iTunes phone in Canada - will we be able to ROKR?
The iTunes support for mobile phones begins today, with Apple's partenership with Motorola's ROKR E1 and the US cell company Cingular.
The big question is of course...can we use it in Canada? Well, the Motorola ROKR is a GSM phone that also supports international networks. Being a GSM phone, it means it also uses SIM cards to activate the phone -- meaning you could use the card from any network provider. Cingular may be distributing the phones as locked, but it probably won't be more than a couple of weeks before a firmware upgrade will unlock it, making it capable of being used on any GSM network. Here in Canada, that's only the Rogers/Fido network.
Update: Mark Evans says the ROKR will be available through Rogers by mid-September, although he doesn't name a source.
Elsewhere, Michael Gartenburg covers the iPod Nano -- for us Mac folks, the Windows announcement might get lost in the shuffle: "With the integration with Outlook with iTunes 5.0 and the small size, I can even see folks using this as a personal information manager."
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iPod phone is disappointing.
There's a cell phone from Nokia on the market right now, I believe, which has a 4GB drive. Why in the world does the iPod phone have only half a gig of memory? It's probably not even exclusive, it's probably shared with all the other data the thing stores.
Half a gig might be enough for a teeny bopper to bring along her top ten music, but it isn't nearly enough for someone who appreciates good music to bring along ALAC-encoded songs. This allows 10 to 12 ALAC songs at best, not even enough for teeny bopper.
The Nano looks fricken awesome, except that the Mini had a 6GB version and could now have an 8GB version. Given that I don't mind the size of an iPod at all, I would prefer greater capacity to smaller size any day. Given how small the Nano is, an 8GB Nano would only have been a bit bigger.
Target market
As walkah said and I talked about in the past as well, I'm also waiting for the Nokia N91 (not quite on the market). But, I have a phone right now with 64MB, and it *sucks* to fill it with music. Syncing with iTunes directly is a huge deal.
You hit the nail on the hid with the teeny bopper comment: THAT is the target market. Music lovers and edge cases like yourself are going to use a giant iPod with full-quality -- everybody else is going to be well served by this phone.
Come... join me....
Come Boris... join me... sit on a dock, drink beer, and crank Big Star somewhere in Memphis on a hot summer night... walk through downtown Vancouver listening to the Bladerunner soundtrack in CD-quality audio at 4AM. Or crank the Gladiator Soundtrack as you zoom to work on your Segway decorated like a Roman Charriot.
The thing is - the Nano might be targeted at the Boppers, but that's only because current technology allows only so much data on file. Some day, once this streak of convergence completes, phones will have enough memory to hold 1500 ALAC songs.
Shoot, even a 60GB iPod with 1GB of flash as a buffer would be significantly preferable to what we have now. Even with ALAC-encoding it would still significantly reduce HD spin-time while I search for something I'm in the mood for.
And why color everything now? Jobs is Salt & Pepper now, why can't the iPod screen still be black & white? I don't even want shades of grey.
No wonder I bought a PC, Apple just isn't the company for me anymore. Pitty even their decent products don't appeal to high-end consumer lust.
A small nano will be in the mail ;-)
Hi B, I am working on getting you a nano. Thanks buddy, Lloyd