it flops, then Apple will stay away from the mobile phone business and mobile phone content business.
Apple didn't want it stealing the thunder from the iPod. Even though there's no where close to enough battery life to play 100 songs and still be confident enough that your phone won't die on you.
Motorola doesn't want Apple making mobile phone in the future. (remember those rumors?)
Singular of course still wants you to use as much air time as possible. They don't really want content that doesn't use Air time to really suceed.
Motorola's RAZR V3i (announced yesterday) would have likely been a better debut for iTunes on a cell phone. People know the RAZR, it's a very attractive device, and I think with the RAZR's current popularity that probably would have made more sense.
Do not post anti apple comments or the apple fanbois will mod you down.
parts of 7ou are 4n operating system in any way related dead. It is a dead
That's just what they want you to think.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
I don't think Motorola needs help sabotaging anything. Motorola often has some interesting tech in their phones, but the UIs are uniformly rotten.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The ROKR won't play any songs encoded at higher than 128kbps? I'll admit that I'm very unfamiliar with this phone, so bear with me. Is this 128kbps MP3s or the iTunes format (aac?), and if the latter, is the sound quality better at 128 kbps than an MP3 at the same bitrate? I'll only keep 128kbps if it's a rare track, for regular listening I prefer an absolute minimum of 192. Anyone care to enlighten me?
There is a simple explanation for the 100 song limit that has already been alluded to in various statements by Motorola and Apple.
The SanDisk Transflash drive in the phone is removable and replaceable. There is nothing stopping a ROKR owner from replacing the 512M drive with a much larger one (such as the 1G version). Therefore it makes perfect since to put an artificial limit on the number of songs. The USB 1.1 transfer rates are likely a factor as well.
I own one, and use iTunes on a nearly daily basis on public transportation to and from work. It's much more discrete than carrying around an iPod (two of which I also own) and is something I have to have in my pocket anyway. The 100 song limit doesn't bother me so much, and I refill it about once a week so the transfer rates, while annoying, are tolerable.
And yes, the phone's interface is a bit clunky, but I find most cell phones suffer from this affliction. My biggest gripe is what appears to be a lack of processing power. The command response borders on dreadful. A more complete j2me environment would have been helpful as well, but that's generally an issue with Motorola.
Cell phone companies did, to sell their stupid ringtones. They are known to cripple things, while Apple tends to make full-blooded products. But anyway, I don't think the 100 song limit is what killed the phone. Anyway, with a 512MB card the "natural" limit is around 160. More likely it's just not a good phone/mp3 player.
The reason MP3 wireless phones aren't taking off is the competing interests of the wireless carriers and content distribution services.
It costs $1 to download a whole song from .
It costs $2 to download a ring tone (smaller than a whole song) from the carrier.
Phone manufacturers are caught in the middle...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
I don't think it was sabotage, it was most likely not tested well, had issues with performance and was rushed to the market.4 _7-31515635.html
Why have an artificial 100 song limit? Good question.
Itunes compatible cell phones are inevitable, this first prototype just didn't cut the mustard.
http://reviews.cnet.com/Motorola_Rokr_E1/4505-645
ROKR review from CNET:
CNET editors' review
Editors' rating Good 6.3 out of 10
Reviewed by: Kent German and James Kim
Review date: 9/15/05 Release date: 9/7/05 Average user rating: 6.1
The good: Solid call and music playback quality; includes speakerphone and Bluetooth; bright display; user-friendly controls; integrated iTunes player.
The bad: Dull design; small 100-song memory; limited Bluetooth functionality; sluggish iTunes interface and transfer speeds; can't download songs wirelessly; VGA camera only.
The bottom line: The Motorola Rokr E1 takes a step toward integrating a usable audio jukebox into a functional cell phone, but the 100-song limit and the slow processor performance will disappoint iPod users looking to carry a single do-it-all device.
So it looks like just a shoddy product from Motorola. On a side note, a friend of mine just returned his Motorola cell phone for the second time, needless to say he did not like their products.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
MS has a monopoly. T0o many computers == wintel and to be fair other companies like say Dell and of course Intel are very happy to help MS keep that monopoly.
Because of this monopoly however any decision MS makes will be very closely watched to see if it doesn't have an "evil" angle.
Apple is tiny and controls the desktop in about the same way that say Greenland controls world politics. Not at all.
Nobody would give one shit what Apple does with its desktop because nobody needs them or feels they don't have a choice but to use them. Same way the whole world watches the US and nobody watches greenland. So Apple can get away with charging for service packs. Imagine if MS did that. Apple gets away with some pretty bad customer support, just browse slashdot, all because it is just to small for people to be really affected.
With MP3 players however Apple has achieved if not a monopoly then at least a dominance. Nobody could possibly feel forced to buy Apple for their player because the alternatives are to hard to use or impossible to buy. (the whole linux vs windows argument).
We do however get to see Apple behaving very MS like. Stupid idiotic restrictions seemingly designed for nothing else then just because they can.
If you ignore the fanboys, always a smart move, then most Apple users will agree that Steve Jobs only saving grace is that he has never had the success of Bill Gates. He can get away with decissions that Bill Gates would be roasted alive for. Steve Jobs decides to cripple a product in order to boost sales of another? 99% of posts will point out that this is a sound business decision. Bill Gates gives a couple of million to disease research? 99% of posts will question what his real motives are.
IBM is a current favorite for their support of Linux and general coolness. Can you imagine that not too long ago it was MS that was the new upstart fighting the monopolist IBM?
While I am not saying that all companies are equally evil I am saying that Apple/Steve Jobs is easily just as evil as MS/Bill Gates. He just has more charm.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Why does any successful company instantly become evil, or at least suspected as being so? Not everyone is out to get you, even if they ARE out to get your money.
I for one thing 100 songs on a phone is quite a lot, and I'm not sure why you'd need or want more. How much time do people want to spend using their cell phone battery to listen to music anyway? It'd be nice in a pinch if you're stuck and bored, but I've got to assume that people have things to do. I mean that's roughly 5 hours of music there.
I never saw people complaining about how cassettes or cds could only fit ~12-20 songs. If this is what we as a culture are complaining about nowadays I think we must be doing pretty well overall!
It was revenge, pure and simple.
After waiting years for chips that just didn't hack it, Jobs stood up, threw a chair across the room and announced "I'm going to fucking get Mororola".
Hence the ROKR.
I don't get the freaking out over 100 songs. That is on average about 6 hours of music. I am an avowed music freak, I have over 200G of music on my server and much more that I haven't bothered converting to MP3 yet. I'm looking at getting an iPod, and the nano seems like overkill for something to take on my commute and to the gym. I'll put a new playlist on there everyday anyway, why do I need to store thousands of songs?
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Motorola does NOT make phones for consumers, it makes them for carriers.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If Apple had their way and they got to design the whole phone, no carrier would take it, because of its customer centric nature. That's how the iPod wins, that's how an iPhone would win. The limit was a warning: "this thing isn't a good idea." Is it a good business move to indicate that you can replace your iPod with a ROKR when the latter has none of your signature features? I would think not. That's a good way to get people to associate the ROKR as a crap phone with Apple
So, if "sabotage" means "de-emphasize" in this guy's vocabulary, then I'd agree. But sabotage means "deliberately destroy," something Apple could have done by just not making such a phone. The ROKR is a statement of "look, we tried to make an iPhone, and because of the rules, the result isn't good. We don't think it's great, but we know some of you want it."
I realise that market cap differences between Apple and any of the major mobile phone service providers are probably enormous, but the only logical thing for Apple to do is buy one of them and then release a proper iTunes Mobile Phone. There are probably a number of options for expanding the iPod market but this seems to me to be the best one. Given Jobs control of Apple, Pixar, and his legendary RDF, I would bet that there are Venture Capitalists out there prepared to back him on this. Then watch the market really explode.
anyone buy a ROKR when you can get an se w800i for free? SE make the easiest phones to use, there's no crappy DRM, amazing build quality, swappable memory card, and they look good too.
The truly diabolical Apple plan is the one where they ship iPods with non-replaceable batteries, fragile screens etc etc and thus poison the minds of consumers against mobile music players -- thus preventing competitors from entering the market!
I am in awe.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I've worked in plenty of dysfunctional organizations in my life. Not one of them ever had staff sit around a meeting room and consicously sabotage a product. Although, despite best efforts, more often than not, the result was a crappy product.
Impossible.
We all know that Jobs is the best, most kind, worderful leader in the entire Multiverse...
RDF Field OFF - Transmission Terminated.
Even if they have an interest in seeing the ROKR fail, why would they? Motorola does a fine job of sabotage themselves.
Considering the Time and effort Apple puts into the product launches ( aka no hitches) when the Rokr failed on stage i was very suprised. Then again if the phone is running windows ce or other i wouldn't be suprised.
Apple probably did have some malicious intent with the ROKR, after all they didn't even let Motorola know that they would be debuting the Nano at the same time. Why would anyone want to overshadow a new product? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to have spaced the releases by atleast a month and keep a steady stream of hype? Obviously Apple didn't want the ROKR to be a viable substitute for ANY Ipod, even the Shuffle. I don't think it's entirely their fault either. MP3 phones are a great idea, but in practice they're simply not functional because of limitations in battery life. After all, no one wants to waste their already short cell phone battery life with something as frivolous as listening to music. As long as battery technology is where it is, we're better off with seperate devices.
There have just been way too many of these quasi-paranoid suggestions over the years to take any of them seriously.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
How does the 100 song limit damage the iPod brand image? If anything, it improves it.
ROKR = "iTunes good, 100 song limit sucks."
iPod = "iTunes good, 100 song limit gone."
If you disagree, then explain the reason for the 100 song limit.
I have hundreds of songs on my Treo using a 1 GB SD card. They now also have 2 GB SD cards, I just have not upgraded.
Palm PDA utilities, Phone capability, MP3 player without DRM, Palm apps, Word / Excel view and edit, keyboard, good size, (Crappy camera) but hours of crappy video with a 1GB card... Bluetooth is sorta suck too, but overall Treo is pretty sweet.
They need a 2MP camera, 4 GB memory standard, wifi, and wireless stereo headsets. Also some usability tweaks could help, but overall, I love it.
I don't believe Apple made the deal with Motorola with intentions of not cannibalizing their iPod line.
I think they had two motives. One, to get a foot in the door of an emerging market. Two, the 100 song limit gets most people to (in theory) spend $100 bucks at iTunes for their music. When they want to add more they have to buy a bigger device, and if they go with anything other then an iPod it is throwing away the $100 on the iTunes songs. It is a savvy business decision.
The first iPod wasn't perfect. There were lots of improvements made along the way. Even the nano has some problems (all the screen lawsuits). Apple just dropped the ball. Not Motorola either, Apple had almost complete control over this device (like they do with all their projects), and Motorola did what they wanted to get the deal. Apple wanted this to be a big hit, because it would eventually sell more iPods and get them in a new market.
In my opinion, they've fucked up (Apple). They've entered into a new area in the market, Music on phones. They were really the first people who produced an "MP3 Player Phone". But it was crap. Thus leaving the market open for ANYBODY to jump on and say: "Look, we've produced this great MP3 player fone tht can store 5gb of songs!" and immediatly they've got themselves brand respect.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Articles about this topic seem inevitably to get bogged down in details. Why only 512MB? Why only 100 songs, regardless of length? Why so big, why so ugly, why ....?
That's not the point. Ultimately the technical issues are what they are. The central point is that Apple could have done better, and did not. The market was not clamoring for a mp3 phone, so Apple's decision was not borne out of rush-to-market, and must therefore have been a conscious decision to make a sub-par product. THAT is the question that people should be concerning themselves with: Why did Apple deliberately release a crap product?
I think the only reasonable answer is to manipulate the market. Whether you call that sobotage or not depends more on your view of Apple than it does on their actions in this case, but I think it's pretty clear that market manipulation was the goal. Certainly Apple's not making much money on this deal. They're hardly polishing their image with it. It's not increasing iTMS market penetration or visibility. I think Apple's sending a message, and that message is "music phones are not a viable product yet". Apple 'tries' and fails. The market, seeing this, reasons that it can't be done because Apple's the music god right now and if they can't do it, nobody can. And the VCs aren't going to send out money to people intending to try, because they've got the best evidence in the world that it can't be done well.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
What's with the G5 logo? If they put a G5 in the ROKR, I seriously doubt that that is sabotage...
Did Motorola sabotage it by preventing you from using your own songs as ringtones? Did they sabotage it by introducing it in that ugly-ass phone and not the RAZR (which did just come out - finally)?
Apple put limits on it to protect the iPod. Motorola put limits in to protect the carriers (their customers). In the end, it's a shitty product that will do little for either company.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Obviously, the ROKR loses in direct comparison with the Nokia N91 and Sony-Ericsson Walkman but at least their product is real and on the shelves...
In the meantime, while people are either enjoying the real phones or waiting for the next big thing, Motorola improves on both designs and announces the SLVR L7...
although I don't have the sales figures for companies like apple, nokia, motorola, SE, samsung and their respective mobile phone divisions, I'd venture saying that Apple can hardly have the leverage to damage the plans of mobile phone manufacturers. I bet Apple will still be in the front line of the high end audio gadget arena with the iPod and whatever they can make of it in the future, but there is much more room for growth in the multi-use-mobile-phone-gadget market.
Bazorg!
Apple clearly limited the product to 100 songs on purpose. Whether or not they wanted to "sabotage" the MP3 phone market is another issue, but clearly the decision to limit the ROKR to 100 songs was a result of Apple's greed and stupidity. I think Apple was looking to establish itself in other markets outside of the PC-enthusiast market, and figured their meal ticket was the ROKR. But they didn't want the ROKR or similar MP3 phones to compete directly with their iPods, so they purposely limited the first high-profile MP3 phone, the ROKR, to 100 songs so that people would get the idea that MP3 phones are okay, but you need an iPod if you're a *real* music enthusiast. But the product bombed due this limitation, and it didn't work out. An example of greed and stupidity at its finest. Seriously, Apple doesn't deserve a free pass here. Most companies in the computer business have been afflicted by greed and stupidity at one time or another, and Apple is no exception.
My blog
I was surprised to see in this story that "The Apple Blog" was revealing such information. Actually, it's some guy who has a blog and he calls it The Apple Blog. This is just personal speculation -- HOWEVER, it's interesting and it wouldn't surprise me. And it would have actually been a good idea, as long as they could protect themselves legally against Motorola and didn't mind burning a bridge.
Motorola didn't have to accept the ROKR design nor build it.
Apple did not design the ROKR! Where are people getting this bizarre idea?
It's a MOTOROLA product, that happens to have ONE Apple program on it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They're TELEPHONES. You use them to TALK TO PEOPLE. Buy some other device if you want to play games or listen to music. TELEPHONES should be TELEPHONES. And fuck every single one of you out there who sets their ringtone to some annoying super-long Broadway showtune or obnoxious gangsta rap song and take forever to answer it, hoping strangers around you (who DON'T GIVE A SHIT) think you're "cool" and have good music taste.
This technology is a bloated, overpriced, gimmicky pile of wank that makes me embarassed to be a part of the information age. Fuck right off.
How about this scenario: Motorola says the're only putting USB1 on the phone. Apple says "ok in that case we're going to need a 100 song limit or it's going to drive people nuts and be really bad PR for us".
Doesn't this just reek of a MS maneuver? Make believe to play nice but make it impossible for someone else to succeed?
I guess this is just "business"??!!!
The gun is good - Zardoz
This company has a long history of choosing short term profits over long term success.
There will be cell phones that double as outstanding MP3 players. It is only a matter of time. Apple has bought themselves 6 months to a year of continued ipod dominance and the profits that go along with it. In exchange, they've forfeited a dominant role in the mp3 cell phone market, which will soon make a whole lot of money, largely at the expense of the ipod. How much do you want to bet that Microsoft will be the company that benefits from this? Way to go Apple, once again you show the world how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Excuse me, I need to call my broker and tell him to dump my Apple stock.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Do you REALLY need this spelled for you? Apple got big bucks by letting Motorola use iTunes and they "crippled" it with 100 songs restriction dealso it would not cannibalize the sales of their regular iPods.
For fuck's sake, it's not rocket science. sheesh
They can sabotage a phone all by themselves.
Ropey old OS, crap user interface, USB1 interface and a CPU so slow you wonder if the phone has stopped working. You can't polish a turd.
I'm thinking this might be worthy of the tin foil hat crown.
I can't be the only one here that's experienced "Chronic Stupid Mangement Syndrome". Apples huge, and Jobs can't manage everything. Why isn't it plausible that some "get it done as soon as possible so I look good" backstabbing, engineer exploiting ass-hat didn't get ahold of this one and bone it up?
It wouldn't be the first time (today...).
Maybe Motorola has sabotaged Apple Phone? Motorola has other, better products, so can let ROKR fail to show consumers that iPods should stay away from their phone market.
Al slipped on a ceramic tile floor in hurricane force winds outside of his hotel room (with a guy holding onto his leg as a sight gag and also harming his balance).
I don't think Apple had any reason or anything to do with it at all.
Man, would you PC-lovers stop with the hate already?
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
I think it was obvious that Motorola's ROKR was born to fail.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
That sentence is silly. Nokia already has N91 with 4GB of internal memory (yes it can play music). I recall that also Samsung has a phone with microdrive.
"The Apple Blog also makes claim that Apple sabotaged the success of the iPod so as to put a bad taste in the mouths of consumers so that they keep competitors from fighting back with their own portable MP3 players." Oh, wait...
I have a SonyEricsson W800i, and I am very pleased with it. :)
OK, I have to admit
It's not the best mp3 player. Being used to my 20GB jukebox, the default 512MB is somewhat limited.
It's not the best camera. However, it's always with me. Almost.
It's not the best phone. But it has an mp3-player and a nice camera.
So it is a really good thing(tm) altogether.
/tb
Why would Apple try to negatively impact the sale of any product that endorse? That's terrible business.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
I have an I-mate PDA2K with camera, video, bluetooth, Wifi, GPRS, MP3, phone, pda, e-mail, etc. It's incredibly useful, but I'm lucky to get a full day out of the batteries. Even though I have as much storage as I want with the SD card, I carry a totally seperate player for MP3. If the MP3 player batteries die, it's not much of a loss. But if I need my phone for business or emergency, I would feel pretty stupid if I ran down the batteries playing MP3s.
In theory, the all-in-one-everything gizmos are supposed to free you from carrying and/or charging multiple batteries. In reality, relying on a single battery for both recreational and emergency functions is not as cool as it looks.
ROKR or no ROKR, I see nothing special about anyone's "MP3/phone". It's been done; no big deal. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Apple is just bitter that someone already took the name iPhone.
Seriously though, why doesn't Apple just make a serious enty into the cell/mp3 market and head off the competition?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I call BS.
The Apple Blog isn't doing any original reporting of its own -- it's just riffing off an article from Wired about the business relationship between Apple and Motorola. And it doesn't seem like they read that article very closely, either.
The Apple Blog asserts:
... which makes it sound like Apple pulled the limitation out of thin air. Apple Blog goes on from there to speculate about Apple's motivation for doing so.
But if you read the Wired article, the actual claim made is nowhere near as conclusive as Apple Blog indicates it is:
The Wired article makes it sound like the 100-song limit was less an arbitrary business decision and more a decision based on limits inherent in Apple's FairPlay DRM. Apple's never going to allow an iTunes client that does not use FairPlay, so if there's something about FairPlay-for-mobiles that means you're stuck with 100 songs, that could mean that there was no predatory action on the part of Apple to "sabotage" the ROKR. It was just "the cost of doing business" for using FairPlay.
If Wired had conclusive proof that Apple made an arbitrary business decision to limit the ROKR to 100 songs, they would have sourced that allegation -- i.e. run a quote from someone who would be in a position to know. But they didn't. If they had inconclusive evidence that Apple might have done that, they could have sourced the assertion to someone more tangential via the old "A source who asked to remain anonymous told us..." approach. They did not do that either.
What that indicates to me is that either (a) Apple Blog knows something Wired does not, in which case they should source their assertion independently of the Wired article, or (b) Apple Blog's speculations are ungrounded. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide which is the case.
Read my blog.
8 hours - That's pushing it with basically any reasonably sized device these days.
I have managed to get 5-6 hours of video playback out of my Treo 650 though, with approx. 36% battery left.
Carry a second battery for the 650 (they're small) and you can exceed 8 hours. Since the 650 has nonvolatile storage, you can swap batteries without consequences.
As to the ROKR - $149.99 with contract for a regular cell phone that happens to also play a limit of 100 MP3s, vs. $249.99 with contract for a combination PDA/phone that does video playback, email, web browsing, games, and music playback with no limit on the number of songs. No wonder the ROKR failed.
What crackhead would release an MP3 player with an artificial 100 song limit? The only reason to put a 100 song limit on a device is if you want to utterly kill it in the market.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
...happen is that printers would put secret messages into your printouts that can be read by government agents. What kind of world do people think we live in eh?
The article is wholly speculative; the article they linked to is more informative and fact-based.
With that said, I'm conflicted: if Apple really crippled it on purpose that's really shitty of them. But if that's what happened, is Motorola so daft that they didn't realize that's what was going o? They didn't have to accept Apple's terms.
Frankly, I'd be delighted if my phone had 512MB of RAM, 1/8" stereo headphone jack and a USB connection that would show up as a drive (much like my old Creative Muvo). I would choose a DRM-less MP3 phone like that over other phones the next time I get a phone, and if the price was good I'd even consider upgrading straight away. They could have a good music-playing phone without iTunes (and TFA indicates they already do in Europe...they should have put it out in the US!)
Some of you already have those cute little shirts on that say disco sucks, right? That's not all that sucks.-Frank Zappa
MS and Apple are both accused of corporate level dickering within a few articles of one another and look at the contrast in responces...
Microsoft gets a name back under the guise of trademark protection and slashdotters all over howl that it's another one of Bill Gates' tricks to overcome the human race and "cover the lands in a second darkness"
Apple is accused of making a product fail under the assumption that it would make Apple's own hardware look better in the publics eye and now we here cries that Apple just couldn't do that; there is no way Apple is able to use left-handed tactics to gain advantage on the marketplace. One of the few posts that even gave this theory any amount of probablity was shot down as troll or flamebait...
For a community that is so fast to throw up the FUD flag it seems pretty ironic.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
You say that this speculation is true because Apple didn't want to damage profits with either the iPod or some future phone they will design. Let's check the math.
While Apple does make a profit on the iPod hardware, it is relatively small compared to the profit made filling the iPod with songs downloaded from iTunes. Assuming Apple makes ten cents per song and over the life of the iPod somebody downloads 10,000 songs, then Apple makes $1,000. It is in their best interest to have as many devices download as many songs as possible from iTunes. A mandatory 100 song limit to protect their iPod doesn't make sense.
As for coming out with their own iPod phone, well, I guess that's possible. However, are they going to develop their own iPod cellular network? If not, it won't work as a phone. On the otherhand, if they partner with Cingular, Sprint or whomever, they don't have to realize manufacturing costs, they get royalties and the sell songs through iTunes.
It is simply not in Apple's best interest to promote a sub-standard product (or one that is perceived to be) that is associated with their iTunes brand. I would imagine that the real story is not that Apple wanted the number of songs restricted, but instead the manufacture only included minimal memory translating to only storing 100 songs.
You may be right on their own phone, though. If they deem that the cell phone companies can't create a phone that truly is what iPod/phone users want/need. They may just design one themself. However, they won't build it. They'll license the design, further adding to the iPod/iTunes revenue stream.
Either way, however, it doesn't change the fact that it is in Apple's best financial interest to not sell a crippled product.
I've had one since they first came out. The 100 song limit is waaaay down on my list of things I don't like about the phone.
The top two things I hate about the phone by far are...
1) USB 1.1
2) Sucky camera
Apple didn't do the hardware for this phone (though they might have asked for it to be this way).
A 100 song limit isn't bad at all, doesn't *anyone* remember the cassette walkman? That was one dedicated device that limited you to far less music...unless you swapped the cassette much like you can swap the flash card.
Not that I've ever swapped the flash card or had a desire to. I usually plug it in daily update my podcasts and whatever music playlists I happen to have going on. My problem is that it takes friggin forever because of USB 1.1. With my Shuffle or Nano (wait, why do I still have iPods?), it's totally a grab and go mentallity. The ROKR takes *my* time to deal with updating as well as computer time to actually make it so.
And the camera sucks.
The new Razor sounds promising, but only if it is USB2...the problem then is that the ROKR has a really great speaker, and not just for speaker phone...I use it for listening to podcasts in my car or on my boat like as if it were a small portable radio.
It always amazes me when a company that ought to know better introduces a compromised product. Usually the reasoning goes something like this ... "we don't want to cannibilize product X". The problem with this attitude is that it assumes your competitors cannot come out with a better product - only you, in your infinite wisdom and knowledge know what is best, and until you deign to produce it, well then the unwashed masses will just have to suffer. Fortunately we live in a capitalistic society and competitors are more than happy to exploit that arrogance. It happens time and time again, and it looks like this is what might happen here. Already Sprint has introduced a music service with phones having a 1000 song capacity (even more with larger storage cards). There will be many others. Arrogance almost always leads to lost opportunities, and ultimately to irrelevance.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
I read /. at least daily, but the rokr was one of the few occasions where my gf knew about some new piece of technology before me.
The reason, she worked at a call center and the day it came out there was an advisory about a defect in the phone. Then again, according to her, motorola phones in general suffer more defects than any other phone available for cingular (I think it's cingular).
I don't want to carry several devices with me. If I had a phone with a good capacity, I would never look to an iPod again. So, I believe it is a threat to them, and I think Apple should enter the mobile business. I'm sure they would create some very cool mobile phones...
by sabotaging the ROKR, they'd be sabotaging themselves...
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Assuming Apple makes ten cents per song and over the life of the iPod somebody downloads 10,000 songs, then Apple makes $1,000.
Who the hell buys $10k worth of itunes stuff? It's probably more like $50=$100. Also, last I heard, iTunes wasn't making much money - it was mainly driving iPod sales.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I thought you could only get a ROKR through Cingular which meant you would have to sign a new 2 year agreement. I didn't look into it, but you could probably buy the phone from a Cingular store but they would've been marked up a lot without a contract. This seems like a lot of hassle, especially when you can't just walk in and buy something from their stores. You have to wait in line for someone to talk with you first.
to even bring up the idea of Apple producing a product designed to fail.
My karma is getting better everyday.
Let's see - Moto strangled the G5, forcing Apple to IBM, and then to finally say "fuck the lot of you" and go over to Intel.
Ooooh- but then again, Apple pulled the plug on the clones, screwing Moto out of millions...
Oooooh, but then again...
Basically, Apple and Moto have been bad for each other for YEARS - this latest notion comes as no surprise.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Let's take this one step at a time:
-The ROKR only has 512MB of memory.
-100 songs takes, approximatley, 300MB. Much more space can be taken if things like audio books are placed on it as well.
-If the limitation had not been placed on the phone, people would fill the phone to the brim with songs, thus crippling other features on the phone that need the space as well (like the video recorder, games, etc).
-If you listen to more then 100 songs at a time, then the ROKR would not be the mp3 player for you, limit or not.
-Real life, as somebody above this post pointed out, bears little resemblence to the TV show X-Files.
And, finally, my final and best blow:
-All Apple did was licence iTunes compatability to Motorola. Apple DID NOT design the ROKR. All problems with the ROKR are Mororola's fault alone.
CmdrTaco needs to run bullshit scans on stories like this, or it may infect users.
I found I was able to defeat the 100 song limit if I wear my tin foil hat while downloading songs. Apple was not able to control my brain remotely. Hah!
That history stopped several years ago. Apple isn't the same company it was in the 1980s or even the 1990s. One look at the aftermarket that has built up around the iPod, and the way Apple has been selling the iPod through a wide variety of channels will tell you that.
Plus, one bad product release does not mean Apple has suddenly turned sour. I don't buy the conspiracy line for a minute. Apple gave Moto the lead in developing the ROKR because they saw the product as a test vehicle in an uncertain market. The Apple of old would have jumped in with both feet (Newton) and declared that they were going to radically alter everything about mobile communications. The new, much more savvy Apple instead let a partner do the heavy lifting for them. Apple can always introduce a better cellPod if they want to, though I doubt they will. If the market for phone/music combos doesn't pick up, Apple isn't going to impale itself trying to move the market the way the Apple of old would have.
There will be cell phones that double as outstanding MP3 players. It is only a matter of time.
This is pure conjecture on both our parts, but I disagree completely. The cell phone is an absolute mess from a usability standpoint, and adding MP3 functionality to them ony worsens that. Some people will like the hybrids, just as some people like cell/palm combo devices. But I think that the active nature of mobile phones and the passive nature of music players makes a marriage of the two fundamentally flawed. Phone-centered devices that play music will not knock music/video focused small devices out of the market.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Apple did not sabotage this phone. That was done by the terrible twosome that is Motorola and Cingular.
First of all, the ROKR is (f)ugly. Had Motorola made their first iTunes phone a RAZR (which they are finally bringing to market for Q4 2005), it would've been a slam dunk. Consumers want the RAZR and adding iTunes functionality (as well as decent sized memory) only would drive up demand further. That was not Apple's fault, but Motorola's for acting greedy and assuming they could sucker in early-adopters to buy the crummy phone just for iTunes and then later get them to double-dip into purchasing an iTunes compatible RAZR model.
Then there's Cingular. Cingular would not allow the phone to use iTunes purchased tracks as ringtones. Wow, that was brilliant. Because all of us that actually have purchased tracks through iTunes would be stupid enough to pay twice the price on the same song cut in half just for the sheer pleasure of using it as a ringtone. That must be another brilliant idea dreamed up by that genius at SBC named Ed Whiteacre for sure.
There's something that would be painful to watch....a match of wits between Ed Whiteacre and Edgar Bronfman. In a version of Thunderdome hosted by the EFF.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
You need a killer app to drive the market. Sexual content drove the internet; digital music drove the iPod; Macintosh Operating System, currently in the version of OS X, drives Apple Macintosh, and now the question is, what drives phones? Clever and intelligent interfaces are extremely important. No phone will work with music, unless it has Apple's easy iPod control wheel/buttons and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack; and no phone has that so far. The expensive thing is to come up with the research necessary to integrate all that into something that really works. You can talk about 'possible to use' all day long. As long as the design of the device does not really suggest you to use it, you can forget about any iTunes phone - you'll still turn up the car stereo: push the button and turn. That's what I want. Push the button. Then turn.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
I think the proof this product was sabotaged is in the NAME.
it's unbearably lame
Or, you could just buy one on ebay without the discounts at actual retail price, and swap sim cards.
Zing!
Never ascribe to villainy what simple incompetence will explain.
Syncerus
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
The reason the ROKR is limited to 100 songs, as I understand it, is that it's memory card (or perhaps it's the SMS card?) can only hold that much. Add more memory, add more songs, or switch out songs with the card. The ROKR does have a TransFlash memory card, according to the Motorola web site:
0 ,,117,00.html
0 ,,130,00.html
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/details/
Someone points out elsewhere on this thread that their iPod Shuffle only hold about 150 songs. Seems about right, no conspiracy theory or attention grabbing headline needed. The ROKR is equivalent to the flash-based Shuffle or Nano, not the hard-drive based main iPod line. Take off your tinfoil hats, folks.
I also see that Motorola has announced (yesterday) the RAZR V3i (among several other new RAZR models) that ALSO supports iTunes like the ROKR does. It has a memory card slot too, unlike the older RAZR:
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/details/
I think the upcoming Motorola SLVR and possibly PEBL models may do the iTunes thing too. The SLVR is basically a flat "candy bar" style RAZR, and the PEBL is basically a low-end el-cheapo RAZR See the :
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/archive
site for details on these models.
Most of the Motorola phones support MP3 playing too, and have for some time. It's just the iTunes interface/software, AAC and Fairplay-protected-AAC file format support that's new in the ROKR and RAZR V3i. (They might've supported AAC before, since it's an open standard, part of MPEG4; I haven't checked.)
The announcement of the RAZR V3i yesterday was PERFECTLY timed for me -- I was JUST about to go switch to Cingular (maybe last night) and get a RAZR to finally replace my ancient decrepit Motorola StarTAC or get the CDMA version of the RAZR from Verizon later this month (see the RAZR V3c, also recently announced) Probably Cingular, though, as they don't restrict the BlueTooth OBEX profile and Verizon limits you to headset-only Bluetooth. Then I saw the V3i announcement. I'd have been SOOOOO pissed; the one major thing I didn't like about the older RAZR was that it didn't have a memory card slot. The V3i does have one.
This is a oft-repeated falsehood.
You have the option, set in the preferences, to downgrade all songs to 128kbps. It does NOT do it automatically. However, at only 512 megs, you definitely should do this, otherwise, you won't ever have to worry about coming close to the 100 song limit.
You fool! Don't you realize that Greenland is just the symptom! Denmark is the problem! Greenland is just the first step in Denmark's plan to take over the world!
Only Pinky and the Brain can help us now!
While Apple does make a profit on the iPod hardware, it is relatively small compared to the profit made filling the iPod with songs downloaded from iTunes.
You got this one backwards. Apple has a >>50% margin on the iPods. They make very little from the music store, it's barely above break-even.
It is speculation on a Blog. It is a post going to a blog from a person who writes on said blog. The blog has loads of ads. Lets do some math. Write inflammatory Story + Submit to Slashdot + Get a few people to click ads while reading said story = Profit.
/. posting peoples blogs so they can get some more money.
Nothing to see here, just another example of
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Personally, I want one, but I'm not going to pay a termination fee to get one.
Make love, not reality television.
All the news that's sh#t to print.
Jobs leads a fascist state
Apple didn't sabotage the ROKR, Motorola did. USB1 - it's 2005 and a new device came out with USB1? That's insane! It takes about an hour to fill the thing up!
OK, so it takes an hour. No problem, I'll just plug it into my computer before I go to bed and I'll wake up with a fully charged phone full of new music, right?
WRONG! The phone does NOT charge while connected to the computer!
What also sucks about the SU^H^HROKR:
When playing music, UI becomes unacceptably unresponsive. Like 2 seconds of lag between pushing a key and anything happening.
Despite the fact that you can play MP3s with it, you cannot set an MP3 to be your ring tone. What if I want my kids voice to be my ringtone? I will NEVER pay for a ring tone.
I couldn't get it to display any jpg I uploaded to it. It only wants to display images that came with it or were taken with it's own camera.
The built in amp wont drive my headphones very well (Etymotic ER4) so I tried plugging in my own headphone amp (Headroom BitHead). However, the ROKR headphone detection circuit has too low of a threshold and it cannot detect that an external amp with high impedence is plugged in: so the music continues to come out of the speakers! I had to wire a 10K resistor in parallel to get it to work. Then I discovered that the ROKR powers the headphones the entire time they are plugged in, not just when it is playing music. If you forget to unplug your headhpones when not listening to music your phone will quickly run out of juice.
The buttons have a weird shape and are hard to push without pushing the wrong buttons. I find it very diffcult to work the five way stick without pushing it in.
When you hold the phone between your shoulder and ear, nobody can understand what you are saying.
The shape of wall wart combine with the folding action of the terminals means that it is difficult to plug it into a standard power strip and if you get it plugged in there is a good chance it will loose connection as the terminals fold.
The UI is awful. There is no consistency. Sometimes it is "Back" sometimes "Exit" sometimes you push the left button to go back, sometimes you push the right button to go back.
Drivers within the phone have "crashed" disabling the BlueTooth. My phone told me I needed to reboot it!!
It's junk, I will never buy another Motorola phone.
In other news....Steve Jobs was the second gunman who shot JFK.
power cord Site map Aurich Power cords Europe VDE power cord American UL power cord Japan PSE power cord european power cord american power cord australia power cord ac power cord uk power cord italy power cord swiss power cord china power cord japan power cord argentina power cord korean power cord israel power cord ul power cord canada power cord csa power cord vde power cord bs power cord imq power cord sev power cord ccc power cord pse power cord iram power cord keti power cord power cords Australia SAA Power cords UK BSI 1363/A Power cords Italy IMQ Power cords Swiss SEV Power cords Argentina IRAM Power cords Korean KETI Power cords Israel Power cords China CCC Power cords
More likely that Apple wants to build their own iPhone that's iTunes capable. Isn't it funny that we're starting to think of iTunes capable vs. MP3 capable.
Clever folk those Apple people.
Just my 2 cents.
r
Don't switch to Verizon; they cripple their Bluetooth phones so that you can't exchange files and integrate with you computer, just so they can sell you ringtones and background themes instead of you being able to get your own. Cingular at least has the decency to let you use Bluetooth as is was meant to be used, enabling cool technology such as Salling Clicker (on the Mac, not sure what the Windows equivalent is) to use your cell phone as a remote control for your computer, and transferring of ring tones, photos and themes directly over Bluetooth.
I agree with the parent post that it's far-fetched that Apple would purposefully tank the ROKR. At the same time, they certainly didn't want it to be so popular that it would eat into iPod sales. Even if the royalties made up for it, I'm sure Apple (or maybe just Steve) would prefer the dominance of their product.
So it's kindof a fine line - if it sucks too much, it tarnishes the brand, but if it is wildly successful then Apple loses prominance and partners get more leverage.
Some company's make deals where each participant is making a gamble in the hopes that they both wind up ahead. Apple doesn't seem to take those kind of deals (not any more). With the HP iPod, Apple structured the deal in such a way that the HP iPod would not seem more appealing than an Apple iPod: no exclusive features, no WMA support, no HP music store, nada. I'm guessing the Motorola deal was similar to the HP iPod deal - regardless of what happens, Apple doesn't lose. Few people would take such a deal, and that's just fine by apple. But if they do, even better...
The last product licensing deal that Apple had with Motorola didn't go so well -- Motorola's Mac clones (as well as others) totally cannibalized Apple's mac sales. They probably didn't want a repeat.
. . . stupidity unguided by secret cabals or ninja assassins or Skull and Bones members.
A lot of the stupidity I see in the US is guided by a Skull and Bones member, which is a secret(ive) cabal.
I don't think he's a ninja assassin though.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I was at Wall-Mart the other day and they had a nice lineup of MP3 players on display. About 50% where 512 Meg, 25% 128 Meg, and 25% 1 Gig or more. I was quite surprised there were still so many players with so little memory. Although I wouldn't buy a player that small, it seems many others would. So I doubt any company is trying to "curb your freedom".
BTW: I don't own a cellphone or an iPod, but I do want a 60Gig video iPod someday. (even if I only have 3.5 Gig of music right now)
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
BTW, the 100 song limit is no problem for me. I encode at a minimum of 192k and I listen to live concert performances which have long tracks. I have never gotten close to hitting the 100 song limit. Clearly, the limit is there to prevent you from using a larger storage card in the phone. It shouldn't be a problem when you use the 512 megger that came with it.
I agree. Motorola did not help themselves with the design choices made on this phone.
My gripe is not with the 100 song limit. I didn't fill my Rokr up completely with songs. Then again, I might not be a "typical" Rokr user. I hold about 60 random songs on it and fill the rest up with podcasts, which I listen to on my morning commute. These podcasts last anywhere from 3 minutes to an hour each, so with that type of song to size ratio, I hit the 512 meg limit way before the 100 song limit.
The 100 song limit is, IMHO, much ado about nothing. There's plenty of other shortcomings of this phone. First, the USB 1.1 interface is ridiculous. It takes it an HOUR to fill up the 512 meg card. I understand that the write speed of the Trans-flash card is just slightly higher than the USB 1.1 speed anyways. Therefore, they should have used an SD and slapped a USB 2 cable into it.
At one hour of activity, this pounds the battery. Not a lot, but in a year, when my battery starts to hold less, I can just imagine a situation where I fill up the card, then have to immediately charge. Even worse, the battery may die before the transaction completes. They could have solved this issue by making the phone chargeable via the cable, but it's not. Really lame.
If the transaction dies, I could just start over, right? Wrong. If you drag a whole bunch of songs in the Rokr, it moves the file in a transaction-like copy. That is, all the files have to successfully copy over before it shows up on the phone. If you copy 50 songs and the cable disconnects at 49, the transaction fails and you have to start all over. I haven't tried this with Autofill, but when you drag and drop groups of songs in iTunes to the phone, it defintely does this.
Related to this, the cable connection is incredibly fragile. I don't know if it's just me, but the slightest bump will disconnect the device. I'm talking something as simple as gently moving it out of the way. I haven't done this at song number 49 out of 50, but I've done it at 48. Again, I had to start all over. I've resorted to placing the Rokr on the *floor* during large downloads. This is just a really crappy design decision by Motorola.
I'm glad it's failed because Motorola hopefully learned a lesson from this to make a better device. Still, I'm going to keep mine. Why? Because it's fine for listening to podcasts on the commute. I have a Shuffle for excercising and an iPod Photo for all other stuff. Most importantly, it does a fine job of being a phone, which is what I really needed in the first place. Imagine that.
ROKR:
GSM 850/1800/1900 for North America
108 x 46 x 20.5 mm, 89 cc
107 g
176 x 220 pixels, TFT, 256K colors
microSD (TransFlash), up to 512MB
VGA, 640x480 pixels, video
- Apple iTunes compatible
- Bluetooth
- MPEG4/MP3 player
- Java MIDP 2.0
- WAP 2.0
- iTAP
- Voice dial
- Calculator
- Organizer
- USB port
- Changeable covers
- Built-in handsfree
Standby: Up to 230 h
Talk: Up to 9 h
JBenchmark2.0 - 41
JBenchmark1.0 - 1140
k750i/w800i:
GSM 900/1800/1900
100 x 46 x 20.5 mm
99 g
176 x 220 pixels, TFT, 256K colors
Memory Stick Duo Pro, up to 1GB (2GB Duo coming soon)
2 MP (1632x1224) autofocus, video, flash
- Bluetooth (2.0 protocol vs. rokr's?)
- MP3/AAC player
- Video player
- WAP 2.0
- Java MIDP 2.0
- T9
- FM radio with RDS
- Image viewer
- Picture editor
- Organiser
- Voice memo
- USB port
- SyncML
- Built-in handsfree
Standby: Up to 400 h
Talk: Up to 9 h
JBenchmark2.0 - 350(8.5x ROKR)
JBenchmark1.0 - 4059(3.5x ROKR)
So tell me why anyone in their right mind would want to go get the ROKR? Oh yeah, 'cuz Cingular offers that phone for free with 2 year contract... I'll take T-mobile's 1 year contract + $200 phone cost for a FAR superior phone any day! Did I mention that Sony-Ericsson lets you do firmware update directly through their website? Try to do that on a RAZR or a ROKR! (For the longest time, V600's firmware can't hold more than 20 SMS msgs regardless of phone memory availability... I had to spend tons of time figuring out how to update the firmware)
If selling a terrible, poorly designed product actually got people to buy an "upgraded" version with the same name in the future, then the auto industry would-
Wait a second.
This theory explains the continued existence of Ford.
The newer models are always "better" than the old ones, while each and every one of them has sucked hard enough to make you want a couple hundred things "fixed" in your current vehicular incarnation of frustration.
To stretch the automotive analogy a little further, this means Apple is the Toyota or Honda of the market, and is trying to become the Ford, which doesn't make sense form a business perspective.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
I work for a wireless provider here in Canada. Every Motorola product has problems with the battery, software or the flip breaks. We've stopped recommending them.
Slashdot: Conspiracy theories for nerds, stuff that might have happened.
-William Brendel
...and bought a Sony-Ericsson w800i. Best. Purchase. Ever. No lame restrictions on how many mp3's I can have, and it has eliminiated the need for me to carry a phone AND an iPod. I also have the bonus of a 2 megapixel camera. Life is good.
AND it works in the USA.
...18...19...20 Submit
I got this Nokia over a year ago. It plays mp3s, takes pictures (640x480, not that bad actually) and video, and it uses a MMC card so I can simply put the card in my memory card reader and put whatever I want on the phone off my computer. Nokia also puts realplayer on this bad boy, so I can even play back porn (in ra format) from my computer on my celly. Comes in handy at school when Im sitting in the back.
This thing cost me $160 over a year ago, and I still haven't seen anything even close other than the new version of the same phone (i forgot the model number)and maybe the trio 650.
I got a nice pair of headphones and an adapter so it works just like a 1gb Ipod, and I don't have to use stupid ass itunes (yes, itunes is stupid, I think it uses up way too many resources and has way too much crap built in that I'll never use). I just keep asking ipod owners, why? why pay so much for so little? Why buy music that should be free? Why bend over and take it nice and dry from Steve Jobs? Oh, and by the way, ipods are easy to break; way easier than my cell phone (which I have dropped quite a few times). My buddy has gone through 4 of them in 16 months. He said every single time he has dropped his ipod while it was turned on; the internal hard drive broke. (its a 20gb model)
Anyway, I'm just glad that I'm a nerd and not some douchebag paying 99c a song, and breaking my music player every two weeks.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
Yes, I believe that Apple sabotaged the ROKR. I believed from the first release day that Apple made a mediocre product on purpose to not wake up the cellular phone company dogs. By releasing a mediocre product it wouldn't scare any of the 'old school' telephone corporations into quashing an innovation that they didn't have a hand in within their realm of service. It's a very intelligent idea, that sets Apple up to making a much more improved product in the near future without giving a shock to the telephone companies since the product had already been introduced, albeit in a crippled manner.
There may be some lucrative gold at the end of the rainbow on this line of product.
Now that Motorola has the hardware working, they can consider cutting Apple out of the loop. By, say, cutting a deal with WalMart.
Phones are phones. I'd rather have a lightweight, compact cell phone, and a lightweight, compact mp3 player than try and merge the two.
Calls interupting songs? Press pause. Not able to hear the phone ring? Vibrate.
Also, given the way tele companies charge for ringtones and features, they'd make a much better ally for RIAA than MP3 manufacturers.
while you are more correct than the previous poster you are exagerating quite a bit here... if apple had a profit margin over 50% someone else would have long since eaten their lunch...
it should be fairly easy to figure out the profit margin on these things... we know how many they sold and we know the profit that apple reports the iPod bringing in right? souldnt all this be in the quarterly reports? I havent owned apple stock in a few years but maybe it is time to dig up some of this info.
plus... there is not way that all the iPods have the same (or even similar) profit margins...
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
A product associated with the Apple brand name fails, and hence it must be a conspiracy? O-kaaay...
Apple took a risk by associating the iTunes branding with another company's cell phone. The phone didn't end up being a big seller -- perhaps because of the 512MB/100 song limit, or because it was bad timing for such a product, or because the market is already saturated with cell phones at $0 down that locks customers into a 2+ year contract.
Why in the world would Apple associate its brand name with an intentional flop? If they really wanted it to fail, they would have let someone else take the risk. It makes no sense to sully your own name... When was the last time that you bought a brand name device when you had already had bad experiences with something of the same brand name? Despite the fact that they were totally different devices, like a portable CD player and a TV, for example.
Additionally, the idea that Apple was trying to sour consumers on the idea of integrated devices seems particularily silly. The iPod itself is an integrated deivce, and becomes more so with every new version. First it just played music. Then it showed pictures. Now you can get ones that also play video. Why in the world would Apply try to convince people not to buy iPods? They'd be shooting themselves in the foot -- on purpose!
I call BS on your call of BS!
Ah yes, the Apple-designed DRM system has hit the fundamental limits of physics / current technology (which Apple has defined by their FairPlay DRM); there is no way they can allow more than 100 songs in any cell phone made by anyone (Motorola OR Nokia, so it MUST not be predatory), but iPods and iTunes somehow can support many, many more... Ergo it must not have been a business decision.
Unless compelling evidence is given otherwise, let's make the more valid assumption that decisions businesses make are "BUSINESS DECISIONS." Very few companies push the boundaries of what is physically or even technologically possible; how far back from that limit a business operates is a BUSINESS DECISION. Even saintly only-good-intentioned, non-predatory (cough, cough) Apple.
By the way, using italicized noncommital language like could doesn't relieve you of responsibility for the ridiculous statements that follow.
And whining about the article posing as original journalism is unnecessary: many references are made to the Wired article as a source, and it is clear that the article is the author's read on the situation as presented by the article and the surrounding situation. You wish to invalidate his speculation because he is not a journalist and posting online? Guess we are mostly all guilty of that one. Is a movie reviewer invalidated because he didn't really make the movie?
Mod parent up to 6 for flawless and all-too-common slashdot logic.
Every day IU have to read about how bad my phone is.
I don't know what the problem is, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it.
It's a phone that plays MP3's and has half a gig of memory... to use anyway I like.
I can synch my address book and iCal via bluetooth and iSynch...
It takes decent photos and does video capture as well... with audio.
I don't have a lot of time to listen in headphones since I am self employed and
growing a business, so the 100 song limit is fine. In fact, I only put 60 songs on it so I have just under 200 megs left over for file storage.
I never expected this to be an iPod in a phone.
I expected it to be a phone with a JME Version of iTunes.
But every day I go online, it seems I am told I am a fool for buying one.
Every day I am told that this phone is sooooo bad.
So can someone please tell me why I am supposed to no like this phone?
Because I sure as hell don't know why.
But I do apologize for having bought one.
I'm sure you all know far better than I every detail about the ROKR E1.
you think either of them -really- wanted to make a device that lived up to the total technical potential that we all know is possible? nope. they're both gorillas and doing so would conflict with each of their own existing works-very-well-so-we'll-make-sure-it-can't-change business models. memory expansion for cheap storage sizes? apple won't go for that. download arbitrary music over the phones data connection to the phone (purchased from itunes or otherwise)? nope, that'd cost cell phone providers bandwidth. they really want to charge a commission for that. a ringtone sells for a lot of money, why shouldn't someone pay 10-20x that for an actual song on a phone?
thats just for starters.. doomed from the outset. someone not an existing player can do it better and either get squashed, bought or both.
Your Nokia 6620 does what you want it to do. Having used both Nokia and Motorola phones, the value really boils down to interface. Despite computer-like attributes, phone software should be intuitive so that it can be used out of the box. Combining an interface so poor as motorola's with a rather small storage space and the name "iPod" cannot polish the turd so well that it becomes gold.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
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Do the phone part die also or is-there some kind of dual-battery or some limitation which allows you to still use the phone but not the MP3 player?
That's my main objection to this kind of phone, while it doesn't bother me when my MP3 player goes down because of the battery, I wouldn't like to being no more able to send/receive a phone call..
Now if the battery is swappable as in an MP3 player, you can have a spare battery with you, is-it swappable?
Somebody had too much coffee this morning! Yeesh.
I didn't say it makes sense to me -- I said that's what Wired reported. Apple Blog presents no facts to contradict this report. If Apple Blog wants to speculate about things other than what Wired reported, that's their call. But let's all be clear that it's speculation unsupported by evidence.
In fact, Apple Blog could do us all a favor and dig into this question for us. What are these limits imposed by FairPlay that Wired wrote about? Or is Wired just off its rocker? Either one would be useful to know.
You've never encountered a piece of software with a ridiculous limitation built in? Even today when computers have 4GB of RAM on board, MS Excel can only address ~64,000 rows in a spreadsheet. Is that evidence of a conspiracy by MS to "sabotage" the financial sector? Or is it just bad programming?
Who said Apple was "saintly" or "good intentioned"? I don't have trouble believing that Apple would screw Moto. We just don't have any evidence to indicate this is what happened, unless Apple Blog is privy to facts Wired is not.
No, I wish to point out that his speculation is not supported by the article he cites. You don't have to be a full time journalist to have a reasonable grasp on the difference between speculating based on established facts and speculating based on your unsupported opinions.
Maybe Apple Blog should call up Apple and ask them to comment on Wired's reporting. That would actually shed some light on the situation, rather than just aimlessly speculating based on the phase of the moon or what have you.
If the reviewer panned the movie on the basis of scenes that did not actually appear in the film, then yes, his opinion is not valid. This does not seem like a controversial assertion to me.
Read my blog.
Had I been browsing at a different filter level I would have seen this sooner. Motorola may have the hottest phones due to marketing prowess, but they're awful from a usability standpoint.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
Wow, how did you come up with that factoid? My iPods all hold more than 100 songs, yet they use FairPlay DRM.
The 100 song limitation is quite obviously an artificial way to keep cell phones from overlapping into iPod territory. There isn't even any mystery involved.
Steve Jobs imposes a style of not doing things until he feels they can be done "as desired." He panned video on the iPod until they had a screen and chipset that made video decently possible. Somewhat similarly, the both the Mac and the NeXT hardware were monocrome until high quality color was available. It wasn't that color couldn't be done, it was that it couldn't be done well (Compare 256 color PCs of the time). The iPod Photo could sorta do video, but it wouldn't have done it "right," so it was artificially limited from doing it at all.
Phones are not close enough to Apple's radar for them to be interested in doing a phone of their own. I'll bet that will change as Apple increases their reach into new markets. However, with the pressure to have "iPod" features on a phone, Apple did the smartest thing possible: they brought in a partner to manage all the risk, gave them enough rope to release "an iPod phone product" but distanced themselves enough to allow Motorola's meah-quality phone to do down without doing much damage to the iPod.
There's no secret conspiracy at work, it's just obvious protection of their assets. Apple has learned not to license off their profitable markets after the Mac Clone experiment resulted in the company subsidizing software development for other's (including Motorola's) profitable hardware sales, to the detriment of Apple's own high-end (and most profitable) sales.
I would imagine that Apple won't ever try to license out designs for hardware again (like Microsoft attempts to do; even MS is floundering in trying to sell designs for tablets, handhelds, wma players, etc). Anyone who licenses Apple technology has got to know that if Apple's not selling it themselves, it's because they don't think they can make money on it, AND, that if Apple's licensing it away, it is going to be neutered enough so as not to compete directly with things they are selling.
Can you imagine Microsoft licensing away the Xbox? And they're not even making money on Xbox hardware sales.
Anyone who thinks Apple is interested in licensing away their hardware revenues on the iPod, the Mac or in relation to Intel Macs (including running Mac OS X on standard PCs) hasn't been paying attention. In particular, Apple's not likely to auction off their gold egg laying geese while their new hardware sales are growing nearly 3x as fast as Dell & HP, and while they are selling their own hardware as fast as China can build it for them.
This conspiracy theory is conveniently reminiscent of New Coke, a theory Coke laughed off by saying, "We're not that dumb, and we're not that smart."
More likely Apple wanted to test the waters to see how well such a product would be received without making an all out gambit in the market. This way, they can try it, but if it fails, well "we didn't have anything to do with the design, it just licensed our DRM". If it does well, I fully expect a slick-as-hell phone *designed by Apple* to come out, perhaps as part of a full size iPod offering...
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"... sloppiness and stupidity unguided by secret cabals or ninja assassins or Skull and Bones members."
The US president is a member of the Skull and Bones.
I presume that tidbit causes the Skull and Bones a lot of depression...in secret, of course.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There is plenty of room inside the new photo ipod to put a phone if you replace the drive with a few gig of flash. There is enough room inside an 2 gig ipod nano to put a phone it in as well.
Why would Apple want to "sabatoge" mp3 cell phones when Apple itself has iTunes on a cell phone available from Cingular. That's contradictory.
i only have two ears. how can i fit headphones for each device on all at once?
The trouble with this "insight" is that it presupposes that the only reason to have 1,000 songs on your iPod is because you're going to take a 3 1/2 day drive across the country and want to ensure that you don't listen to the same song twice. If that were true, then you and the Motorola guy would be quite right.
But, of course, that's silly. You want to be able to listen to any of your music at any time. Well, most of us do. You're quite satisfied, apparently, to limit yourself to less than a dozen albums containing music that seemed appealing when you were sitting around loading the thing up at your computer, but which isn't going to fit your mood later. That's all well and good, but I feel quite certain you and Mr. Motorola are in the minority.
I wonder if Apple were worker (slave) owned - if it would hate it's consumers as much? I got the worker as a slave from an interview with Noam Chomsky. Once a worker isn't a slave to one person - then I would expect the worker/owners would "Be All They Could Be!" and make Apple a totally different company - where the customer came first. Its obvious that a multi-billion dollar company could have produced the multipurpose mobile product that we all want - that can do video/audio/telephoney/browsing/TV as well as running the desktop at home - and maybe be a good still and video camcorder blah blah. We might even get into the public realm more often and watch the unexpected - and maybe even talk to a complete stranger. Instead Apple plays the game of coning people to be "cool" - with products that have been castrated in one way or another.
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately ascribed to incompetence.
but I'll tell you what they accomplished. I was tempted by the Sony Ericsson W800 from the time it came out a few months before the ROKR, but wanted to wait to see what Moto and Apple came out with. As soon as the ROKR came out and I saw how unremarkable it was, I went to the store and picked up my W800. It's a fantastic phone, and I even though I'm an Apple fan, and have been all of my life, I really don't care if my phone has iTunes as long as it plays AAC and MP3, and has good sound quality. The W800 also has a great camera, lets me use any headphones I want, and has the best earbuds I've found for less than a few hundred dollars.
So yeah, I don't know what you were thinking, Apple, but maybe, just maybe, you got this one wrong and created a significant opportunity for someone else. I don't want another device in my pocket, and for doing something as SIMPLE as playing music files, I don't need a dedicated device.
So obviously cell phones pose a valid threat to the venerable iPod.
Cellphone + iPod: Well, the iPod gives you at least 10 hours of music before you recharge and when it gets low you can still use your phone. The cellphone that can just about go a long weekend on standby between charges. Used to be longer, but they started adding more functions and making them smaller... but they seem to be hitting a wall, at least they've stopped getting worse. Maybe people are pushing back on the battery problem at last.
Cellphone playing MP3s: Hell, I gave up using my PDA to play MP3s because I was tired of not being able to get at my calendar because I was conserving my battery... and my PDA didn't have to run a radio transceiver full time. I can't see how this could ever have seemed like a good idea to anyone who really needed to use their phone as a phone.
Well, somebody is downloading enough from iTunes to make others want a larger piece of the pie. If there wasn't any money in it why would that be? It's been reported that iTunes has had over 500 million sales at ten cents a song, that's $5 million in profits.
$5 million in profits for running an on-line store is a pretty good return on capital.
Oops, that should read $50 million in profits, not $5million.
The idea is that his company provided a linkage of satellites which was put into orbit and rented by various customers, (like his company), to transmit news and videos, etc., to different cities in the blink of an eye. For this service, the said company charged a lot of money.
As the internet became a growing reality, and email a popular new service, my friend observed a conversation between the boss and a subordinate who had asked the following question. . .
While I don't know if it was deliberate manipulation, general incompetence or budgetary concerns which drove Apple's decision, I DO know having witnessed it a few times in a few other industries, that the fear of losing one's viability and relevance (and your pay check) drives people to distraction in a big, big way. That fear can make people do some pretty extreme things. --It sometimes sounds a bit silly until you find yourself in the middle of watching your living fall out from under you, but when it happens, you start acting funny. It's like talking about relationship problems other people might be experiencing, and being right in the middle of your own relationship problems; Fear and Jealousy and similar instincts bubble up from different, older parts of the brain, (the parts we share with reptiles and lower animals), and which fight to overcome the more rational, more evolved elements of the brain.
As such, even with the dumbest, dirtiest jobs, people often fight and scrap and low-blow to keep rather than simply leave for the uncertainty of maybe finding greener pastures. Fear of the unknown makes us do dumb things if we don't exert our will and control our lower impulses.
This is partly why it makes me blink when people cry, "Conspiracies Do Not Exist." I don't think they are being realistic. --Even a humble guy like me has, with the help of others, secretly planned and executed plans designed to create future benefits for small groups. It happens all the time. --It's the reason businesses prize their secrecy and don't share their latest discoveries and marketing plans with their competitors. It's the reason spies are employed by nations. It's the reason there are laws on the books which use the word, "Conspiracy". --Conspiracies are real, and the darker ones have played important roles in defining much of our present state of society and national and personal identity. Indeed, the fear of being a social out-cast which makes some people declare that, "Conspiracies Do Not Exist" is the result of more yet quiet marketing; more conspiracies.
The argument which is most often used against the existence of conspiracies, "People can't keep secrets," I find quite silly. --It is true, people CAN'T keep secrets very well. But what makes that point irrelevant is that the general public has no problem in looking the other way and happily accepting lies at face value. It works like a charm.
-FL
Interestingly you can purchase the much cheaper E398 with a 64Mb Transflash card as stock, zip over to motomodders.net and grab the instructions to upgrade the firmware and make it a ROKR. The only difference between the ROKR and the E398 is the extra iTunes button on the front, which you can re-map elsewhere...
Task Mangler
Maybe a simpler explanation was that apple didn't want the ROKR to cannibalize Shuffle sales, and so limited the number of songs it would play, keeping the Shuffle competitive. Thats not quite the same as saying Apple sabotaged the ROKR and wanted it to be a disaster. I don't know what Apple makes per ROKR sold, but I suspect its less than they make on any model of iPod. The limitation sucks for Motorola, and for users, but is necessary for Apple to protect its interests.
Implicit in this accusation is that Apple is some sort of malignant opportunist and Motorola is a naive victim of treachery. Apple didn't do anything without Motorola's knowledge and agreement, and Motorola has MUCH more experience in the mobile phone industry than Apple. If Motorola thought the ROKR would be a disaster, they wouldn't have released it.
Apple was pretty open about why they allowed the ROKR ever to exist. It was an experiment. There are plenty of mp3 playing phones that have done reasonably well to think that making one that sucks would sour consumers against the entire paradigm. Thats nonsense. However, it reasonable that Apple should hedge their bet when they have the most to lose from the venture (e.g. thriving iPod sales).
In Japan, it's getting hard to find a phone without an mp3 player these days. And on a recent trip back to the UK, it appeared that they weren't short of music phones there either. Is America lagging so far behind the curve that the ROKR is the only choice?
This story in wired......
I just moved to Japan and got my first taste of what real new phones can do.
I got myself the SH901is from Sharp. I haven't had time to play with it much to see if it can play .mp3's or not. It does have a decent 3 megapixel camera, a 320x240 video recorder that can record over 40 minutes of video and audio to my 128MB miniSD, and video phone. There's a lot of neat apps like acting as a DVR for a TV, a remote control, auto news grabber. Most of which I can't use since I can't read Japanese yet. The only thing sorely missing the bluetooth capability and my laptop doesn't have an IR port built in. D'oh!
I don't see the profit numbers for the iPod on the quarterly report, just the income. However, Apple's gross margin across the board is 30%, so my guess is not too far off. Products like the mac mini and the shuffle do not have large margins, but the regular-price iPods have been estimated to have a bill of materials cost of about 1/2 their retail price, so a 30% margin on them is quite realistic.
As far as competitors eating their lunch: it doesn't happen, mainly because Apple has much larger volumes than any of them, so it can get better deals on components.
Alright, you wrote a reasonable response, so I will respond.
The fact that the article is speculation, we all agree. It just isn't something that, in my mind, requires pointing out, since the article itself points it out. A valid criticism of a speculation piece, however, is not that it is speculation. You can criticize slashdot for posting speculation, or criticize someone for taking it as hard fact. But otherwise, it is what it is, and let's stop wishing that it were something else.
Put another way: I wish that Picasso had composed symphonies. It is logically fallacious (or just pointless) of me, however, to criticize his paintings because he wasn't composing symphonies instead.
Those are business decisions. Apple built the software in question, so it is Apple's business decision to limit the # of tunes on the phone. It's not like apple bought the DRM software from Microsoft to sell to Moto; it is Apple's software that enforces the 100 song limit. And even if it had bought somebody else's DRM software, they could probably choose the guy who sold DRM software that allowed more than 100 songs. But that's not the case; Apple has FULL CONTROL over themselves and the products they produce, within physical and technological limitations (e.g., they can't build a perpetual motion machine). End of story.
No, that's called a Business Decision. That's my point. MS limits its excel users to 64k rows, possibly at one time as a technological limit of the architecture they chose (16 bit), but now as a business decision (cuz as you said yourself, they could do more w/ 4GB of RAM), but they see no compelling reason to change the software now.
Your assertion that "his speculation is not supported by the article he cites" misses the point of speculation. The article gives a couple of facts, or purported facts, and the reviewer uses these and a couple of other points (such as, that the DRM software is completely under Apple's control, and that Apple makes good profit off of iPods and leads the market in the category). Connecting those points together by some reasoning is speculation, and is not directly supported by anything.
Now if you are referring to your original post's quote of the Wired article and your reasoning that the Wired article directly contradicts the speculation in the blog, I think you are completely FOS. I gave reasons why earlier (Apple has control, etc), and we can argue those, but it seems they fell on deaf ears (or blind eyes, as it were).
I feel my movie reviewer analogy is inferior to my Picasso analogy, but nonetheless, you seem to be the reviewer who is panning the movie on the basis of scenes that did not actually appear. Examples:
"Maybe Apple Blog should call up Apple and ask them to comment on Wired's reporting"
"In fact, Apple Blog could do us all a favor and dig into this question for us"
I've had a Nokia 3300 1gig for a year. works great, has all the tools and plays tunes. I think Apple just does not care about phones but had to finish the contract. BTW they are $35 on eBay now.
Just by designing an MP3 Player that far exceeds every expectation of common music listener, Apple has set new standards for MP3 player,made consumers set new expectations for any MP3 player. Every one compares any mp3 player to Apple's. How many times we didn't say - this player has more features, but it's not as good as Nano or it's just not cool..
:).. I am sure Apple can also do anything to retain their consumer base and they have statistics to support this move..
The allegation that Apple deliberately introduced a bad product to sway consumers from cellphone-mp3 player market to keep control over the mp3 market - makes perfect sense from strategy point of view. What would be
easiest way to steer consumers away from cellphone-mp3 market to ipod
market? Just make them realise cellphone-mp3 isn't just cool as Nano..
In other words just make them realise that ROCKR is not as good as their exceptionally good Nano/Ipod.. Statistics could point to 100 reasons why not let develop that new market.. Strategic players can think of any trick that might work. You click somewhere and as result somebody pays money to somebody.. I sure didn't know that I was earning good Karma by just googling..
whaddya reckon ?