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Apr 12, 2001
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CNet quotes Motorola's Ed Zander with teasing comments about Apple's plans for a "smart phone".

And we know that [Apple is] going to build a smart phone--it's only a matter of time

His comments appear to be primarily speculative. Rumor and speculation about an Apple-branded phone has been ongoing.

Meanwhile, in the article, Zander was defending comments he had made against the iPod nano. Those comments were "taken completely out of context" and Zander reports that they still had a great relationship with Apple.

 
I said it to some friends when Apple realesed the nano: it has a clock, a calander, and can store your contacts and notes. All it needs to replace my phone is the ability to actually act as a phone and it's the only device I'll have to carry with me.
 
I'd get one

Well, I don't know if it's coming or not, but Apple, if you're reading this, if it synchs with iSync (which I imagine it would) and isn't as large as a Treo, I'll buy one the day it comes out.
 
Currently there are now only two smartphone OSes ( now that Palm OS has been sold off, and Palm using microsoft ), so a third will be welcome. OK - there is Linux, but which is a minor player.

1. Symbian > 60% marketshare ( thanks Nokia )
2. microsoft

Apple could make a real good stab at this, for sure.

Smartphone market is growing so there is real potential for apple to make a good go at this. It could build a dev kit around XCode and port to Windows. As good as Symbian is, the various development environments are appalling, with no real good IDEs around.

So - Apple could build something with the usability and software of quality from OSX, and provide good development environment to encourage developers.
 
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I would love a phone designed by Apple (maybe not Ives as it would schratch too easily :p) with a superior GUI and perfect sync against Address Book, iCal and even Mail and Safari.

I don't really care about iTunes, but that would probably be a feature, and maybe even some iPhoto capability could be handy if it featured a decent camera like that of the SE K750i and W800i.
 
Do you reckon an Apple phone would only have one button for picking-up/hanging up the phone and to hang up you'd have to hold down another key and press the big button?
 
Just PLEASE do not put this on Cingular's network! After 2 of my friends had crappy experiences with them PLUS my fiance (I hated how my calls to her kept getting dropped), I refuse to go with them.

Oh yeah... according to people that are using them still, their "raising the bar" campaign is purely 100% BS.

Apple- Please go with Verizon or Sprint. Preferably the latter, since that is who I am with now, but I could stand switching to Verizon since they are good.
 
Stella said:
Currently there are now only two smartphone OSes ( now that Palm OS has been sold off, and Palm using microsoft ), so a third will be welcome. OK - there is Linux, but which is a minor player.

1. Symbian > 60% marketshare ( thanks Nokia )
2. microsoft

Apple could make a real good stab at this, for sure.

Smartphone market is growing so there is real potential for apple to make a good go at this. It could build a dev kit around XCode and port to Windows. As good as Symbian is, the various development environments are appalling, with no real good IDEs around.

So - Apple could build something with the usability and software of quality from OSX, and provide good development environment to encourage developers.


I am all for Apple design but the PC market share is about 4% which makes it rather unactractive for phone operators. Let's be real, the phone would have to synch with Outlook to have a real chance of becoming a market breaker.

Ehm...Stella Artois the "Goddess of Beer" ? I live in Be and no one here thinks it's such a great product...Try some of the Abbey beers, like a Leffe triple...There are over 800 beers left in this tiny country and there used to be over 2000...nearly all of them are better than Stella :D

But I do agree, a good Stella is at least 100 times better than a bud light! Yuk!
 
longofest said:
Just PLEASE do not put this on Cingular's network! After 2 of my friends had crappy experiences with them PLUS my fiance (I hated how my calls to her kept getting dropped), I refuse to go with them.

Oh yeah... according to people that are using them still, their "raising the bar" campaign is purely 100% BS.

Apple- Please go with Verizon or Sprint. Preferably the latter, since that is who I am with now, but I could stand switching to Verizon since they are good.

Uh... Cingular works great for me. I've got friends w/ problems from the other major carriers in my area. I'm sure it's local variations in network stregnth in some areas Cingular=good, in others =bad. Hopefully the Apple phone would be carrier independant, but who knows, given the state of the current wireless carrier market in the US (which sucks by the way).

Anyways, I'm sure Jobs and co, are brewing up something good, maybe they'll use the scroll wheel to harken back to the good ol' days of the rotary dialer (J/K) :) . But who can honestly say anything at this point, it'd all be merely speculation.
 
Yes, any smartphone would have to work with windows - OutLook et al, very much agreed, otherwise there isn't much point of windows users buying the phone in the first place. As you say, why would phone operators want to carry a phone that is essentially, Mac only, for its smartphone features.


ScubaDuc said:
I am all for Apple design but the PC market share is about 4% which makes it rather unactractive for phone operators. Let's be real, the phone would have to synch with Outlook to have a real chance of becoming a market breaker.

Here in Toronto there is a place called Smokeless Joe's that has beers from all over the world, including Belgium. The beer menu is larger than a food restaurant menu! I've had Leffe before, and it wasn't too bad either.

The Stella in Canada tastes different to the Stella in Europe. The European version I tend to think has a very much stronger flavour than that of Stella here ( though they are the same alcoholic percentage ). The north american version has a much smoother taste, and I find, much more drinkable.

The Stella Artois adverts are a hoot!



ScubaDuc said:
Ehm...Stella Artois the "Goddess of Beer" ? I live in Be and no one here thinks it's such a great product...Try some of the Abbey beers, like a Leffe triple...There are over 800 beers left in this tiny country and there used to be over 2000...nearly all of them are better than Stella :D

But I do agree, a good Stella is at least 100 times better than a bud light! Yuk!
 
The phone can be built around the Nano. It should have major syncing features with bluetooth and USB 2.0 for the Mac as well as Windows PCs. Phones today are like the MP3 players of the past before the iPod. They have poor interfaces, design, and sync abilities.

Also it would be nice if Apple would focus on computers again when the new Intel cpus are available.
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I would love a phone designed by Apple (maybe not Ives as it would schratch too easily :p) with a superior GUI and perfect sync against Address Book, iCal and even Mail and Safari.

I don't really care about iTunes, but that would probably be a feature, and maybe even some iPhoto capability could be handy if it featured a decent camera like that of the SE K750i and W800i.

I've just bought a W800 and it does indeed Sync flawlessly with iCal and addressbook out of the box. iPhoto treats it as a digicam when you connect it via USB too. Even the 'Walkman' part has a very iPod feel about the menus ... if Apple should team up with anyone right now to produce a phone it should be SE, not Moto who haven't produced a decent phone in years.

A
 
To be honest I've been thinking about this for a while and obviously never post.

I think an Apple smart phone wouldn't work on Verizon, or Sprint, or Cingular. But it would rather be a wifi smart phone. As soon as Google flips the switch on their wireless network...look out.

Downloads of songs would come directly off the internet and be way faster than any cell phone. Apple isn't making a cell phone, they're making a wifi phone. Just my two cents.
 
Not so fast...

I don't think that an Apple smartphone would take off without a mobile version of Office... and I doubt Microsoft would pledge support for such an app at this point.

Maybe it would be attractive to a casual user, but face it... smartphones are geared more to business users that have a need for mobile web and email as well as a way to view/edit their documents on-the-fly.

Now if Apple could make thier own mobile office suite...
 
The carrier isn't really the big deal -- it's what form the phone itself might take, and on that subject I think many of you are shooting too low with talk of an Apple smartphone resembling the Treo or Blackberry. The MDA IV seems to me a more likely candidate because it will be a multimedia device.

I hate to cross-post, but I put this up earlier today on AppleInsider:

I'm dying to see Apple put out something like the MDA IV, which is now available here in Germany. This all-in-one approach is, I think, where portable devices are headed and with, say, 4GB+ of flash memory it would be able to hold not only plenty of songs and videos but a scaled-down version of OS X too.

I never saw the need for any type of handheld before last year when a friend told me about the Sharp Zaurus. A personal organizer, a moble phone, a camera, an MP3/video player... yeah, all these things are cool or useful, sure, but I don't want to lug them around individually. Nor do I want to have anything to do with Windows -- and now that the Palm OS is Windows-based, it's getting harder to enforce that criteria. The Zaurus, which is Linux-based (on an Intel Xscale processor), does all these things in one way or another, and the community of developers has turned it into a laptop that happens to fit in your pocket. Now that is both cool and useful. That's why these all-in-ones are greater than the sum of their parts. What continues to bug me about the Zaurus is that it lacks the intercompatibility of Macs, and so every sync or file transfer process takes sixty steps instead of one.

Incidentally, I stopped into the local T-Punkt and had a look at the MDA IV. It's one hell of a smartphone. If it didn't run Windows, I'd be shilling my Zaurus on eBay right now. But just imagine it in white. With a silver metallic backing. And OS X-lite on the screen.
 
monty77 said:
I've just bought a W800 and it does indeed Sync flawlessly with iCal and addressbook out of the box.
So it handles all day events in iCal? And maybe different categories (i.e. Calendars)?

And multiple e-mail addresses and phone numbers for each person, not just one of each category, plus normal addresses. Just like when syncing Address Book to an iPod?

That's awesome...
 
If apple made a smart phone I'm sure it would be damn funky, have a super, inovative UI and be out of my price range ;)
A
 
Well, I don't think Zander knows anything about an Apple smartphone and is probably just repeating rumors. But while we're here..

mcadam said:
If apple made a smart phone I'm sure it would be damn funky, have a super, inovative UI and be out of my price range ;)
A

Yeah. It'd probably cost about $200 more than I can ever imagine budgeting for a phone/organizer. And I'd probably buy it as soon as it became available. I would bet that if they put their mind to it, Apple could do a smartphone OS right (not that I have enough experience with Symbian or WinMo to know whether they do it right, but I think our friends in Cupertino could make it just that much better.)
 
Stella said:
Here in Toronto there is a place called Smokeless Joe's that has beers from all over the world, including Belgium. The beer menu is larger than a food restaurant menu! I've had Leffe before, and it wasn't too bad either.

The Stella in Canada tastes different to the Stella in Europe. The European version I tend to think has a very much stronger flavour than that of Stella here ( though they are the same alcoholic percentage ). The north american version has a much smoother taste, and I find, much more drinkable.

The Stella Artois adverts are a hoot!

I was in Montrèal a short while ago and I found a micro brewery with a belgian brew master that had a great blanche and wonderful flammecookes! Yummmm!

I only noted streets adverts for Stella, I did not see any TV ads but then again, all they were showing were Katrina images.

It's nice to know that many still appreciate good food and beer. When I'll make it back to Toronto, I'll be sure to check Smokeless Joe's out...

Here in Belgium Stella is best draft, but that's of course true for any beer...I must admit I did not think of trying one while I was in Canada. Normally, I go for local micro brewed beers as I see no point in drinking what I get here. It would be like going to McDonalds in Paris to see if it tastes the same as in the US... :eek:

Cheers and have a great cold one!
 
I think apple should design something like the nokia 8890 with iPod nano. That would be the sweetest phone ever. Just imagine you have something like the iPod nano and then to dial a call you just slide down the click wheel, like the nokia 8890, to reveal the phone buttons. That would be so sweet.

late
 
aikomhoch said:
Well, I don't know if it's coming or not, but Apple, if you're reading this, if it synchs with iSync (which I imagine it would) and isn't as large as a Treo, I'll buy one the day it comes out.

same here. make somethhing cool set a trend jobs like danger did with the tmobile sidekick. they will sell more than ipods lol. oh yea make sure it has itunes hehehe!!!
 
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