David Pogue September 8, 2005
IPOD phone. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
You'd better believe it. When Apple announced that it was about to unveil something big, its stock price zoomed to a record high. The Gizmodo Web site posted an exhibit of no fewer than 24 different faked "iPod phone" photos that have circulated online. Gadget freaks worldwide went foamy at the mouth.
Now, plenty of current cellphones can already play music -- but not with Apple's sense of style and polish. They can't play songs from Apple's iTunes Music Store, either, which is where 10 million people -- more than 80 percent of the world's online song buyers -- get them.
So questions about the new iPod phone flew thick and fast in nerd circles. Will it look cool, like an iPod? Will it have the iPod's famous click wheel on the front? Will the phone have a hard drive that can hold thousands of songs? Will you be able to download songs straight from the Internet? Will it have a FireWire or U.S.B. 2.0 connector for superfast music transfer? Will you be able to use your songs as ring tones, so that the phone bursts out in "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman" when your husband calls?
All became clear on a San Francisco stage yesterday morning when Steven P. Jobs, Apple's chief, took the wraps off two new products. One was a new iPod model - the iPod nano - that's so thin, it looks like a traditional white (or black) iPod that's been squished by a steamroller. Its two models ($199 and $249) hold 500 and 1,000 songs in memory; there's no hard drive, which helps the nano crank out 14 hours of music on a charge.
The other new product was, yes, a new combination cellphone and music player, a collaboration among Apple, Cingular and Motorola, called the Rokr E1, which will cost $250 with a new Cingular contract. (Ever since its Razr phone became a hit, Motorola's been on a roll with its omitted-letter naming scheme.)
ALL right, now, about those questions: the answer to all of them is no.