Motorola's CEO Ed Zander added fuel to persistent speculation about Apple's interest in producing its own phone. "And we know that they are going to build a smart phone - it's only a matter of time."
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2005-08-26
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They've gone one better and moved the only valuable feature (Ink) from the Newton OS to OS X, which as we all know is a VERY portable OS by modern standards.
I wouldn't be surprised if they go one better than resurrecting the Newt and instead bring out full powered OS X machines in a cellphone form factor.
They have access to the low power highly integrated chips from Intel that will allow this to possibly happen sometime in the not-too-distant future.
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And I assume that Apple, will, again go with Cingular on this? Or pre-paid using Cingular's network. Well, unless it makes it to market by next March, when my VZN contract is up, I'm still going with Windows Smartphone unless it's that "to die for". Reason being it has more apps already out there and works with every Digital Music Store available, except iTunes. Apple would provide it's own network, it would buy time for someone, right?
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2005-07-11
It is no problem for Apple to make one good phone. One. Maybe two.
But Apple simply can't compete with Nokia and SonyEricsson releasing new phones at a pace of 40-50 each year, selling billions. It might come as a surprise to Americans, but cell phones are consumer products with a short time to live.
Apple can't keep up with this. It would require Apple to become 10 times larger than it is today and it would distract Apple from their business into a low margin and hectic race. Jobs knows that.
But keep your eyes open for different iApps compatible with a lot more phones. I have seen some of the work and it is lickable.
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"But Apple simply can't compete with Nokia and SonyEricsson releasing new phones at a pace of 40-50 each year, selling billions. It might come as a surprise to Americans, but cell phones are consumer products with a short time to live. "
Apple would design the cell phone's form/factor and UI.. not all the communications crap. They'd simply buy that from Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm, whoever...
There is no need for 40-50 new designs a year. 1 or 2 are sufficient. The key is that it's a good design, something Sony, Nokia, Motorola, etc still haven't done yet IMO. If Apple built a cell phone(iphone) that was as cool looking and usable as the nano, they would sell a shitload of them.
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What's up with Ed Zander anyway?
First he's bad mouthing the iPod nano, in jest supposely, then this claptrap. What's wrong with this guy?
The cell phone market is saturated, Apple is no dummy, they know they need to create new markets and dominate them, like the Mac and then the iPod. Plus the carriers really call the shots and Cingular just made a deal with Microsoft.
Sure there is a purpose to Apple letting Motorola and Cingular play with their marbles , it most likely has to do with a notebook/cellphone convergance of some sort. Apple needs a carrier and Moto doesn't make computers.
Oh, well I guess he was right, but I doubt Apple will invade the space for a strict phone only market.
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2005-07-13
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>>>Other companies like Porche design for other companies... Apple's design team can be subcontracted to create a phone...
>>>It would be really cool if they created an OS that combines the cool old Newton stuff with an OS X look and feel.
Apple didn't design anything.
PortalPlayer designed the ipod chipset. Pixo designed the ipod OS.
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The iPod was designed by a British Designer - Jonathan Ives. But he is head of the Apple Design Team, he's not just contracted in. Apple definately have a design team - to suggest otherwise is crazy talk!!
Jonathan Ives has been working for Apple for years. The first mac I bought was one of his first designs (6500 - not the best example of his work but still). Since then the Apple design team have gone from strength to strenth - first ibook, emate, imac 1,2 + 3. ipod, mini, nano, shuffle, powermacs , isight, airport base station etc etc etc etc
How could a company that prides itself on design not have a design team!?!
I mean, come on, even the boxes say "Designed by Apple in California"
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2005-09-30
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Everyone: Shut up and apply for work there and you'll find out they have a Design Team. Holy crap that's about as braindead as saying NeXT didn't design the NeXTDimension, NeXTCube, so on and so forth.
Apple does design the shit. They have their constraints and they coordinate with outside companies to reduce the costs of bringing the shit to market.
This can't be that difficult to grasp.
What most people don't grasp, who have either never worked for Apple or been on the inside is that Apple has many secrets and keeps many subgroups within Apple secret from other groups. There are many buildings that Apple designs, and develops future products, outside of Infinite Loop.
Boring example:
Title: Analog Design Engineer - iPod
Req. ID: 2370203
Location: Santa Clara Valley, California
Country: United States
Req Date: 11-Jul-2005
The iPod group is looking for an Analog engineer. This person will be an individual contributor working with a top notch engineering team developing the next iPod products with responsibilities for the design, implementation and integration of the analog subsystems (low power high efficiency psu's, audio system, high speed communications, etc...)
The duties include; schematic capture, prototype bring up and debugging, hardware bug tracking, functional verification, signal characterization and some manufacturing support.
The applicant should be familiar with the design of portable low power products with experience in a consumer electronics environment dealing with high volume and high quality products.
This position is open for all levels of skill from a junior engineer willing to learn quickly to a senior engineer.
Required Experience:
* BS/MS EE or equivalent required.
* Must have great EE fundamentals.
* 2+ years overall experience needed
* Experience in the following areas is important: strong PSU and audio
circuit design.
* Broad experience: both digital and analog.
* Experience in prototyping circuits and products in the lab.
Please email me at jcong@apple.com or apply online. Thanks!
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Best of luck getting such a job with less than 8 years experience.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Motorolla is not innovative at all they just copy Nokia and Erricson/Sony. Apple must make their own cell phones; imagine their ipod nano size it's like a slim battery of a cell phone in its dimension; I mean they can add it to any phone of their choice and then market it, but they want to make their own cell phone because companies like motorlla do not listen to apple hardware innovative team who wants more control over motorolla's retarded team when making a joint device.
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I'm hard pressed to name a cell phone or a cellular service provider that does not suck. Every phone I can think of are cheap, low quality, buggy garbage, and the services are way too expensive and offer so very little of actual value. The coverage sucks regardless of the company.
The whole cell phone industry is almost as big a sham as the insurrance industry.
That rant aside, if you're ever dumb enough to get a support job for any of these service providers (they all outsource), and you get a particularly maddening irate customer, an easy thing to do to get back at them is to sign them up for Jamster. 3$ a week until the write in to cancel.
Bastards.
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2005-07-06
Apple: "We're not going to build a smartphone"
Motorola: "Apple is going to build a smartphone"
Apple is putting themselves into a position where customers start to lose trust in Apple. They denied all questions about OSX x86, now they're denying the idea of an Apple smartphone. If they continue this practice, people are going to to treat such statements like Microsoft's low-TCO FUD.
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2005-07-27
If Apple did the VoIP thing... that would be freaking awesome.
I'd rather pay more for a quality phone than just get some shitty $50 per month plan and phone where I really don't need $50 per month worth of talking.
Like... quality phone that costs money, then more plans to pick from ranging from like $10 + per month.