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Fortune: Motorola's ROKR iTunes phone a "STINKR"

updated 11:40 am EDT, Wed September 21, 2005

Fortune on ROKR phone


Fortune columnist Peter Lewis says Motorola's new ROKR iTunes cellphone is "." Rather than design a new phone, Motorola "recycled the E398 design and made only minor modifications, including built-in stereo speakers and a dedicated iTunes music-software key that, when tickled, causes the ROKR to burp out as many as 100 songs from the user's music library." Lewis speculates that Apple intentionally "crippled" the ROKR: "Apple has a good thing going with the iPod, and perhaps it didn't care to see the ROKR get good enough to kill that action." Lewis later writes that "the most inexcusable failing of the ROKR is that for all the anticipation, many of its features do not work as advertised. Doesn't anybody test these things before selling them to the public?"


by MacNN Staff

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 industry, digital music/video

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Comments

  1. Bobby

    Mac Enthusiast

    Joined: Apr 2001

    0
    09/21, 12:16pm | report spam | Reply |

    Rrrrg!

    Man, I was all excited before it's release. My contract renewal comes up in November and I was gona get the iTunes phone. But now that it's released, it obvously sux (no bluetooth? why??????), so there's no way I'm getting it...

  1. hayesk

    Professional Poster

    Joined: Sep 1999

    0
    09/21, 12:22pm | report spam | Reply |

    Not Apple

    Apple did not cripple that phone. Motorola did with not spending the extra penny to use USB 2 instead of USB 1.1. Geez, would you want to sync 500 songs with USB 1.1?

    No thanks.

  1. addiecool

    Dedicated MacNNer

    Joined: May 2001

    0
    09/21, 12:25pm | report spam | Reply |

    Eeesshhh....

    The phone is the biggest disaster ever. It is just a Motorola E398 with a itunes software. The design, the slow interface, just about everything sucks...

  1. vickys_box

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jan 2003

    0
    09/21, 12:38pm | report spam | Reply |

    Phone

    It sucks even as a phone, never mind the iTunes compatibility.

  1. benhur

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jan 2001

    0
    09/21, 01:01pm | report spam | Reply |

    options

    Well, for iTunes store compatibility this is about it. If only the Sony W800 had iTunes. That phone kicks the ROKR's butt in every way. I need a phone since my recently broke. iTunes or not, I may just go with the W800 and just deal with manually transfering mp3's. That is much less an inconvience than dealing with all the negatives of the ROKR.

  1. Feathers

    Grizzled Veteran

    Joined: Oct 1999

    0
    09/21, 01:30pm | report spam | Reply |

    No Surprise!

    As mentioned in a previous post, it comes as no surprise that a company who christens a "music phone" ROKR (Rocker?)must be so out of touch that the product was destined to failure. I wonder do the 50+ types swanning around "Moto" still use phrases like "Groovy Man!" and listen to music on "trannies"???? I agree with benhur that it's a pity Apple didn't team up with Sony-Ericsson although given other areas where Apple and Sony compete it's probably understandable.:(

  1. Synthetic

    Baninated

    Joined: Mar 2005

    0
    09/21, 03:22pm | report spam | Reply |

    This is a test

    This is a test. Tesing.

  1. cebritt

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Mar 2000

    0
    09/21, 03:30pm | report spam | Reply |

    It's a Motorola product.

    ...not an Apple product! Apple's product are so much better than everyone else's because they sweat the small details.

  1. jayparry

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2005

    0
    09/21, 04:03pm | report spam | Reply |

    Reviewer doesnt get it

    Reviewers do this all the time and it annoys the h*** out of me. The ROKR (yes rocker, it families with RAZR (razor?!?)) gets compared with a phone that costs TWICE as much and ISNT OUT YET. How can you compare a shipping product to complete speculation? You cant, its bad reviewing!

    Also prevalent is misinformation and contradiction. He complains about how slow the songs transfer (BTW moron, USB 1.1 transfer speed doesnt rely on whether you have a dual G5 or the very first imac) and the bad UI... yet he wants the itunes STORE to be available on a cel phone screen? That would be the worst user interface of all time! How would you SEARCH and enter your credit card info? AND if he thought USB 1.1 was slow try downloading ENTIRE SONGS over cellular lines! Plus thats a lot of data hogging up cel bandwidth that would have to be paid for by SOMEONE thus raising the costs of songs you can just buy at home... they would have to add security over the line, a way to MANAGE songs so you could delete them, AND two way transfer, so you could get the songs you bought back on your machine at home...that would be a LOT of work and totally raise the price for something you cant even do on an ipod.

    Finally, the phone wasnt designed by apple. Period. They had nothing to do with the phone, the just made an itunes player and handed it over. Why complain about it "having escaped apple's design team" when they werent part of the project at all?

    Peter Lewis is an idiot. I dont know how these people get their jobs.

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