27 Jul 2004 | Mike D. said...

I wish I could claim it was more than a coincidence, but I published this article only a day before the whole Apple/Motorola thing was announced:

All hail the iPhone

*That* is what we need. Not 12 little songs on a phone.

27 Jul 2004 | Mike said...

I don't think we need uber-integration (cell + iPod + PDA + kitchen sink), but rather smarter integration.

A listing of my contacts is absolutely worthless to me if I can't hit one button and have them talking to me. Now that cellular phones permeate our society, what's the point of having a contact list on my iPod and my PDA if I need my cellphone in order to do anything useful with that information? And on the same vein, now that cellphones can let you listen to MP3s, let's see just how long that battery will actually last.

Also, Mike, that was a great post on your blog. Thanks for the link.

27 Jul 2004 | Eamon said...

I'll tell you, the Treo 600 is the next best thing. It's a fantastic PDA and a great cellphone, and with 1Gb SD cards falling in price (~$200), it's a darn good mp3 player, too. Plus the battery life just can't be beat. I ♥ my Treo.

27 Jul 2004 | Mike D. said...

Mike,

Battery life on the Treo 600 blows the iPod (and any other hard drive based MP3 player) out of the water. I listened to 4 hours of music on my Treo while on a plane back from Hawaii and it only drained 20% of my battery juice. Since SD memory is solid-state, it sucks up a lot less power than a spinning hard drive.

Pretty much the only two things which eat up juice on a cell phone are LCD backlighting (which is off 95% of the time), and actual talk/data airtime. All other functions, including playing music, are very battery-friendly.

27 Jul 2004 | Ed Knittel said...

Where did you read that it would only support 12 songs to begin with? I have a Motorola MPX200 and with my 256Mb Smart Disk in my phone I can easily fit more than 12 songs on it. I HATE using Windows Media Player on my phone to listen to music. God I hope this will work on my phone... I really, really do.

27 Jul 2004 | Jonathan M. Hollin said...

This is great. It's one step closer to my ultimate gadget.

27 Jul 2004 | hp said...

Motorola's main objective is to sell as many phones as it can so it's unlikely that they will provide a way for their older models to be enabled to use this feature unless there is a decently profitabler revenue angle for them to exploit.

As for Apple and a possibility of "iPhone", I do think that it's in the works but not in the way that would result in an Apple branded device for a number of reasons that would take too long and too much space to present here. What I think we'll eventually see is an iPod based "kit" that will be licensed to phone and network equipment makers that will make mobile phones an integral part of the digital hub strategy as well as much more user-friendly. Devices based on this kit will seamlessly integrate with home computers, will work equally well with Macs and other platforms and be much easier for carriers to deploye, integrate and support.

These licensing arrangements may not necessairly make a lot of money for Apple (relatively speaking) but will be an important component in the overall business strategy. Where the real money will be in for Apple (and this is already happening at some level; those who attaneded this year's WWDC will know what I am referring to here) is in sales of Xserves and Xraids (along with Xsan software and Xgrid setup and consulting) to telecoms, equipment makers and, eventually, corporations/organizations intent on running their own "intracoms" in tandem with their telecom service providers. This would fit in with the company's larger QuickTime strategy and it's reasonable to assume that some enterprise-class software (likely based on WebObjects application server) would be developed and packaged with the hardware as mentioned above.

Therefore, I don't think that we'll necessarily see/carry an iPhone but I do believe that we will use one, possibly sooner than later.

Best regards,

hp

27 Jul 2004 | hp said...

Apologies for the typos and spelling errors in my post above.

Regards,

hp

27 Jul 2004 | One of several Steves said...

How long until we have a combo handset thats an all-in-one phone/iPod/PDA (sync with iCal and Address Book too)?

Hopefully never. The marketplace is littered with the failures of combo products. Rarely do they ever do their individual functions as well as they would were they standalone. There's a good reason most people still prefer to carry separate phones, PDAs (if they even bother with those anymore), music players, etc.

Engineers and hard-core techies love integration. Few consumers do.

28 Jul 2004 | Mark Wyner said...

"How long until we have a combo handset thats an all-in-one phone/iPod/PDA (sync with iCal and Address Book too)?"

Man, how I've been waiting for this one. I salivate at the challenge to make a device like this usable. I'll be part of the team to make it happen. Any takers?

28 Jul 2004 | Don Schenck said...

Give Red Green the objects and some duct tape and you'll have your device.

Anyone else trying to *rid* themselves of pesky, electronic intrusions?

28 Jul 2004 | Eamon said...

My previous boss once told me about a time when he'd woken up at 3am with a great idea for a new product and called one of our VP's on his cell for feedback. The VP answered the call and got all bent out of shape about the early hour phone call. My boss said, "I'm not the idiot who left his phone on."

These things aren't sentient. They don't turn themselves on. If receiving a phone call is going to be an intrusion, TURN IT OFF. Done. Finis. EOL.

28 Jul 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

Engineers and hard-core techies love integration. Few consumers do.

But in this particular case, I think consumers would welcome a well-designed integrated device because it means you only have to carry one piece of electronic equipment in your bag or on your hip instead of 2-4 (cellphone, PDA, MP3 player, digital camera).

The portability issue is what's driving integration here. For desktop equipment such as printers, scanners, copiers, home stereos, etc., integration isn't a big selling point for consumers unless they've got severe space constraints. Most people buy dedicated individual machines because they perform better than the all-in-one devices. But once you start talking about portable equipment that people are likely to carry with them all day, then I think integration does become attractive.

28 Jul 2004 | One of several Steves said...

But in this particular case, I think consumers would welcome a well-designed integrated device because it means you only have to carry one piece of electronic equipment in your bag or on your hip instead of 2-4 (cellphone, PDA, MP3 player, digital camera).

But only if that integrated device can perform its individual functions as well - or better - than the individual devices do.

We've had at least five years now of integrated devices, and with rare excptions, none of them have succeeded. They all have various problems. The first Palm/phone combos were ridiculously huge. That form factor has finally gotten better with the Treo and Blackberry utilizations, but even then, most people don't really like those as phones. Too big.

Note that the trend in cell phones continues to be smaller and lighter. How are you going to pack all of that into a device and have it accomplish that? The iPod is heavy, compared to my Nokia (which isn't a particularly small one). And it's much heavier. I don't want to hold it up to my face.

The iPod's screen is too small for effective PDA use. The interface is great for a music player, and sucks hard for a PDA. How are you going to get a worthwhile screen on there? Text entry?

Now you want to throw a camera in there too? You're going to be lugging around at least a six-inch by six-inch device that ways a couple pounds. In the realms of portable electronics, that thing is enormous.

And, it's likely that it won't perform many or all of the functions as well as the individual units would.

Believe me, I'd love to carry around one piece of equipment for everything. I'd also love to win the lottery and walk around on Mars. None of the above are likely to happen any time soon.

For those of us who design and develop these sorts of devices, let's concentrate on first getting them to work by themselves before we complicate it by trying to create the SwissArmyPod.

28 Jul 2004 | sloan said...

Will the iPod develop into something pod-like instead of a music player with some extra software features? Adding wi-fi or bluetooth would allow for it to act more like a pod for storing information than simply a music player. With the iPod providing a base, add-ons could be minimized to their bare essentials. But right away you would have a "remote" to control your AirTunes setup.

Cellphone size is largely dictated by the need to push buttons, a screen and have a distinct distance from the ear to the mouth for speaking. If you have an iPod with an addressbook, all you would need is a bluetooth headset with cell phone connection tech. The iPod would be the dialing device and the headset would be truly just a communication device and could be collapsable to something smaller than a lighter or integrated into a new type of headphones.

A PDA needs much more screen real-estate to be effective. Couldn't the click-wheel on the new i-Pods flip down or something to reveal more screen? Put a nice, hi-res screen on there and a bluetooth pen and you have your entry device (no need for touchscreens). You could always add a keyboard too. In the end though, I think data entry is better suited for when you are at a computer, the small size of a PDA makes them awkward for data entry, but fine for displaying stored information.

Using the iPod more like a pod might be where they are headed in the future. Solid state memory and low power wi-fi/hi-bandwidth bluetooth may be the keys they are waiting for if they are interested in this sort of thing at all. For there to be real a real convergence device I think there is still some time to pass and Apple will wait until then.

28 Jul 2004 | b said...

SwissArmyPod! ha. that's great.

28 Jul 2004 | Paperhead said...

I've been using an XDA II for the best part of the year and I'm with Brad on this one, an all-in-one device that fits in my pocket is exactly what I wanted.

Slam in a compact flash microdrive and I can carry lots of tunes around with me, even movies for when I get really bored on the train. Email on the go, wifi card works fine (will be native on the next generation), camera/vid functionality (video surprisingly good, stills crap, but at least I always have a camera with me and the quality will be way better on the next build). Couple of dozen e-books on there that I'm working my way through, sync some news services of a morning and I'm pretty much set for the day. And of course, some decent games for when I don't really want to think.

Only thing I dislike is when I forget to turn bluetooth off because it just chews through the battery.

Really, why would I want to carry an iPod, laptop, cell phone, and camera instead?

29 Jul 2004 | Don Schenck said...

Turn off my cell phone ... hmmmm ... what a novel idea.

29 Jul 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

Let me be clear that I would probably never buy such an integrated device myself, I just think that there's demand for it. Witness the popularity of cellphones with cameras built in: the photo quality sucks, but most people who buy them don't seem to care.

It's funny, the only electronic device I carry around with any regularity is my iPod. I use it as an alarm clock when traveling, for listening to tunes on airplanes and in hotel rooms, for bus and Metro directions (I keep directions to the airport and other destinations stored in the Notes directory), and for looking up phone numbers of friends and clients. I don't have a cellphone or a PDA, and I bring my digital camera with me only occasionally. So I personally have no need for an integrated device, and I'm picky enough about things like sound quality and picture quality to want separate, dedicated devices for those functions. But for those who embrace the "digital lifestyle" and regularly walk around town or travel with phone, PDA, MP3 player, and digital camera, an integrated device might be very attractive.