Having just seen the announcement of the new Motorola ROKR E1, I have to admit I’m a bit underwhelmed. Granted, I’m generally not one who’s impressed by gadgets, but there are a number of things that will keep me from replacing my current phone and iPod:

• It costs $250 with a 2 year contract with Cingular.
• It’s only available through Cingular.
• It only holds 100 songs.
• It definitely doesn’t have the aesthetic qualities of the iPod.
• It’s named after a TV weatherman.

Here’s part of Apple’s marketing blurb:

With iTunes for your mobile phone, your songs live right alongside your contacts. Think of it as musical multitasking. Hear a selection of your favorite tunes while sending text messages, taking pictures or checking your email. Listen through the included headphones or out loud on the ROKR E1’s speakers. You can even pause the music when your phone rings, so you won’t miss incoming calls.

I’m probably not the only one who’s worried that we’ll have to start listening to not only annoying ring tones but also people blasting their iTunes collection through a tiny phone speaker.

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My most recent example happened this week, when I was required to update the iSight software. An iSight device has never been plugged into this machine and most likely never will be. That didn’t stop the Software Update window from popping up with the update and no obvious way to say, “No thanks, I’ll pass on that one.” I did hit Cancel, but all that did was postpone it a couple of days. I finally gave in and thankfully I’m now running the latest iSight software. It even popped up a window once it was done installing asking me to plug in my iSight for updating. That window didn’t have a Cancel button, but luckily Command-Q did the trick. Hopefully it doesn’t pop up repeatedly reminding me to plug in my non-existant iSight. That’s not quite what I would expect from a company with a reputation for good user interfaces.

Fig. 1 An unusable dialog box to update the software on an imaginary device