Why the Rokr Phone Is An Important Failure 470
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian has some interesting commentary on the new iPod cellphone." From the article: "The music-player module works like an iPod - though it lacks the clickwheel that makes its big brothers function so slickly. But overall, the impression is distinctly underwhelming. The word on the streets is that far from being the revolutionary device that will bring about media 'convergence', the Rokr is, well, just the sum of its parts. And that, it seems to me, is the most interesting thing about it."
Mighty Panel (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if Apple is able to pull such a trick where it uses its Mighty Mouse [slashdot.org] technology to provide both keypad and clickwheel on the same surface. Icons/numbers will be displayed accordingly through this LCD-type surface.
Now that will not only change the way we interact with mobile phones. For example, on game-playing mode, this Mighty-Panel will switch to a gamepad; On net-browsing mode, it offers scrollbars, back/forward buttons.
Re:Mighty Panel (Score:2)
Of course it does. After all, didn't you hear? Creative invented that. That's why they got the patent on it.
Re:Mighty Panel (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mighty Panel (Score:2, Insightful)
You have that reversed. Apple doesn't design phones, Motorola does. Motorola isn't going to let Apple control their phone designs.
Re:Mighty Panel (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mighty Panel (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mighty Panel (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm, perhaps the click wheel could function as an old rotary dial... :)
Re:Mighty Panel (Score:3, Insightful)
The article misses the point of the ROKR completely, and this comment is proof.
THe ROKR isn't supposed to be an iPod in any way shape, or form. The ROKR is a phone with iTunes software, minus the purchase functionality.
Does the iPod run iTunes? Then why should the ROKR be treated as an "iPod phone"?
Re:Mighty Panel (Score:5, Insightful)
The Motorola phone doesn't run anything that looks or works like iTunes. It's an "iTunes phone" because you can sync your music to it from iTunes.
The phone should be considered an "iPod phone" for all intents and purposes, but Apple didn't want to dilute the "iPod" brand for something so clunky.
Failures aren't important for one reason. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Failures aren't important for one reason. (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, that doesn't get reviewed for another month or two.
Re:Failures aren't important for one reason. (Score:2, Interesting)
Steve is a master marketer if nothing else, and there's no way he wouldn't have known the iPod nano presentation would utterly eclipse it. The question I ask is why so much in the way of underwhelming promotion from Apple themselves? So many people online (and I realise this isn't an ultimate metric of possible popularity) have clamo
Re:Failures aren't important for one reason. (Score:5, Interesting)
For steve to accept something like the ROKR makes me suspect he has a point to make, but I'm not sure just what it is yet.
"Buy iPods, not Phones".
Which will work for a while, but eventually (1-2 years) phones will have 4-8GB of flash, wireless transfer, and a 'good enough' UI. And then it is bye-bye for the lowend music player market. Just expect Apple to do as little as possible to help this along.
Re:Failures aren't important for one reason. (Score:3, Interesting)
Good gravy. I'm truely amazed at some of the 'black and white' attitudes around here. Convergance is not about destroying a category of device. Never was, never will be. (Seriously, if it were, you'd think there would be much stronger attempts.) Instead, it's about convenience. My cell phone, for example, has a cra
Re:Failures aren't important for one reason. (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple and its own tail. (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact you need to be interested in this article. It makes a really keen obversation about Apple; that Apple is too scared to damage itself in order to imporve itself. This implies that Apple viewes itself and its current business posture as weak, and thus must do everytihing in its power to keep the status quo. Look at its move towards Intel chips f
Re:Apple and its own tail. (Score:3, Insightful)
Quite honestly, I think Apple realized they hit the end of the road w/ their current CPU partner. When they deadended (or predicted the end) with Motorola they switched to IBM. If anything, Apple is showing just how different they really are. Apple knows they are limited - they moved somewhere else. How many other companies/product lines would be willing to make that kind of risk? And Apple's done it three times (that
Re:Apple should be scared. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple had originally intended to move to an internally developed next-generation OS in the mid-late nineties. You may have heard of it - its codename was Copland. It was one of the greatest software development disasters in recent memory. It repeatedly missed milestones, and Apple eventually decided the project was too ambitious and gave it the axe. At that point, Apple went shopping for a new OS. They looked at any number of candidates, but the two strongest suitors ended up being BeOS and NeXTStep.
Keep in mind, NeXTStep had been around since the mid-to-late 80's, so it was a fairly mature system by that point. It's certainly possible the UNIX underpinnings had some effect on Apple's final decision, but it seems far more likely the relative maturity of NeXT relative to Be and Steve Jobs had a greater effect than the underlying system.
Remember that Apple had stayed afloat at this point solely due to its loyal fanbase. I rather doubt UNIX fanboyism (even rarer then as this all hapened before Linux really started to gain wind in the mainstream) played much into Apple's decision.
The point of all this? Betting on NeXT was a life-or-death decision for Apple. Far from going with any flow, it was a radical shift in architechture that had to result in either success or the failure of the company. Apple's failed attempt at a modern OS with Copland had cost the company literally millions. They quite simply couldn't afford to ahve that happen a second time. Neither could they sit and do nothing as MacOS was already technically hobbled by the mid-90's.
Dismissing the evolution of NeXT into Rhapsody and eventually OS X as being a path of least resistance indicates a lack of familiarity with the actual gravity of the move at the time. It was a huge risk that paid off in the long run. The iPod may be another story - less risky, but still took a to that point niche market with mediocre at best sales and turning it into a phenomenally successful mainstream one indicates they did *SOMETHING* other than go with the flow. What that was is left as an excercise to the reader.
None of this is meant to defend to ROKR. Everything I've seen seems to indicate that Apple doesn't really care about it on any real level. But choosing the original iPod and OS X as examples of Apple being unwilling to take risks seems a bit ludicrous to me.
Re:Apple should be scared. (Score:3, Informative)
that sort of customer-abuse is fairly typical with verizon (the 'get it now' variety of shackles and chains), but cingular hasn't been known for it.
until apple and motorola stumbled through the door with this absurd monstrosity, cingular's flagship mp3 phone was the nokia 6230, which will accommodate up to a gigabyte of bog-standard SD flash memory (the slot's right under the battery), play mp3's without the ridiculo
Well duh... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well duh... (Score:2)
Well duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
I always cringe when they state the number of songs. While it's always easier that way for consumers to understand, I am thinking: "hmmm...100 songs at 96kbps AAC?"
No thank you!
JB
Re:Well duh... (Score:4, Interesting)
All Apple Songs from iTunes Music store are 128kbps AAC's the Rokr will hold ~100 of those songs.
a 128 AAc is at least as good quality wise as a 128kbps Ogg, or a 168 mp3.
Of course that doesn't make the Rokr phone any more useful. The best suggestion to date is go get a Razor and tape a nano to the back of it. You will get a better deal on both dies of the equation.
The Ultimate Media Device... (Score:3, Insightful)
Storage wasn (Score:2)
Storage not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the nano, it's got such tiny flash chips which are huge storage-wise.
Storage size isn't the problem. There's no shortage of phones with a lot more than the 100 song capability of this one - including the Rockr. Note that Apple actually limits the capability to 100 songs, no matter how much memory you have.
Which to me basically says that Apple does not want a phone with music capability to succeed, and this device is deliberately underwhelming, and an attempt to deflect that trend for a while. It goes under the assumption that people will want to choose an Apple device, and faced with a bad phone, they will choose an Ipod instead.
I think that is a mistake. I use mhy phone as text reader and radio already, and I'd really hate going back to carry a separate device for that. I don't know what mp3 player will be my next one, but I do know it will be labeled as a telephone.
Re:Storage not the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure it is. I never stated otherwise.
Convergence is a nice thing, and I do like it, but the camera on cell phones aren't good enough to replace an actual digital camera, and the mp3 playing phones aren't good enough to replace an actual mp3 player.
Digital music being what it is, however, what makes it a very, very nice music player is nothing that inherently is impossible to duplicate in a device like a phone (unlike the camera).
Consider, if you will, an iPod - an actual, real iPod, down to the translucent plastic and scroll wheel. There is no technical or UI reason not to be able to stuff a radio and a phone/email device in there (I use mine more for email than talk). Conversely, there is nothing magical about playing mp3 (as opposed to, say listening to radio) that makes it impossible to make a good UI for it in a phone.
Most importantly, it doesn't even have to be fully as good as the iPod; "good enough" really is good enough. My current phone only lacks a convenient way for me to download mp3:s (now I have to email them to myself which gets kind of old), and it doesn't play all my Ogg:ed audiobooks (which, by the way, the iPod can't either). The UI already is good enough for me.
Or to put in another way; a decent but not great player in my phone handily beats a wonderful player that stays at home since I carry too much crap already.
Now, if you really aren't all that into photos or music, an mp3 picture phone might be just what you are looking for.
Cameras are different than sound; optical quality really is size-limited. There are good physical reasons a camera phone - or a small standalone camera, for that matter - can't approach the optical quality or noise level of a larger one. An mp3 player isn't limited in the same way.
I really care about photography, so I carry a DSLR (a major reason I don't need still more stuff with me). I'm a casual listener; I use music and radio to entertain myself on the way to and from work. To the limit of my hearing (and my ability to care), that mp3 will sound exactly as good being played from my phone as it does from an iPod.
Re:The Ultimate Media Device... (Score:2)
Re:The Ultimate Media Device... (Score:2)
So now I guess I'm the cool one since I waited a little while.
Re:The Ultimate Media Device... (Score:3, Insightful)
The
let's take the simplicity and style of an ipod (Score:4, Insightful)
that, to me, is what's wrong with the Rokr.
Repeat after me: (Score:5, Insightful)
It is not designed, marketed, or sold as such.
It is a Motorola phone, that has iTunes.
It's not even designed by Apple for christ-sake. Steve Jobs called it "pretty cool". No RDF to be seen in action.
The chief purpose of this phone is to be there before anyone else, license the iTunes software and patent rights (common, does no-one except me remember the iPod patent with an antenna on the side?), and establish Apple as jointly the first to market.
The real news was the iPod Nano. Now quit bitching. And remember, if it's successful, there will be more to come (but not for awhile).
Re:let's take the simplicity and style of an ipod (Score:3, Informative)
That said, I just happened to be near a Cingular store a few days ago, so I checked it out. I wasn't impressed with the phone, but I was pleasantly surprised they shipped the sample phone with Callin' Out by Lyrics Born. Apple gave me this song in their free iTunes Indie Sampler and it is pretty good.
Andrew
The worst of both worlds (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention that having an MP3 player and a cell phone sharing the same battery is a stupid idea.
This is one of those 'high concept' ideas that may have looked good on paper but will not connect with consumers.
Re:The worst of both worlds (Score:2)
Slow... ok. (Score:5, Interesting)
Strange, I seem to get about 3KB/sec most of the time off Cingular's network here in Maryland. I really don't see the benefit in downloading 4MB files off Cingular's network, especially if you don't have the unlimited data plan. What's USB 1.0 rated at? Over 1 MB/sec? That seems to be about 300x as fast as downloading off the phone network.
Granted, it's not as portable for downloading files, but is it really worth waiting half an hour for downloading a song where there isn't EDGE or EVDO? (I haven't yet found a place where I get "EDGE" speeds in the Baltimore area).
Re:Slow... ok. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course it's a failure. (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think that a product will get recognized unless it does everything the user wants. It's gotta be a PDA-plus-phone-plus-MP3 player. Make it as cool-looking as the iPod, and then *everyone* will want it. Maybe throw in movies just for effect.
jack of all trades... (Score:2, Interesting)
But this will get better as stuff gets more and more minaturized. In 5 years we might have phones with five megapixel cameras and 20 gigs of storage. I also wonder how the U.S. phone industry will criple them.
OK, let's think about this (Score:4, Insightful)
2) It plays music and is a phone.
3) Millions of fashionable heat-seekers buy it.
4) Apple gets to sell songs and ring-tones, which is, inexplicably, something like a 347 billion dollar a year business worldwide (go figure).
5) Apple makes a lot of money.
Had you read the article, you'd see it's more like (Score:5, Insightful)
2) It plays music and is a phone.
3) Nobody buys it, because...
4) Apple sells the songs via your PC, not directly to the phone, and Motorola still sells you the ringtones separately.
5) Nobody makes any money.
It's like AOL/Time Warner all over again...
Re:Had you read the article, you'd see it's more l (Score:3, Informative)
Cingular still makes boku money, just like they always have. And Motorola still makes whatever money they always have. So the phone isn't a failure at all. But it's
Re:OK, let's think about this (Score:2)
2) It plays music and is a phone
3) Cingular and Verizon refuses to deal with Apple
4) Apple is stuck selling a $600 GSM-Only Phone from their website
5) Most people buy the subsidized music phones with 2 year contract.
6) The low-end flash MP3 player market evaporates.
7) Cingluar and Verizon introduce their own music stores, incompatible with iTMS.
8) iTMS customers are pissed because their DRM music is incompatible with everything except a $600 phone.
9) Apple goes back to selling
Of course it's limited (Score:5, Interesting)
The iPod nano was the real star of the show. If I was from Motorola, I'd be a little annoyed that Apple upstaged the ROKR with the nano. The message seemed to be: "If you want to have music on your phone, here's a decent option, but why would you, when there is a tiny device like the iPod nano that will fit in your pocket with a normal phone, and is better in every way".
Almost Old News (Score:5, Interesting)
once again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't use the songs as ring tones? Just to appease the cell phone companies? Do cellphone companies really think they can continue to make money on a gimmick forever? Where's the creativity?
How could apple fix this? The same way they do with all there products. Control the entire thing. I don't think partnering really works for Apple. They should have developed the phone themselves from scratch, maybe with a minor partner, not someone like Motorola. Furthermore, what if they could offer their own cellphone service and make something like downloadable songs over the wireless network feasible? I guess the problem with that is that Apple does not own such a network. I think Apple should give the iPhone another chance, and do it right.
Re:once again... (Score:3, Informative)
Except that:
1. It's not an Apple phone, it's a Motorola phone
2. It's not getting very much press, especially considering it was released an an Apple event (which always get press) The response has been underwhelming. Nobody seems to care much about the ROKR, while everyone loves Nano. I'm not sure what you mean by "so much" press.
Re:Let's tick off some Apple fans: (Score:4, Informative)
Cue the smarm with a link to some clever hacker's rotary cell phone.
Okay. [sparkfun.com]
Cell phone with mp3 player: is that a big deal? (Score:2, Insightful)
This seems again like a lot of empty hype: just like when Apple came out with their ipod, some three years after the advent of mp3 players, and everybody congratulated them on their "innovation". Except the innovation couldn't even play ogg format files.
Is it a failure? (Score:2)
Hmm... (Score:2)
Samsung sch-i730 (Score:3, Insightful)
Failures aren't Important. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Failures aren't Important. (Score:2)
Do they even make phones these days that _can't_play mp3s?
Back in Econ 101.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The same holds true for the iPod phone. Whatever the reason for its lack of certain features, it is clearly not to protect other companies, or even other divisions within Apple. If these features could be included at a competitive price, Apple would make more money by including them than it would lose elsewhere. Despite the looney theories, any MBA and Apple executive would know this.
Re:Back in Econ 101.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Blame goes around (Score:2)
Seems to me like restrictions from Cingular brought about the limits in songs (100) and the inability to use said songs as ringtones. I haven't seen anything to debunk this, so reply if you can use uploaded songs as ringtones.
The music-player module works like an iPod - though it lacks the clickwheel tha
didn't see this coming.. (Score:2)
Is it a failure? (Score:5, Interesting)
I ordered one yesterday at the Gold Coast Cingular store in Chicago (about two blocks from the Apple North Michigan Ave store) - one guy was already in there playing with the one demo model, and right after I walked in, two people walked "wanting to see the Rokr". From the looks of it, Cingular is special ordering all these, or at the least, can't keep them in stock in stores just yet.
Remember iPod mini's debut? Who would pay just $50 less for a mini iPod that had (at the time) 16GB less space? Or what about the iPod itself? $299 was just too much for a 5GB MP3 player. Yet both flew off the shelves, each at their own pace, but both were doubted at their beginning.
I wanted a new phone, with Bluetooth to use my Prius' hands-free system and the ability to use at least some of my iTMS songs on it. So I can't load my entire 6.5 GB music library, but my main playlist only has 80-90 songs, big deal. It doesn't look like an iPod, but quite frankly, I'm glad. Phones are primarily for making calls, and I like to use numbers to call people, not swing a clickwheel around to rotary dial - why should there have to be a clickwheel on the phone when I know of no one today that would prefer a rotary dial over touch-tone phone.
Let's wait at least until mid-week to decide if this was a failure - iTunes Japan surprised everyone in just a week, and most of the buzz has been about the nano all this week (which absolutely rocks, but is too expensive to just replace my iPod as my car's jukebox). If sales numbers are where I think they might be, this "failure" might surprise everyone just like the last two mispriced, misplaced Apple pieces.
Re:Is it a failure? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I can think of three main things that make ipods desirable:
1) The user interface
The click wheel is reputedly excellent, and the shuffle's simplistic design makes it easy to operate without looking at.
2) The styling, which looks cool to others
Consider the picture of it [apple.com]. It looks nothing like an ipod and every bit like a gener
Apple needs to get into the cellphone business (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw a picture of the ROKR on the web, and the menu looks exactly like the existing menus on my Motorola phone. I was expecting the famous Chicago font that you see on old classic Macs, and iPods nowadays. But its just the crap font used in Motorola phones. Also there's the input situation with no click wheel type of thing (or even an iPod Shuffle kind of interface)... the ROKR looks just like a standard issue cellphone, that has "iTunes" added as an extra application to the system, along with the calculator, mini browser, address book, and a java game.
The obvious thing to do would be for Apple to make the phone entirely themselves. I suppose it's possible since they ARE also a hardware company. Frankly, I'm surprised Apple allowed another company to have so much control in designing something that would be associated with the Apple brand. It doesn't end up having the Apple look or feel at all.
Apple could even launch their own cellphone service, instead of pairing with Cingular. They wouldn't even need to build their own network. Virgin Mobile is just re-branded Sprint service. So I suppose Apple could do something similar with an existing cellphone company... Offering an Apple phone to use on Apple's cellphone network.
Perhaps then Apple could truly innovate on this thing, instead of falling victim to the situation the article describes when multiple businesses try to cooperate.
A plea to Apple (Score:2)
Proves Apple doesn't collaborate well, film at 11 (Score:2)
It is so obvious this phone is a checklist of specs:
- Hundred song capacity - check
- iPod library navigation software - check
- Dedicated iTunes button - check
- Pause song on phone call - check
- USB sync - check
It's like Apple made some demands on what the phone must do, and the rest Motorola did. Clearly if Apple was allowed design considerations on this phone, they got nixed in a very intense way. The phon
Obviously this is a toe in the water (Score:5, Insightful)
I see the ROKR as proof that Apple has become much more adept at business strategy than it was back in the 1990s. People have been screaming for a hybrid phone/iPod for some time now, and Apple has given them what they want. They haven't placed a huge bet on it, and they're letting Motorola do the heavy lifting (which is a long time coming). I say smart move Apple.
Re:Obviously this is a toe in the water (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Koolaide for all... (Score:2)
Nano will not be the revolutionary form factor SJ wants it to be. Once novelty wears thin. People will want bigger than a credit card for their tune player.
SJ is back to pedalling Kool-aide, again.
Phone interfaces (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, for me they aren't. I had a Nokia 3650, and regardless of form-factor oddness the interface was just dubious. Very slow, took ages and many button-presses to just get it to understand I wanted to send a text. Something like Phone book->Pick name->confirm number->create message->SMS message (as opposed to picture or what have you. Or there was another way starting from Create Message that required just as many button presses before you started typing.
I switched to the Motorola V3 to give something else a try - specifically to get away from the Nokia interfaces. The Motorola interface has proven better in some areas, the same in others. Not worse in any, except the god-awful default ringtone.
It's still not great however. Years ago, I had an Ericsson T38 [google.com], and that had a great interface. Purely text-based, to create a message was just one option at the top level - 'New Message'. If you regularly sent to one person (which I did - my then-girlfriend-now-wife), you could specify person as being the default recipient. So creating an SMS consisted of three button presses - cursor down, select 'New Message', hit select to confirm default recipient and then type. And the response was instance - none of the large lag that seems increasingly common with graphically flash phones.
There's not one of the new phones I've found that's anywhere near as quick as that. I like the V3 as a phone for its size, audio quality and size of keypad. I can't help feeling that in some of the basics however phone interfaces going backwards fast.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Phone interfaces (Score:3, Informative)
If I wanna send a text message from my Nokia 7210, I just press the "left" directional key from the main screen.
I stick with Nokias BECAUSE they have such a reasonable interface. (Of course, reading the manual helps... despite geeks loathing to do so.)
Bluetooth (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the phone was interesting, but not interesting to me. I immediately noticed on the specs that it supported bluetooth specifically only for voice.
I can't tell you how many people I know can't get their laptops to sync to their bluetooth phones in the one way they want them to: to be able to connect to the net
Why can't they sell a phone specifically for this market? All it would do is make phone calls, and wirelessly connect your laptop to some dialup speed connection. No bloody video camera, no lame on phone email thing, no songs, no extra ring tones... just easy net capability. I guess that would just be too obvious, and never sell well in Japan.
Re:Bluetooth (Score:5, Informative)
Apple Testing (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple partnered with Motorola not because they think Motorola can design a better phone or a better interface, but actually to insulate themselves from a horrible failure, should that happen.
Apple will probably make its own cellphones eventually, but right now the conservative decision (and the correct decision) would be to go with someone who is already in the phone business, see how the product does, see what its flaws are, then improve with its own Shiny Apple iPodPhone.
Applie milking it (Score:3, Informative)
Convergence is NOT going to happen, IMO (Score:5, Informative)
I used to believe the convergence myth just as much as the next guy, but a marketing guru by the name of Al Ries convinced me otherwise. If you'd like to see his take on why convergence isn't going to happen, go to this page and click on, "The Convergence Bubble."
http://www.ries.com/Articles/index.cfm?Page=adage [ries.com]
Re:Convergence is NOT going to happen, IMO (Score:5, Interesting)
You realize you're typing on a computer right?
Convergence is great provided:
The obvious problem in this case is not that we don't want a cellphone that can play music but that it is intentionally crippled.
Personally, I'd love to have a device that could be a PDA, MP3 player, cellphone, and wifi/voip device all in one. The only problem is that cellphone companies always end up making things like that suck because thye try and squeeze money out of you for stupid shit. Like charging you $10 to transfer YOUR phone numbers to your new phone.
They're not going to be able to do that if your phone syncs like a Palm. They're not going to get ringtone money if you can use your own music. They're not going to get as many cellphone minutes if you can use wifi when its availible.
They are holding us back, dammit.
Re: @*$&*$& 120-pixel column!!! (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.ries.com/Articles/index.cfm?Page=adage [ries.com]
This brings up a pop-up window that is set at 120-point width, in huge text. I am not going to read through a long article in a huge font in a little bitty pop-up window 120 pixels wide. I am not going to bother to change my settings to fix this, much less edit the raw HTML. Ain't that important to read this guy, whatever he has to say, if he can't present his content in a palatable form. Whateve
Re:Convergence is NOT going to happen, IMO (Score:3, Interesting)
Devices like cell phones that tried to "converge" did so poorly. My phone plays MP3s and supports BlueTooth, but the MP3s can't play through a BlueTooth headset.
Optimistically, I would like to think that the upcoming generation of convergence products will learn from past mistakes.
I am thinking that the X-Box 360 will be a perfect example of convergence don
My take on the ROKR "iPhone" (Score:3, Insightful)
As for me, I can get pretty much the same functionality with a 512 MB MMC card, OggPlay for SymbianOS, and a couple of scripts to transfer a playlist to my phone and rename them from *.m4a to *.mp4 so OggPlay can find them. Oh, and a stereo headset that sounds just as good as an iPod's. For the extra time it takes I get back a very nice UI.
It's an E398 (Score:3, Informative)
The only groundbreaking idea about this product is that motorola and apple have the audacity to rebadge an old product and sell it.
Hard ROKR (Score:5, Interesting)
Those ringtones are the most profitable (percentage yield) product the telcos sell. They didn't even really have any right to get any real take from them, but they did get their hands on the first generation of deals, when people were used to having a single ringtone for their whole lives, and didn't think hard about spending $1-3 to get it. Even if they already owned the song from which the ringtone is sampled, they could see it as a convenience fee for the sampling/installation process that put the sample into their ringer. The companies that originally offered the service fought the copyright holders, the record labels, for the chance to offer that service on existing content. And telcos backed the upstarts, in return for getting to do the charging. Now they make most of that money.
Back in the Spring, when Motorola was getting hassled by developers to whom it had announced availability of this ROKR phone, one of their VPs blurted out at a conference that the telcos were blocking it. Verizon, he said, was addicted to getting $3 every time one of their customers got a music sample as a ringtone. Even though Verizon wouldn't be in the loop on a song downloaded from iTMS to one's PC, then synced with a ROKR that just happened to be sold to its user by Verizon, Verizon still wanted to get a cut every time one of their customers used a device that Verizon had sold them to get a song.
Apple, Motorola and Verizon/Sprint/Whoever spent 6 months negotiating, and finally the ROKR is out. I believe that the real deal has been cut behind the scenes, to cut Verizon in on the real iPhone. That phone will let the iPod half actually download songs over the phone half's Internet (radio) connection. Which will allow Verizon to justify getting a cut of the revenue. Maybe Apple got Verizon to fight with the labels over who controls delivery of those copyrighted songs. Maybe it somehow leverages whatever license Verizon gets from the labels to do ringtones. Maybe it's got some kind of DRM that expires old songs - like the current ROKR's 100 song limit, which will discard many songs, many of which will be repurchased.
I expect this is all leading towards Verizon charging users every time we listen to a song, regardless of how it's delivered, or what we "bought". The simplicity of packaging creates a black box, and most consumers (especially in this exploding market of less sophisticated users) won't even realize that there's little justification for charging them so often for the same thing "under the hood".
The ROKR is the thin edge of the wedge. It's just songs now. Within 2 years it will be videos, then all multimedia content. It will all be funneled through these "phones", not necessarily because that's better for consumers, but because another little chunk of plastic that can be controlled by a "copyright controller" has finally been found to replace LPs, 8-tracks, cassettes and CDs/DVDs. If we thought getting screwed by record companies sucked, we'll be reminiscing about "the good old days" once the telcos are the new boss.
ROKR Competitors outside the US (Score:3, Informative)
I guess since the W800i is a GSM phone without the 850MHz band, it isn't sold much in the US. But rest assured in GSM countries the ROKR looks like the piece of crap it is, a Motorola E398 with an extra button.
(Though personally I'm holding out for the Samsung D600 instead of the W800i.)
Sony Walkman Phone (Score:4, Informative)
Sony did a great job here. Not sure why there is no "buzz" around the phone. Only drawback is it looks like a toy phone with the silly white / metallic orange only case option. Great screen though. And memory stick can provide storage expansion, it came with 512K which is pretty good to start.
Another drawback, can't seem to transfer files over bluetooth, need to use USB cable for that.........
And yes, they do have "store" interface but have not figured out how to use it yet!
Re:Sony Walkman Phone (Score:3, Funny)
R.
Out of interest... (Score:3, Insightful)
From reading that article, can anyone explain why this phone is significantly different to other phones that you can upload mp3s to and listen to them on the phone? A friend of mine had one of those at least two years ago, iirc.
Is it simply that it plays protected iTMS AAC files? The 'iTunes' on your phone doesn't seem that radical - I'm guessing (from pictures I've seen) that it's simply the hierarchical genre/artist/album UI of iTunes and not much else. (I'm not sure how necessary that is for 100 songs, of course, but presumably that will change over time).
Am I missing something? Is it just the DRM'd AAC support?
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
The article may be right about the 100-song limitation being Apple's fault, but all the other design flaws of the Rokr are the fault of Motorola and/or cell carriers, not Apple.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes me wonder why they didn't slap a nano on the back of a razr. I mean, 2 Gig nano($150) + Razr ($200) = $350. I understand that it's a little more involed, but shit...slap a calender with email and you got a nice little product. Even if you have to download via the interweb and FireWire them over.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
Just for the record: you cannot thransfer songs to the iPod nano via Firewire. Sadly, transfers are USB only.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
there are endless studies with cel providers complaining that no one surfs the net on their phones, no one plays games on their phones - and this is exactly why.
who's going to bother surfing the net - unless it's an absolute emergency - when you are being billed by the kb?
this is why wap is such a collosal waste of time to develop for - when people are being milked money for every extra character that you have on your webpage, how are you supposed to provide ANY kind of 'rich media experience' for these customers?
we are just finishing off a celphone game for a large publisher that is just entering the mobile market - and it's a ridiculous market to try and enter into, both from a developer and a consumer perspective.
i'm not even going to get into the nightmare of developing games for celphones - you hear all these reports of millions of dollars being invested into mobile game development - and the platform is so fragmented and flat-out broken that it's a complete waste of time to get into.
it's the dot com bubble except a thousand times worse...except that when the bubble 'pops' it will only be good for consumers.
first the celphone providers forced you to ONLY use the ringtones that they provide you and threatened with lawsuits any company that dared to break that monopoly.
second the celphone providers try to force unwanted features onto consumers with new phones - which helps as far as 'market penetration' goes - but the overall impact has still be next to negligible simply because of all of the 'hidden costs' to the consumer - namely airtime.
the cost to download a 3 meg MP3 (or whatever format itunes spits songs out in) over the celphone networks would be easily 5-10 times what itunes itself charges for their songs.
so instead of a 99 cent song, you suddenly have 5+ dollars PER SONG in order to transfer the songs to your phone.
the better solution is providing integrated wifi into the ipod-type phones - then when the phone is near a wifi spot, it can just access the 'normal' internet much like a windowsCE PDA device (for example).
As hotspots continue to popup everywhere, this kind of solution would definitely be a huge boost to the consumer experience.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
Cingular charges $20/month for unlimited bandwidth on your phone.
I'm using a Motorola v551 w/bluetooth to my iBook right now to post this.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
I'd be very interested in doing the same thing -- using my Motorola phone + Bluetooth to access the internet when mobile from my laptop.
I have ZERO interest in using the internet from my actual cellphone display. But using it as a bridge between my computer and the internet when I'm out of range of WiFi
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's far far worse than that (Score:3, Interesting)
They built in a gopher-like menu system to help you navigate the internet.
Each menu has about 5 items to choose from, each item is ASCII text with no graphics. Each menu is apx 18kb.
I'll say that again just in case you blanked out...
Simple ASCII Menu of 5 items -> 18,000 bytes transfered.
They charge by the kb, so they pack shit into the stream.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
I know what you mean. I just developed a live GPS Fleet-Tracking software package for Google Earth. IMO, it kicks ass mostly because it does everything it can to stay within data plan limits, and manages to squeeze a month's worth of 14-hour driving days into the 5MB the carrier provides with a 5-second polling interval. It took a week to devise and implement a custom, UDP-based protocol to save the TCP/IP overhead, and I spent even more weeks testing and tweaking to get the data usage down.
NEXTEL, who is the carrier for the phones it runs on, charges $20 per month for 5MB of data. Think about that. That's not even ONE mp3 file sometimes! It's $4 per megabyte (roughly 1 minute of song time)!! If you go over that amount, it's TEN DOLLARS per MB. Not exactly the environment for a rich media experience, is it? It's not even a good environment for business apps.
Who's gonna care about applications they can't afford to deploy or use?
--Jasin NataelRe:I love my smartphone. (Score:3, Funny)
MOD FUD DOWN (Score:4, Informative)
[1] From the Apple website.
[2] Whether it supports higher capacity cards will be discovered when someone makes TransFlash cards bigger than 512MB.
Re:designed to fail (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:designed to fail (Score:3, Informative)
FWIW, Sprint's the only CDMA carrier that doesn't allow outside phones on their network - Verizon can be coaxed into taking an unlocked Sprint or Alltel phone, and Alltel WILL take an unlocked Sprint or Verizon phone.
Now, GSM carriers? Just drop a SIM card in. Get a quad-band GSM phone from the UK, and throw a Cingular or T-Mobile SIM in, and it'll work in the US no problem.
Re:carrier options too limited (Score:2)
Public performance right (Score:4, Informative)
The filmmaking problem comes not from the public performance right of a cell phone, but making a derivative work (the movie) and showing that in theaters (the public performance). The issue of whether the standard copyright defenses (fair use, implied license, first sale, etc.) apply simply doesn't come up.