Slashdot Mirror
Did Apple Sabotage the ROKR?
JPigford writes "The Apple Blog makes claim that Apple sabotaged the success of the ROKR so as to sway public opinion of MP3 cell phones in general...ultimately to drive more sales to the iPod. By mandating a 100 song limit on the ROKR and having the product flop, Apple was able to put a bad taste in the mouths of consumers so that not only do they drive more iPod sales, but they keep competitors from fighting back with their own MP3 phones."
Hate to point out the obvious, but apple does like control over products using it's services. Is it really that far fetched?
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 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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Hate to point out the obvious, but apple does like control over products using it's services. Is it really that far fetched?
Of course it isn't - if you're leveraging Apple's stuff, then prepare for them to protect their own best interests as well. However the idea that they were trying to sour consumers on the idea of integrated devices sounds a little bit ridiculous (though it earned that terribly-heavyweight site lots of views) - Consumers don't have such a disconnect between devices, and a good MP3 player, whether a part of a cellphone, a PDA, or a stand-alone, is a good MP3 player, and the bad ones are bad ones. Indeed, there are a lot of terrible stand-alone MP3 players by shoddy companies, but I'd hardly say that it "soured the market" such that the iPod couldn't happen. It sounds more likely that Apple wanted to limit how much the specific device ate into their own sales - all of the advantages of the iPod, but with a couple of limitations. It says or predicts nothinga bout competing devices.
Personally I think the time is long overdue for good integrated cell/pda/mp3 players. MP3 playing in particular is so trivial that it's absurd that we have such powerful electronics that we lug around, but they can't credibly and easily play mp3s. Usually the implementation is ridiculously short sighted (I got a PDA to double as an MP3 player, and everything worked great but the DAC was terribly low quality. A couple of cents and they destroyed that entire use).
Motorola does NOT make phones for consumers, it makes them for carriers.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I don't think the time is right for a "good integrated cell/pda/mp3 player". I think the problem is the life expectancy and different function of each of these items. I expect to keep a cell phone for the length of my contract (1-2 years) and it will serve me for work and personal use. My PDA is pretty much work only, but I may expect to hold on to it longer than a year or two. Finally, an MP3 player is strictly for my personal enjoyment and I will keep it as long as it works (or until something vastly superior comes along).
I want specialized devices, not a "jack of all trades, master of none" device and I don't think I am alone in this. So I think to say that a "good integrated cell/pda/mp3 player" is long overdue just isn't true.
Finding other idiots on
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.
Not to mention the battery issue.
Of a small rechargable battery, a good cell phone can give you about a week of stand-by time without recharging. Even if you use it a lot, you should only need to charge it about once every day or two while avoiding it every completely running the charge out.
If you let it run out, you could miss an important call, so this is important.
An MP3 Player's battery's life cycle is measured in hours of playback, and when it runs out, it's no big deal. You just need to hook it up to a charger for 1-4 hours sometime before the next time you want to listen to it.
Make the same device to both functions, and guess what your biggest problem is going to be.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I want specialized devices, not a "jack of all trades, master of none" device and I don't think I am alone in this.
This line gets dragged out everytime this gets brought up, yet already our electronics have seen integration, and it is only going to continue - indeed accelerate. There is a point in PDAs, MP3 players, and cell phones, where it is good enough to completely satsify the majority of consumers - it is, in effect, a master of the realm if it satisfies the consumer, even if a specialized high-end stand-alone unit lets them add irrelevant effects to their music. I love my Digital Rebel XT, yet there are a lot of people for whom the digital camera in their cell phone is more than adequate (with extreme portability to boot).
My cell phone already has a pretty powerful processor in it, a good colour screen, a very capable data entry/navigation system, it's tiny, and has a fantastic battery. Flash memory is getting ultra cheap, so it's obvious that cell phones are increasibly going to integrate MP3 players (and FM radios), and even video and PDA functionality (of course you could say that PDAs are integrating cell phones - it's all the same thing). Why should I carry three different devices - all of them powered by general purpose CPUs (often the SAME CPU) just running different software, with a slightly different form?
Make the same device to both functions, and guess what your biggest problem is going to be.
Umm...probably not what you think it will be?
The amount of power that a cell phone is using constantly keeping in touch with the cell tower, powering the display, and carrying out a conversation (where it becomes a radio station) is enormous compared to the miniscule power needs of an MP3 player. The power impact of playing MP3s on a cell phone would be marginal at best.
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
Yes, but a device which does both functions all day long would probably only last about half a day (at best) per charge cycle, unless you used a battery which was bigger than an entire iPod nano... in which case you didn't really save a heck of a lot of space by combining the gadgets.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The problem isn't that integration is necessarily a bad thing. It's that the companies doing the integrating design for the lowest common denominator. Thus, you get a lousy PDA, a lousy MP3 player, and a lousy camera built into a phone that periodically crashes when you're making a phone call.
Those camera phones? They're fine for people wanting to just send a quick pic to their friends---hey, look, I'm in Rome---but I don't know of anybody who would consider any of them good enough for taking photos that they want to keep. That's why few people complain that all you can generally do with those photos is email them to other people (for a price). They don't use the phone to take pictures for their memories. They use the camera's phone for photos that don't matter. If they're on vacation and want photos to keep, they either take a separate camera or buy a disposable.
Single-purpose devices are consistently, more reliable, offer better functionality, and offer interfaces tailored to a particular function. Integrated devices are consistently less reliable, offer watered-down functionality (usually for political reasons within a company), and consistently have clumsy interfaces.
No, thanks.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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
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.
...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?
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.
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.
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*
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Or, you could just buy one on ebay without the discounts at actual retail price, and swap sim cards.
Zing!
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."
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.
A lens of the size that will fit into a cellphone is never going to be good enough to take very good pictures. The quality is not a function of materials, but of size. The lenses on a dSLR aren't huge because people like their cameras to look impressive. You can build a really tiny 10 megapixel CCD that can work with a 6mm focal length and a lens that's a couple of millimeters in diameter, and end up with some really horrible-looking "high quality" pictures.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Apple has a stranglehold on the downloaded music market and the DRM format used by the biggest (their) service in the market. Sure, you can avoid that and try to build up your own competing service or try to rely on the small services that use open formats but that's not that effective.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Slashdot: Conspiracy theories for nerds, stuff that might have happened.
-William Brendel
Now that Motorola has the hardware working, they can consider cutting Apple out of the loop. By, say, cutting a deal with WalMart.
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!
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.
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...
That's the real genius behind their evil plan!
1) Make people believe Apple produces the best MP3 products around.
2) Make sure "iTunes on a cell phone" sucks
3) Buy stock in white plastic (see: 1 above)
4) Make people think cell phones suck as MP3 players (if Apple can't get it any better than this...)
5) Sell more ipods!
Genius, I say!
Required reading for internet skeptics