Monday, September 26, 2005

News: Motorola CEO: 'Screw the nano': Motorola CEO Ed Zander appears to be more than a little upset that Apple’s iPod nano has stolen the spotlight from his company’s iTunes-enabled ROKR phone. Despite having a partnership with Apple to offer iTunes on his company’s mobile phones, Zander had some very harsh words for the nano in a in a recent interview. “Screw the nano. What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?” he reportedly said. Zander said consumers are going to want devices that do more than just play music. (Via iPodlounge.) I seem to remember that he was similarly dismissive of Linux and commodity hardware when he presided over Sun's fast decline. Some tech executives who grew up in the age of complex centralized solutions cannot understand the power and attractiveness of less complex designs. I don't use most of the features on my cell phone. It's just too complicated, and life is too short to waste reading the awfully written manual to learn about features that I will use less frequently. Ditto for my Canon PowerShot digital camera, which is pretty nice but doesn't come even close in ease of use to my old Canon AE-1 SLR. The beauty of the iPod is that it does one thing well, and it needs no manual. If its functions were stuck in my cell phone with its awful interface, I would rarely bother to listen to music. Then, indeed, I would not need 1,000 songs. As it is, I can choose among 2403 tracks. Miles Davis or Bach, the Decemberists or Toumani Diabaté, Philip Glass or Evan Parker? 2:41:41 PM