iTunes Phone Falls Flat, nano Goes Huge
People had been expecting an iTunes enabled cell phone for quite some time. Frequent delays had only ratcheted up expectations. There were legitimate reasons for the optimism: Imagine Apple’s world leading industrial design finally harnessed to make the slickest cell phone human eyes have yet to behold. Couple that with what would undoubtedly some incredibly clever method of navigation and dialing and you’re looking at a world class product that anyone would find drool worthy. So it must have been a bit of a letdown when Steve revealed a clunky phone that could hold a whopping one hundred songs. Sadly they couldn’t even get the headphones right (earwax orange? Come on, at least try!).
It would be all too easy to blame Motorola for the anemic 1999 design of the phone. You can imagine the engineers at Motorola laughing at all of Apple’s suggestions (“Make it look good? That’s crazy talk!”) yet Motorola has some really compellingly designed phones. The phone, in all likelihood, suffers from the “too many cooks” scenario. Cingular demands one thing, Motorola wants another and Jonathan Ives cringes in horror every time he sees a prototype. So the phone, despite all the anticipation, lived up to absolutely no expectations. Why amateur designers could (and did) dream up much better looking phones. How lame is the new Motorola phone? A one legged camel springs to mind but perhaps the best example of just how tacked on iTunes seems to be is the fact that even Hadley Stern wasn’t excited and that guy buys iPods with the regularity the rest of us feed parking meters.
More unfortunate than the uninspired design is the utility. An iTunes enabled cell phone that holds 100 songs is basically a worthless gimmick designed to lure you into ponying up $300 and signing a two-year contract with Cingular. Cingular may have the best service in the business but you’re looking at a total investment of $2,000 dollars for a phone that offers a color screen to navigate a miniscule play list. Take my advice get the free Cingular phone, buy a hot glue gun and a 512Mb Shuffle join the two semi permanently and get the best of both worlds. Sure you might look a little geeky but at least you’ll have a good cell phone experience and a good iPod experience.
No one outside of Motorola and Apple knows why the phone was so often delayed. Speculating that Steve Jobs took one look at the thing and decided if that was all he presented someone would punch him in the mouth for wasting their time seems apropos. So, in my fantasy world anyway, Steve set the Apple minions to the task of making something truly worthy of a media event and the folks at Apple delivered in spades. I am referring, of course, to the new iPod nano. Okay the name is contrived and far too cutesy (Got an iPod nano? Protect it with the iPod nano tube! Stop, oooh my liver, you’re killing me.) The unfortunate name aside (next up the zepto?) the iPod nano is simply brilliant. The looks are indescribably slick, the space is ample when you consider the number of songs people actually keep on their digital audio players and the size is simply breathtaking.
At this point someone is bound to whine about the price. Compared to the larger iPods the new nano does seem a bit on the expensive side. You’re paying $6.67 per GB for a king sized iPod and paying a seemingly huge $62.25 (that is an order of magnitude more expensive) per GB of storage for the nano. That comparison is a bit unfair because the players use different forms of memory. It is akin to comparing the cost of beef to chicken, sure they are both animal derived protein sources but there is a fundamental difference betwixt the two meats. Likewise the iPod nano is an excellent value if you consider the cost of the storage used (I’ve saved you the trouble of searching). When viewed in that light the iPod nano seems like a veritable bargain. Oh, and it comes in black too.
So we have reached the point where it is time to weigh the event as a whole. Let us use football terms. The Motorola ROKR is the equivalent of a strong side pitch sweep where the quarterback flips the ball completely over the head of the running back. In short it is a busted play, the kind of thing you shake off and try to forget. The iPod nano, on the other hand, is the equivalent of a tightly thrown 60-yard spiral that hits a receiver running flat out in mid stride. In short it is a thing of beauty, something you can watch over and over again and still be impressed.
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Comments
ROTFLMAO about the quarterback, except it’s the second string QB that’s in the game. Good ol’ Stevie has not failed…
Think about it. You really think Steve was all that confident in the iPhone… pleeeaaaaasssseeee. Not a chance. That’s why he surprised us with the Nano so we wouldn’t totally be left hanging.
Looks to me like he did just enough to get by, and we will eventually see the tru iPhone.
Just my $.02.
I wanted an iPod cell phone where you could use the click-wheel as a rotary-dial.
-dw.
One of the great mistakes in the US is that we never standardized on one wireless standards like Europe - GSM. It’s the reason why in Europe you could buy a phone and use it with any provider without locking yourself in. Here, almost no two wireless companies equipment work with each other, except for T-Mobile and Cingular. Even then, the phones are locked to particular networks. Granted, we get discounts for the phone from the providers. But even after we fulfill our contracts, they refuse to unlock our phones for use on other providers.
So given the above, it’s almost impossible for Apple to release their own IPod phone without backing from the providers. And getting backing from the providers would mean crippling features or adhering to Provider’s interface etc. Which Apple is unlikely to agree, afterall, user interface is an Apple hallmark. Apple could always release the phone at a high price without provider partnership. Quit possible, given Apple could get people to fork over half a grand for a MP3 player.
Then again, given the history of cell phones released in the US without provider support, it’s not a pretty picture. Nokia N-Gage anyone?
My question is, why not something that looks more like the RAZR?
The ROKR truly is fugly… you’d think with designs like the RAZR around, Motorola might have been able to make a really hip phone for iTunes. Why the hell not make it like the RAZR?!?
Its mentioned that the itunes phone is ugly, but I would like to know how nice the black nano looks. The classic white always works well for apple, but does anyone have the black one? A few comments on the looks of the glossy black, how the finger prints show, etc would be extremely helpful!