Posted on 09/26/2005 1:17:24 PM PDT by Cicero
At a leadership seminar in California Friday, Motorola CEO Ed Zander talked about his role in rebuilding the phone maker's brand. But when answering a question from the audience about the iPod Nano, Zander apparently lost his cool saying, "Screw the Nano. What the hell does the Nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?"
Motorola, however, has fired back and claims IDG News Service, which first reported the outburst, is taking the comment completely out of context. Company officials say Zander was smiling and joking when he responded to the question, and he did praise Apple and its iPod.
"Motorola has a great partnership with Apple. Unfortunately Ed Zander's comments, made at a conference in California on Friday, were taken out of context," Motorola said in a statement.
The iTunes-capable ROKR has been met with a fairly cold reception since the start. Even on the day of its debut, Apple's Nano stole the show and Motorola was left on the sidelines as Steve Jobs wowed the crowds with a new iPod no thicker than a #2 pencil.
"During the Q&A session one questioner repeatedly and insistently asked what Zander thought of the Nano. Jokingly, Zander said he wasn't there to talk about the Nano - but to talk about the next big thing happening in the industry - the fusion of the phone and music. ROKR with iTunes was a good beginning, he said, and there's more to come," the statement continued.
Motorola says that the 1,000 song remark was simply a joke in response to part of the question that asked why the ROKR only held a maximum of 100 songs. It has been widely reported that Apple -- not Motorola -- imposed the restriction to keep the iTunes phone from affecting sales of the iPod.
Nonetheless, Motorola is working hard to clean up the public relations debacle, even though Zander himself has no problems with the new iPod. Sources tell BetaNews that Zander actually bought two Nanos following the product's launch.
"Most car speedometers even show 120 or more on the dash."
LOL. Back when speedos started to get higher than 85 on mainstream cars people would think the top number shows the max speed.
I opened up my old-school 87 buick on the highway once and the needle just went past 85 and got stuck there. :(
Mutant beings, draped in filthy rags will wander the earth, grunting toothlessly as they eat the refuse from landfills, and pay 21.9% interest on their credit cards.
My son just chose the Zen Micro over the iPod because it also has an FM tuner. And it has 1GB more memory than the same priced iPod mini.
Screw that dinky thing, indeed.
My Creative Zen Touch has (I just checked) 7,349 tracks on it so far, and I'm still loading more of my CD collection. Hi-quality WMA format, too.
My MP3 player has 6 Terabytes, and holds approximately 2 million songs, give or take a few. I now need to find a battery that can last long enough to hear all of them before I die.
Me, a happy Ipod person who owns nothing manufactured by Motorola.
And get bugged by marketers.
I'm with you, Add. I cringe whenever I have to deal with a corporation led by bean counters. Find a CEO that was once out in the field selling and my confidence level in that company climbs rapidly.
I agree with both of you. Accountant based CEO's only look at "what will this cost me to make/produce/whatever" while a CEO with other experiences will think, "by producing this, what can it make me". Two completely diametric viewpoints and one leads a profitable company with long term growth potential while the other looks to expend all company assets for short term increases in the bottom line until all assets are gone and the company must be broken up and parceled out to satisfy creditors.
If I only wanted to listen to 120 songs, I'd listen to FM radio. That's about how big a typical FM radio playlist is.
My iPod has over 8400 songs. I like hitting Shuffle and having absolutely no idea what might come up. The best part is, any song that comes up is one that I know I'll like. It might be a current song or it might be a song from 30 years ago. I also have dozens of very eclectic playlists that I could never possibly assemble from a list of just 120 songss.
So the basic iPod shuffle is for casual music fans who don't own a lot of music. The iPod nano is adequate for most serious music enthusiasts. But the full-size iPods (like the 20gig and up models) are for music junkies like me. And there are a lot of music junkies out there.
Apple is being flooded with hundreds of these complaints and people here would still buy one. Unbelievable!
The screen will become so scratched even with normal use as to be un usuable for many in less than a week.
If the economy is as bad as the liberals say, who is buying all these expensive electronic toys?
Every kid in the country. If they can't afford to buy one, I hear they're a hot item to steal.
I rode on the bus last year with a bunch of NYU students, and it seemed as if every one of them was plugged into an i-pod or a Dell Jukebox. The same with every young person you pass on the sidewalk.
The genius of the iPod and similar devices is that it is possible for people to carry all of their music with them in as little space as a shirt pocket and can put away the clutter of the cd cases.
I guess it all depends on the individual's use for the device. For you, something like the iPod Shuffle would be great. For others, the Nano, and for others still, the iPod is ideal. Fortunately, the market supports all these great little devices for all of us.
Count me as one of those junkies! But my iPod has some catching up to you with yours. I'm roughly 4,000 behind you.
The playlist capability, and especially the smart playlist setup, is one of the best functions of that little device.
"I rode on the bus last year with a bunch of NYU students, and it seemed as if every one of them was plugged into an i-pod or a Dell Jukebox. The same with every young person you pass on the sidewalk."
I have a Treo 650 (phone/pda) w/ 2gb SD card for mobile music duty. I travel a lot, and listen to it in airports, on the plane, while I'm working, etc.
When I'm in public places I prefer to not listen and have situational awareness, instead.
I'm in two minds about it. On the one hand, I can't help remembering that early story by Ray Bradbury about a society where everyone is plugged in and no one is open to the outside world or to other people around them.
On the other hand, when I do repetitive commuting, I have taken to listening to MP3 books on a CD player, and I'm thinking about transferring them to some sort of i-pod player that would be a bit lighter and more convenient.
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