From Good Morning, Silicon Valley…

“We got off to a little bit of a rough start. People were looking for an iPod and that’s not what it is. We may have missed the marketing message there.” That’s what Motorola CEO Ed Zander had to say about the company’s ballyhooed ROKR phone, which appears to be sinking like its namesake in the market for converged devices. According to American Technology Research, an exceedingly high percentage of customers who purchased the phone are exchanging it. “As many as six times more customers are returning the ROKR phones than is normal for new handset,” ATR analyst Albert Lin told Bloomberg. “There’s an overall disappointment with the product.” I’ll say. But honestly, what did they expect? With its slow syncing, artificial 100-track limit and ungainly design, the ROKR is a poor substitute for an iPod. And as a cell phone, it’s less than astonishing. You’re better off spending your money on a NAZR.

Nice to know that one’s intuitions are occasionally correct.

See here for his enthusiastic review.

The biggest surprise: watching video on the tiny, 2.5-inch screen (320 by 240 pixels) is completely immersive. Three unexpected factors are at work. First, the picture itself is sharp and vivid, with crisp action that never smears; the screen is noticeably brighter than on previous iPods. Second, because the audio is piped directly into your ear sockets, it has much higher fidelity and presence than most people’s TV sets. Finally, remember that a 2.5-inch screen a foot from your face fills as much of your vision as a much larger screen that’s across the room.

Many people — including Apple’s chief, Steve Jobs — have predicted that video on the iPod would never be as popular as music. One crucial reason is that watching requires your full attention. You can’t do something else simultaneously, like driving or working.

In practice, these predictions turn out to be absolutely accurate. (I established this fact through scientific hands-on testing. Unintentionally absorbed in an episode of “Lost” while walking through Grand Central Terminal, I marched directly into a steel support girder.)

Amidst the hoo-hah over the video iPod, two interesting developments have been overlooked. Both concern the new iMac G5 range. The machine now comes with an iSight video camera built in. And it ships without a modem (an external modem is available as a high-priced optional extra). What this tells us is that Apple is now assuming that the majority of its customers have broadband connections.