Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple iPhone by Motorola?

Status
Not open for further replies.
I would like to second the above author. The apple thing should just have been a face plate of some sort! Just imagine a phone with aluminium and white shiny design! I am not going to buy that! It will be very hard for motorola and apple to face the competition offered by NOKIA and Ericsson.
More over no one would want to spend a fortune on getting a phone that would get outdated in a year. Mobile devices are the fastest changing comodity (not so long ago were the speeds excess of 100Mhz a luxury and today Dell/HP PDAs run at 650 Mhz with their own small graphic processors!). I would definitely like a powerful PDA + small phone and good connectivity than combining both of them! It has been a long time since moto has come up with any of the above! I would rather stick to NOKIA than a stupid stunt by MOTO!
 
Besides who said anything about Apple designing it? An Apple branded phone would just be a Motorola phone - with the usual crazily-disorganized menus. I just got a Nokia for my wife earlier this week, and its menus are just as bad. Where in the world do phone-makers find people who do user interfaces this badly? A mental hospital?
 
sony ericsson is the only phone manufacturer with decent ui's

apple could change all of that
 
This sounds good.. I probably have to get a new cell somewhere next year.. if this thing is true and they will sell them in Finland, I will most likely get one.

And this is based on my assumption that Apple can do a lot better than Nokia.
 
iChat

Just imagine! AIM audio chats to Macs and PCs from your phone. Plug in an iSight, and have a lower-resolution video chat than on iChat, but still a video chat!!
 
The Tuck said:
Just imagine! AIM audio chats to Macs and PCs from your phone. Plug in an iSight, and have a lower-resolution video chat than on iChat, but still a video chat!!
Click to expand...
you would need at least a phone that supported 2.5G.. but even that would suck badly AND bandwidth is generally expensive ( Fido do unlimited internet for $50).

3G would be good, but generally coverage is very lacking. At present, uptake of iChat over a cell phone would be minimal.

Can't see it at the moment. The 3G market needs to mature in leaps and bounds.
 
OMG

...I would soooo buy one :D

right now I'm the only person I know that does not have a mobile... I refuse to get one until someone comes up with a decent UI and a design that doesn't give you eye-cancer... :D

no really, I don't have a cell, but I would buy this "Motorola, designed by Apple-thang" instantly...

vSpacken
 
Oh yeah

This is exactly what apple needs. Its eventual challengers aren't likely to be mp3 player, but cell phones that play mp3's, so why not venture into this market before competitors. Furthermore it would become uber cool immeaditely, plus it would give Apple important allies in the emerging world of media communications devices. :)
 
Stella said:
Oh God. Apple could make any iPhone a death nail and market this for north American markets only, ignoring the vastly more popular GSM.
Click to expand...

Eh? GSM is very popular in the flat areas of the US.
 
Imagine if they added a dock connector to this "iPhone"...

Ohhh man... I'm sure it'd never happen (two docks for your iPod and iPhone?)
 
let's not get too excited about ipod/iphone intergration. adding photo support is one thing, but apple keeps things simple. i dont carry my ipod every place i carry my phone, nor do i carry my phone everywhere i carry my ipod. if the iphone does turn out to be an "ipod", then i'll pass. consolidation is great, but these two things merging just doesn't make sense to me.
 
has anyone noticed in the article that the informant turnes from a male to a female and then back to a male again in the article?
 
I am sure that there was some annoucement this year by Motorola that they were supporting AAC on there 2005 mobile phone releases...

Yeah, here we go...http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/news/detail/0,,4505_3838_23,00.html
Motorola and Apple Bring iTunes® Music Player to Motorola’s Next-generation Mobile Phones

ROSEMONT, IL and CUPERTINO, Calif – 26 July 2004 -- Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) and Apple® (NASDAQ: AAPL) today announced they are partnering to enable millions of music lovers to transfer their favorite songs from the iTunes® jukebox on their PC or Mac® , including songs from the iTunes Music Store, to Motorola’s next-generation 'always with you' mobile handsets, via a USB or Bluetooth connection. Apple will create a new iTunes mobile music player, which Motorola will make the standard music application on all their mass-market music phones, expected to be available in the first half of next year.

“We can't think of a more natural partnership than this one with Apple, the brand synonymous with easy-to-use, legal music downloading, and Motorola, the innovator in mobile technology,” said Ed Zander, chairman and CEO, Motorola. “Being able to transfer songs you’ve purchased from iTunes to Motorola mobile handsets expands the market reach for both of us and drives new revenue for customers, delivering an amazing music experience to millions of wireless users.”

“We are thrilled to be working with Motorola to enable millions of music lovers to transfer any of their favorite songs from iTunes on their PC or Mac to Motorola’s next-generation mobile phones," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. “The mobile phone market -- with 1.5 billion subscribers expected worldwide by the end of 2004 -- is a phenomenal opportunity to get iTunes in the hands of even more music lovers around the world and we think Motorola is the ideal partner to kick this off."


http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004Jul/bma20040727026194.htm

"Apple and Motorola made a surprising announcement today: iTunes-compatible mobile phones are on the way! The Motorola phones will be capable of syncing with iTunes (on both platforms) and playing music in iTunes formats (including AAC). The press release did not make a big deal of this, but this is the first instance of a FairPlay licensee. This is also the first hardware (other than an iPod or PC) to play AAC files. The phones are due out in the first half of 2005. The only word so far on how much storage to expect comes in the form of a Steve Jobs quote to Reuters: "Wouldn't it be great if you could take a dozen of your favorite songs with you on your phone?" Read more in Apple's press release. How well do you think these will do on the market? If 12 songs is right that's about an album's worth. If you don't own an iPod or similar device it might be nice, but I think I'd sooner recommend some flash player that had more storage before recommending what's sure to be an expensive phone that can only hold an album's worth of music. Time will tell.
"
 
ProjektJ said:
sony ericsson is the only phone manufacturer with decent ui's

apple could change all of that
Click to expand...

true that! That's why I went to my T610 as soon as it was released and was glad to be rid of my nokia.. IMHO, nokia vs sony ericsson is almost pc vs apple.. the former has a buncha randomly designed stuff that is intended to look flashy but looks crap, has a poor user interface and stuff like that.. sony ericsson have nice looking phones and a decent interface =) I don't fancy moto's ui either so... Apple shoulda gone with sony =)
 
russed said:
has anyone noticed in the article that the informant turnes from a male to a female and then back to a male again in the article?
Click to expand...

Actually if you read a leetle bit more carefully, the "informant" is male all the way through the article. The "she" alluded to, is the informant's direct supervisor.
 
AGHHH!!!!!!

All I know is that I hate where the cell phone market is going. Ringtones, callback tones, tones tones tones!!!!! It's slightly worse here in the UK - people download wallpaper, screensavers, crappy games, and porn like mad! Ringtones made about 3.5 billion last year!

Wouldn't it be nice if all the people in the world buying ringtones and other worthless cellphone add-on crap would donate that money to charity instead!? I know I will.
 
This stuff about iTunes and iPhoto doesn't make much sense for a flash-memory based phone. You just wouldn't have enough disk space to carry around even a significant subset of everything.

What WOULD make sense is for the phone to integrate well with all the other Apple services. A phone is bound to be either on or near you at all times, and therefore is THE device for your constant presence in the network. Synchronization with iCal and Address Book is a given. It should do iChat for text messaging, obviously. But it should also notify and allow you to read and manage email. Rather than type your response, they could implement a voice-to-text service to help you compose long emails and then edit them on screen. Some sort of Safari mini could be used for web browsing, but could go well beyond that for browsing all sorts of files from faxes and pdfs to plaintext, images, and word processing. .Mac would be leveraged for many services, not the least of which is data retrieval - since phone space is limited, being able to (seamlessly) access your data stored via .Mac would be extremely helpful. It could even be downsampled or thumbnailde on the fly for your phone - especially useful for complex web pages and large images.

iTunes and iPhoto could be leveraged by smart-sending upcoming items in playlists and slideshows to the phone remotely. But there's the catch - you don't normally store all that online. Thus a new utility to allow .Mac to easily coordinate content on your computer at home with everything else would be necessary. Obviously there are significant security issues there. Probably it could also be used as a clearance house for other data online (other email accounts specifically).

There's more you could do. A built in USB port is essential for getting stuff on and off your device. But that means that it could act as a USB flash drive. But since it also has connectivity built in, you could theoretically have your phone act as a key for using your home folder on any mac. A/V output would be nice too, and would allow you to use a simple TV or monitor for better interface. Actually this could be considered a must, for those Keynote and PowerPoint presentations.

Given all this data traffic it may require a flat-rate no restrictions unlimited calling plan. But Apple never hesitated to charge a premium, and as .Mac is a critical enabler for all these services it would probably be included.
 
Here is a quick concept drawing of an iPhone ...

iphone_1.jpg
 
one3 said:
Here is a quick concept drawing of an iPhone ...

iphone_1.jpg
Click to expand...

Pretty nice, but how about making it a slider with a larger scroll wheel, and with the keypad dropping down on the bottom when opened? That way, it can just be an iPod until you need the phone.
 
one3 said:
Here is a quick concept drawing of an iPhone ...

iphone_1.jpg
Click to expand...


I think you should take another look at the Motorola line and do it in silver.

Furthermore what if it had buttons that switched it between phone and mobile mode and only had the scroll wheel with a few extra buttons above it? That would be cool, as they could layout the numbers on the dial alog with the ipod controls, keeping the over all length down.
 
My wife has been hoping that Steve would work out a deal with Motorola. It would also need to work with Verizon wireless. She was thinking about Bluetooth also. If the cost mentioned above at $500 that would be exorbitant. Would like to see it a current cellphone prices.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back