Everybody’s complaining about the 100 songs limit but in reality it’s close to memory limitations of the phone.

Look, Apple didn’t sabatoge this by putting a 100 limit on this device. Um iPod 512 shuffle? Do these not get sold because of the song limit? No. Nano kill these? No.

Facts.
(1) Price is to expensive for halfwit, ugly, bricklike phone.
(2) Design wise its about as attractive as a wheelbarrow full of cracked cinderblocks and frog manure.
(3) It’s like carrying a brick around. Clunky.
(4) Poor marketing
(5) If it held 1,000 songs it still wouldn’t sell because its about as fashionable as you grandmother’s leotards.
(6) Razor will do better depending on price and promotional marketing.
(7) Motorola should let apple design the phone and do the marketing.
(8) I don’t think Motorola is so stupid in business that they would let someone take this much advantage of them as implied in this article. I think Motorola is trying to get better licensing arrangements from apple so when they do put it on a phone such as the razor they wouldn’t have to pay as much becuase they could cite the fact that the Rokr was such a failure.
(9) Conspiracy theory….ooh Apple next move
iToilet. Every time you flush it picks a random song from your playlist and you get your own refreshing music to cover up the noise of the toilet flushing.

LOL
PS: Comparing APPLE to MSFT is like comparing a scientist to a serial rapist.
If it was MSFT it wouldn’t be iPod it would be
iOWNU

As far as the point of Apple vs. phone manufacturers, yes, they are competitors; granted, the phone manufacturers have to license components from Apple. Furthermore, how many people do you think are going to buy a ROKR that don’t already have money invested in iTunes? The ROKR isn’t average joe material but more geared for the Apple-head who has invested time and money into their iTunes collection and doesn’t want to buy an iPod Shuffle to go with their cell phone, iBook, and regular iPod (for the videos, of course). Most people will take the free phone that their cell phone provider is offering and not spend $150 on a phone. That leaves them with $150 to invest in an iPod device or more songs through iTunes. This isn’t even for us, the computer nerds, because we can see what a piece it really is. Instead, the ROKR is just the tip of the iceberg that gives the masses an idea to have wet dreams over and us something to complain about because any press is good press.

I mean, damn, how much time have we now spent on talking about a bad version of a possibly good idea?

Consider this… the name of the phone was stupid.

ROKR. It conjures visions of Guitar Center, of Otto “likes to get Blotto” from the Simpsons, it’s reminiscent of maladjusted, unpopular kids in school.

RAZR sounds okay. A razor is sharp. A razor is cool. Cut. Cut. Cutting edge. Even the word sounds good. Full of positive mental associations. Sleek, sharp.

You wouldn’t be embarrassed to say you own a RAZR phone. You’d be afraid the other person would laugh at you if you said you owned a ROKR phone.

Mr. Zander is a bit silly. I mean, he managed to be succesful at Sun during the internet bubble… a time when a babboon might have done as well (in his place).

Rants and Raves

1. Did Apple Sabotage the ROKR? To sum it up, The Apple Blog is posing the quest [...]

And if me…care to elaborate?

belive = believe
lisencing = licensing

Man, I need some typing lessons. Sorry for the errors.

I think it is more likely that Jobs saw an opportunity to make a little extra lisencing cash, but wanted to protect his own product…thus the 100 song limit. But making the claim that Apple intentionally sabotaged a product they didn’t seek out for the sake of boosting Nano sales, is pretty ridiculous. The ROKR investment is reported on Apple’s report to their shareholders. EBad investment decisions, with or without a windfall, do not encourage investor confidence, and ultimately undermine a company’s credibility.

Say what you will, but its also impossible to make the case that the Nano sold well because the ROKR sucked. A Motorola product just doesn’t have the market play that an Apple product does. And iTunes-compatible phone, no matter how well designed, just doesn’t have the sex appeal of an iPod. Even if the ROKR rocked, the Nano was going to be giant.

I don’t think Jobs is a great fan of Swiss Army knife devices. But yet, the momentum was building about how “critical” an iTunes phone was to the iPod’s future. Apple needed to show that it was relatively trivial for them to get into the cell phone business and thus deflate some of the “cell phones will kill the iPod” talk that had been going on for a while. Now everyone suddenly realizes that cell phones can’t do music as well as a dedicated player, especially since most people probably prefer saving their batteries for making important calls than draining it by listening to music.

As the ROKR shows, it takes more than just music capability to make a truly compelling device. The 100 song limit? The real reason is more practical than that. Just like the Shuffle has no scrolling Click Wheel because of its limited capacity, it would become impossibly frustrating to navigate through a list of a 1000 songs with push buttons or paddles. By limiting the songs to 100, Apple can at least hide this flaw in the hardware interface. Don’t underestimate how much Apple values the total user experience, because even though the idea of having 1000 or 5000 songs on your cell phone may seem compelling on paper, it’s very difficult to navigate through a long list by repeatedly pressing buttons, and people are only gong to end up feeling frustrated with the feature.

It’s like the common geek complaint about the “wasted” space on Apple’s 17″ PowerBook. Why, with all that extra surface area, doesn’t Apple put in a numeric keypad? More keys are better, right? It seems like a stupid omission until you realize that putting a numeric keypad would shift the regular keys all to the left. Imagine trying to type off-center for an extended period, your wrists angled non-ergonomically to the left while the PowerBook is sitting centered on your lap.

It all comes down to user experience.

What next? Is Apple also in cahoots with JFK, Elvis, and the CIA that the switch to Intel is a good thing, with the secret plan to put Intel out of business and soldify the PPC chip’s market share? Give me a break.

And who really gives a rip about the 100 song limit on a cell phone anyhow? Its a phone people…a phone.

Then I saw the phone. Argh. Just another ugly cheap-looking phone. I’ll never gonna buy that one.

How is this Apple’s fault?

Has the iPod not proofed that people want to pay extra for good design and ease of use. How hard is this to understand? Motorola messed up. Not Apple.

http://jurgen.ca/archives/000490.html

I think they’re sucking Moto’s brains a bit here, learning from them. I won’t be surprised if Apple releases an iPod that includes a phone… but it would be an iPod first, not a phone first like the Moto. The Moto is a phone with iTunes in it. Apple would want an iPod with a phone in it. Subtle difference, but vital to the success of any iPod+Phone combo.