iCell in the Works? 271
SirWraith writes "Ars Technica is running a story speculating on the possibility of an Apple cellphone." From the article: "At last week's CES, Motorola officially dumped Apple with its new ROKR E2 phone and its new iRadio digital music service. ... After the ROKR's lackluster launch, speculation abounded that Apple was saving the 'good' iTunes phone for itself, and the new 'Mobile Me' trademark lends credence to that line of thinking. At this stage of the game, it looks like Apple is moving in the direction of launching its own cellular service complete with its own lineup of phones (or phone, as the case may be)."
This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in? If Apple doesn't capitalise on the current media and consumer 'love' for iPods, then the plethora of other devices with similar or superior function will destroy Apples market (and it's only so long before flash storage becomes comperable in capacity to drive based iPods.)
Apple could quite easily pull off a 'one phone' network not because it was technically superior or cheaper than other networks/handsets, but because Apple would do what Apple does best, give it a slick UI/customer experience and use their flair at advertising to buy the market.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:5, Insightful)
personally, I'd prefer they be seperate -- but that's me. It's kind of difficult to use your phone while using your iPod, isn't it?
The iPod was successful because the design and interface was clean and "sexy". Do you think that by adding phone, camera, and whatever other capabilities to the device that they will be able to keep it "clean and sexy"? I don't.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
I guess I'm not alone in thinking that a bluetooth enabled ipod (or other music player) would rock. Not only could you sync it w/ no wires. you can have 1 set of headphones for music and phone. plus it could integrate in to a car's audio system.
The real question is: Why hasn't anybody done this yet?
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Not to mention everyone on the train listening in on your music. Would that be punishable for broadcasting music in a public forum without permission?
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Should I worry about turning my stereo up loud enough that my neighbors can hear it for fear of ASCAP demanding royalties?
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
2. Blue Tooth is slow. I have in on my phone but I tend to use the cable for pics and mp3s. It works for head sets and stuff but it really isn't that great for transfering files.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm curious, do you have any articles which support this, and could you explain to me why you don't want the extra features?
If for example you have two phones with identical form factors, except that one has a 60gb music library in it (for the same price), would you honestly prefer to still get the phone without the music, and buy a seperate device with a 60gb music library. This isn't an Ad Hominem, I'm just curious, because I don't
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Yet Apple will need to make it so not-like phones we have today. I assume a folding design as one of celebrated parts of the iPod is it look. Now I don't expect a rotary dialing system but that wouldn't be too hard of a gimmick to add using the click wheel.
Now, if Jobs and Co would come up with a phone that can work on anyone's network and is sold through the Apple store maybe he can free the consumer from these networks. Subscriptions suck.
Now a
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Second is device size. A phone can be tiny and needs only a minimal display but has a very specific shape requirement based on how it is held/pla
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Now, if I could link the phone and the iPod up through bluetooth or something similar, that would solve the problem. Ooh, I might patent that idea...
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in?
I'm holding off buying an iPod cos I want a phone with a decent integrated mp3 player. (So far the thing that's holding me back is that it's still cheaper to buy separate devices.)
I don't want to carry around a zillion gizmos, each with their own quirky interfaces, cables, memory formats, sync apps, drivers etc.
Actually when it really comes down to it, what I really want is to have my PC with me at all times, in a form factor round about that of a phone. But that's a few decades off, even assuming anyone wants to build one.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Treo smartphones and PocketPC phones can hold decent chunks of music, and have builtin phones. You can even get SSH and Remote Desktop clients for them.
I check out PDAs from time to time to see what the latest is. But the thing they never have is a DVI port. I'd like to plonk down the PDA, plug in a keyboard and monitor, and use it as a PC -- if only to act as a thin client to a beefier application server.
These guys are approaching what I want [dualcor.com], though it's not as small as I like, and isn't a phone or came
This is why I bought my Treo & later sold an i (Score:2)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
I think if Apple did this, it'd be a smart move. iPods are great and all but the phone
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a good argument for integration right there... an incoming call should simply be taken through the headphones.
IPods and phones are really so similar... they're both little devices for listening... only difference is phone can transmit.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Wouldn't that be where Apple steps in? To make using both at once easy? Ease of use is something they're known for.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I want a phone that has crystal clear voice and never drops a call and has an 8 hour talk time and a 2 week standby time. I don't want it to have a camera, web browsing, a PDA, mp3 player, or any other garbage and I want it to be as small as possible while still being sturdy. For mp3 playing I'll use my iPod.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:5, Interesting)
After I got a phone that had one, I started to think what it would be good for. I figured it was a comfort to have it in the case of an accident.
Sure enough, I got into a small fender-bender in a parking lot. It was completely the other person's fault (they backed into me), but they later tried to blame me! Luckily, after it happened, I snapped some pics on my phone and sent them to my insurance company and theirs.
The photos show clearly where my car was and where their car was. My insurance company didn't pay a dime. I received a check from theirs.
So I don't think convergence in this respect is a bad thing.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
More than covered the expense of the phone - and was so much fun getting the other guy to pay when he thought he could just lie his way out of it.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
After I got a phone that had one, I started to think what it would be good for. I figured it was a comfort to have it in the case of an [auto] accident.
You're right. They are nice to have in a pinch. I have a cameraphone, and I have used it in similar situations.
But I agree with the grandparent post, in that I don't want feature creep and bloat in my cell phone if its *primary function*, that is, to send and receive calls, is still broken
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Why is it that every time a story like this comes up someone feels that such aa phone shouldn't exist just because they don't want it? OH, I KNOW - you're a troll.
Get back under your bridge.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
I love when trolls call other people trolls. Congrats. You win the prize!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
But it was a little over the top to call him a troll. Sorry professor.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
I want a phone that has a PDA, web browser, camera, MP3 player, and other interesting garbage that, believe it or not, I actually use. I don't mind if I have to charge it every 4 days instead of 8, t
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Apple would want to segue its iPod market into the mobile phone market.
becomes
Apple would want to smoothly and unhesitating move its iPod market into the mobile phone market.
See?
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:5, Funny)
Both. Here's how:
1) Purchase a cell phone. Get whatever you want, it doesn't matter.
2) Purchase an iPod Nano.
3) Purchase a role of duct tape.
4) Purchase a book instructing you in the proper use of duct tape. "Red Green's 10,001 Uses for Duct Tape" is highly recommended.
5) Using your newfound knowledge in high precision engineering, duct tape the iPod Nano to your cell phone.
Now you too have a phone and iPod combination all in one, but with none of those silly limitations on the number of songs! Just flip your phone one direction to talk to people, and flip it the other direction to switch the song you're listening to. What could be better?
P.S. 6) Profit!!!
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:3, Funny)
Is this one of those modern euphemisms like 'jump the shark?' I'm guessing it would mean to introduce something technologically advanced but with little real world utility.
Or did you mean 'segue?'
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2, Insightful)
segue = transition.
segway = expensive scooter.
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:5, Funny)
There ya go! Next step: Apple merges with Segway, to produce the Segintosh, which merges phone, video, music and computing with a handy transportation device, only $22,000 USD!
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Re:This wouldn't surprise me.... (Score:2)
Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in?
Phones and iPods are both electronic devices, and they're both things you carry around with you all the time, but the synergy mostly ends there. My point is that the merging of the two together creates design compromises for both, so you wind up with a crappy phone and a crappy iPod. A good example of technology integration that's only a niche product is the combined TV/DVD player or VCR. The DVD player/VCR is useless without a TV, s
Ironically ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Either way, I'll follow suit and ask how much longer will it be until the iPod is your computer, media player, internet access, cell phone, credit card, personal identification, financial recorder/advisor, taser, keyless entry and pace maker?
Re:Ironically ... (Score:2)
Perhaps the author of that article had a lot of insight and perhaps they already new about this news.
Not a helluva lot of insight - people have been speculating about an 'iPhone' for years now.
There's even some lovely mockups of what an Apple phone would look like here. [applele.com]
Either way, I'll follow suit and ask how much longer will it be until the iPod is your computer, media player, internet access, cell phone, credit card, personal identification, financial reco
Re:Ironically ... (Score:2)
I certainly hope that phone is supposed to magnetically seal itself when it's closed, because the artist seems to have forgotten a latch. (!)
Re:Ironically ... (Score:2)
When Virtual Retinal Displays [wikipedia.org] become feasible in something as small as an iPod or Cell phone.
Otherwise people will have a hard time trying view a lot of information all at once like they do on their pcs.
Is there not enough Apple news today already... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is there not enough Apple news today already... (Score:3, Funny)
Tiger Can Rotate the Screen As Well (Score:4, Interesting)
Off hand I don't remember how to force it to do so, but Tiger does have this feature. Combined with the new trademark, we may see an Apple PDA and/or Tablet sometime this year.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Tiger Can Rotate the Screen As Well (Score:2, Informative)
The hidden option was removed from the System Preferences in 10.4.2 or thereabouts. I can confirm that it worked, though. I rotated the display on my iBook and had a hard time resetting it. Try moving the mouse pointer with a mouse pad that's rotated by 90 degrees ...
Re:Tiger Can Rotate the Screen As Well (Score:2)
Re:Tiger Can Rotate the Screen As Well (Score:3, Informative)
I don't necessarily see it as a sign of things to come, just a requirement that should have been it OS X 10.0, or at least 10.2.
Will it come with an Apple UI (Score:2)
Will it ask you if its 'okay' to hang up on a telemarketer?
Re:Will it come with an Apple UI (Score:2)
Dialing with the clickwheel (Score:3, Funny)
Mobile Me? Sounds too close to (Score:2)
Bad Motorola Breakup? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder of this is business or tit for tat type of thing.
Re:Bad Motorola Breakup? (Score:2)
Re:Bad Motorola Breakup? (Score:2)
Apple Patent (Score:5, Interesting)
Amongst the uses they include mobile phones.
Also can someone stop beating this rumour to death. They'll release it when they figure out a cool name for the product iCell just sounds lame, especially with the supersecret spreadsheet applications "Cells" (amongst a host of other rumours.) With the latest Apple nomenclature, it'd probable be MacPhone.
Re:Apple Patent (Score:2)
Ben Franklin Said.... (Score:2, Funny)
Apple will simply buy a network (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Apple will simply buy a network (Score:2)
It's very difficult to "simply buy a mobile phone network". Apple is a global company and unless they want to pick up some tin-pot network somewhere in the middle of Russia then they simply aren't going to have the experience or (as you mentioned) the market cap to go for companies like Vodafone, T-Mobile, Telefonica or France Telecom (Orange) who truely are global. It simply won't happen.
They may start an
The key isn't to buy a network. (Score:2)
Possible Look of iPhone (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple products in his spare time:
http://www.applele.com/index.html [applele.com]
http://www.applele.com/pictures.html [applele.com]
I personally favor this iPhone design:
http://www.applele.com/pict_04hipod_r02.html [applele.com]
Almost better than the real thing!
I think it won't be hybrid (Score:2)
I see that Apple like to seperate things, in same time ensure that simply would fit together and work. But if their cell phone will be the same quality as iPod (I mean not only technically, also in design and "working together"), then I would like to buy one,
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Can they add a phone without clunking up (Score:4, Interesting)
They can with iTunes (Score:2)
Re:They can with iTunes (Score:2)
Really? Are you not from the US, or have you not met your average iPod owning cell phone user yet?
I don't think there is a resturaunt on the east coast right now where you can go in and not see a table with two people more interested in clicking their keypads than talking to each other... With the occational passing of the phones for a moment and giggling. Especially disturbing when those two people are pushing 30.
Not Really Apple's Business (Score:5, Insightful)
When Apple hit the mp3-player scene in 2002, there were some competing products from mostly small companies that had limitations due to the necessary tradeoffs. But, mp3-players were a nascent luxury item at the time, whereas cellphones are now, more or less, a commodity item. Almost nobody at the time had experience in mp3-player design and manufacture, whereas cellular phones are a mature product. Consider the players in today's cellphone market: Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, and about a dozen others that aren't as prevalent in the U.S. In comparison to the mp3-player market of 2002, the cellphone market of today is a cut-throught, kill-or-be-killed, Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"-like world filled with a bunch of predators.
Even if Apple were to make an iCell, what would it do with it? Without a service provider to back it, the phone is dead-on-arrival. Will the allure of Apple's logo and the iPod brand be enough for service providers to risk the wrath of the other cellphone manufacturers? I don't know.
I guess if a convergence between the iPod and a cellphone is inevitable, then I'd prefer Apple to take a crack at it first (and don't cite the ROKR as a counterexample, that thing was a kludge of competing interests). Steve Jobs has often said that cellphones are poorly designed - trying to get the feature list make up for the fact that they aren't better thought out. Still, is this something that Apple really wants to be a part of?
Re:Not Really Apple's Business (Score:2)
With GSM, all is possible. They could either just sell an unlocked GSM phone and any GSM based user can move their SIM into it (providing it's not locked, not sure if us carriers lock their sims -- I know they lock their phones) Or they could just enter a resell agreement with several GSM providers. T-mobile goes for the younger crowd for example. GSM is very flexible. I think there are many avenues they could go this route, whether part
Re:Not Really Apple's Business (Score:2)
I think you're absolutely right. The cell phone business is complicated, political, expensive
Re:Not Really Apple's Business (Score:3, Interesting)
Or rather, they don't set thier collective minds and resources to it unless they think they can come up with a winner.
Re:Not Really Apple's Business (Score:2)
Yet there is another (also attractive) market: the PDA phones or smartphones, which still no one has got completly right; i-mate Jam is almost quite there, but yet...
Apple's lack of experience can be covered by an experienced partner like HTC: don't forget apple is not a manufacturer, th
A suggestion (Score:2, Interesting)
That way Apple will have internet access which they could use for downloading music/video, web-surfing etc.
In a few years, when Wi-Fi is as wide-spread as the cellphone networks are, they can easily convert the iPod to a VoIP phone. All you need is to add a mic and a speaker (or just use head-phones with an attached mic). They could even keep their wheel thingie, and just put numbers around it.
That enables Apple to control their own
Re:A suggestion (Score:2)
...with a click wheel?
Why not? (Score:2)
Cell or VOIP? (Score:5, Interesting)
A conventional cellphone means that Apple would have to kowtow to all the carriers and their phone would be just one phone among a plethora of other, well-established outfits (Nokia, Moto, Samsung, whoever).
But a VOIP phone using wifi would enable Apple to sidestep being just another player and control the whole thing all the way down the line. Of course there is the minor problem of establishing a huge wifi network, but maybe this is where Google and friends come in, and anyway didn't someone say this is all wild, wild speculation?
Can't recall where I read this. Mabye yesterday on Slashdot
Re:Cell or VOIP? (Score:2)
Re:They might collaborate with Google (Score:2)
So Apple will soon announce a tablet, a PDA, and a VOIP phone/iPod, each of which will work with the wireless infrastructure that Google is rolling out.
Yup, that is a very interesting idea. How nice it would be not to have to deal with the incumbent cellphone carriers where I live and for whom the term "daylight robbery" could have been coined.
Apple/Motorola (Score:3, Insightful)
OTH, I realize that in business dealings you very rarely get both sides of the story and Apple may be able to sit down with future partners and easily allay any fears they might have. Business is funny like that and has a lot more to do with confidence than with money.
Just my 2 cents.
Is hardware the answer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or is that what the Xbox is?
It's been in the works for a long time (Score:3, Funny)
Huge market for this: women (Score:2)
Re:Huge market for this: women (Score:2)
Are you joking?
Even the smallest handbag I can recall seeing a woman carry would have have ample room for a cell phone and an iPod or a cell phone and a PDA.
Try carrying around anything more than a cell phone in your pants pockets. The iPod may be small (and indeed they are now smaller than the old 20 GB 2nd gen one I have) but even an iPod nano is almost too big to stuff into a pocket with a cell phone.
Personally, I leave my iPod connected to my car stereo unless I know I'm going on a walk. If I'm doi
Cool, cellphone with rotary dial! (Score:2)
Re:Cool, cellphone with rotary dial! (Score:2)
it's like myspace, for your phone.
Forget the phone for a bit, think about service (Score:2)
Let'
Getting into the Provider business (Score:2)
Re:The Doug Flutie of Apple rumors (Score:2)
Re:The Doug Flutie of Apple rumors (Score:2)
So, I take it you're a Miami fan.
Re:The Doug Flutie of Apple rumors (Score:2)
Re:Cellular Service? I think not (Score:2)
It's an incredibly competitive market already though, so they'd have to offer something pretty special or unique.
Re:missing 1Gb shuffle? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:missing 1Gb shuffle? (Score:2)
Why not?
Re:missing 1Gb shuffle? (Score:2)
So do most theaters, and how many times do you hear them ring still? Besides, I'm sure that if Apple had a phone, you could turn the ringer off.
Re:Geezus people (Score:2)