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<< Previous: The J What? | Next: Things That Happened >>

Apple Watch: iPod News
Wednesday, 2005 September 7 - 11:31 pm
Apple announces the long-expected iTunes-capable phone, plus the brand new "iPod nano".

As EVERYONE predicted, Apple, Motorola, and Cingular announced the Motorola ROKR phone today. Some people call it an "iPod" phone because it can play music from Apple's iTunes, and it roughly emulates the iPod's menus and screens. But it definitely doesn't have the iPod's fashion sense; in fact, I'd go so far as to call it an ugly beast.

The ROKR can store about a hundred songs. In other aspects, it's a pretty typical camera phone: VGA-quality pictures, about six hours of talk time on the battery, etc. etc. etc. One thing that would worry me: I'd hate to be stranded in the middle of nowhere because I depleted my phone battery by listening to music. Hmm.

I get the sense that Apple wanted to put more emphasis on a different announcement: the iPod nano. This is a replacement for the iPod mini. It uses flash memory instead of a hard drive, it's thinner, it has a longer battery life, and it has a color display. At 4GB maximum, its capacity is no better than the original iPod mini (and there's a 2GB version but no 6GB version)... but man oh man, is this thing tiny. It's a quarter of an inch thick. The whole thing is about the size of four credit cards stacked together. I'd say, unless you really need to carry ten thousand songs with you all at the same time, the iPod nano is definitely the thing to get.

Apple's other announcements today were pretty ho-hum:

- Honda, Acura, VW, and Audi will be offering iPod connectivity in certain new car models.
- iTunes 5.0 is available. The new feature list is pretty skimpy.

There was no video iPod.

I think the iPod nano will make some waves. As far as the phone goes, people will probably wait for the next one. Probably, the main significance of today's ROKR announcement was more to show what's possible.
Permalink  1 Comment   Bookmark and Share
Posted by Ken in: techwatch

Comments

Comment #1 from olafandyjon (Guest)
2005 Sep 9 - 2:43 pm : #
I saw the phone at the Cingular store today and was so tempted until I assessed the situation logically and asked myself if it was really necessary to own that along side my iPod. For once, I was able to reign in my Apple geekness!

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