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Had a chance to play with one of these phones/iPod players recently. Not very good. The interface isn't great, the mp3 player is arbitrarily limited to 100 songs, and you cannot download songs over the air, plus it takes forever to sync it via iTunes. No wonder it's been getting awful reviews, and it's most likely not going to make it.

Shame on Apple and Motorola for creating an ill-conceived product, knowingly. It's not easy to know what people want: tons of capacity, an easy-to-use interface, and a usable phone packed with features. Instead, Apple feared it would cannibalize the iPod so they limited it to 100 songs, which makes it useless. Then, Motorola developed it so that it can only load songs via iTunes and has no wireless song download capabilities, effectively pissing off all the carriers. Why in the world would they carry the phone? They all rejected it flat out, and in fact threatened Motorola with pulling ALL its handsets. After extensive talks, Cingular ultimately - reluctantly - agreed to carry the handset, and now they are probably sorry they did.

Apple won the loyalty of music fans through elegant design and brilliant marketing. Using DRM as a digital tether will do nothing to hold them. Last January an irate iTunes user put Apple in the same camp as Verizon - don't get me started on them - by filing a class-action lawsuit over the limits FairPlay puts on music bought online.

So many agendas. The music labels, the wireless carriers, the handset manufacturers, and in this case, Apple itself. It's all greed, and will most likely end in disappointment for all concerned.