By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
After months of anticipation, Apple Computer last week finally unveiled the first cellphone that combines elements of its hot-selling iPod music players. The $250 phone, called the ROKR, was designed and made by Motorola; is being sold by Cingular; and contains special iPod-like music-playback software created by Apple.
But Apple is strangely unenthusiastic about it. Apple's heavily trafficked Web home page relegated the new phone to a small box underneath a giant photo touting its newest music player, the iPod nano. By contrast, the Motorola and Cingular home pages were dominated by the new music phone.
After a week or so of testing the ROKR, along with a couple of competing music phones, my assistant Katie Boehret and I share Apple's indifference. As a music player, the Motorola ROKR is OK, as are the two other music phones we tested. But none of them approaches either the style or the functionality of the iPod, and none lives up to the full potential of what a combined cellphone and music player could be.