22 ms·

It's not talked about much, but RAZR was a skunk works program inside of Moto started by a small group of engineers independent of management. By that point the

by nvarsj 4y ago

It's not talked about much, but RAZR was a skunk works program inside of Moto started by a small group of engineers independent of management. By that point the company had been largely taken over by cost cutting style management. Lean/6 Sigma was everywhere, and pretty much all research/innovation centres were being shut down. C level was incredibly incompetent. Ed Zander, the most incompetent choice of all, was appointed as CEO in 2004. The company basically looked like it was gonna die any day. Then RAZR happened. The swaths of incompetents had no idea how to leverage the success, but oh man they were able to spend great swathes of money on terrible ideas over the next few years. Probably the pinnacle of this incompetency was collaborating with Steve Jobs on the first iTunes enabled phone (ROKR). Basically Moto management opened the doors to Apple/Jobs on how to build cell phones - gave full access to Apple's engineering teams with virtually no upside for Moto but lots for Apple. RORK was a dud. Then iPhone came out a couple years later. I still remember the COO/CEOs downplaying it in town halls, saying things like "Where's the keyboard! No one is ever going to use a touch screen based device!". Of course, all the engineers knew the writing was on the wall - the iPhone was amazing.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Even by today's standards, the RAZR is a marvel of engineering and industrial design. It's insane how thin it is for 2004 considering the swappable battery and dual display. Only thing holding it back was the sluggish SW and terrible UX, but that plagued most phones of the era. >C level was incredibly incompetent. Please name me a major western consumer electronics company of the era other than Apple that didn't have incompetents at the helm. Nortel, Nokia, Blackberry, Ericsson, Siemens, Alcatel, Philips, all these phone makers are extinct. They all failed to see the writing on the wall that mobile HW is becoming a commodity and the SW and UX will make the difference. The original iPod proved this. It was built with off-the-shelf parts that every hardware maker had access to. Same with the original iPhone. Just off-the-shelf parts and the secret sauce was in the SW not the HW. It feels like the only way to get to C level is to be as incompetent as possible.
- bluGill 4y ago
  I've often heard it said that a great CEO needs to be a visonary to see the future. (s)He needs as a "right hand man" a great finance person who sees the numbers and reins in all those dreams and ensure they don't overspend and run out of money. The problem is then the CEO retires and his "right hand man" is the obvious choice - but the right hand man doesn't have vision of where to spend money, only where to save money and that lack of vision kills the new development pipeline. Even companies who make the least innovations (there isn't much you can do to make better soap or toilet paper) still need a visionary CEO to see investments that could pay off (could be automation to reduce costs, something to increase quality, or sometimes there really is a better soap).
korroziya 4y ago
I wish the CEO's had been right. Keyboards > touchscreens. The iPhone allowed normies to ruin everything. Instead of programs, we have apps. Instead of websites, we have walled gardens. Instead of bbs systems and forums, we have IG, Facebook and TikTok. Blame the normies. Edit: Your downvotes mean nothing to me. I've seen what makes you upvote.
- bluGill 4y ago
  The only problem is nobody knows how to make a useful keyboard that fits in my pocket. I hate touch screens in general, but a phone in my pocket is useful in many situations where I wouldn't bring a keyboard.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    Some people still give rave reviews to the Blackberry keyboard
  - silisili 4y ago
    The moto backflip, despite being a flop, actually had a really cool idea on how to handle that. So did the blackberry priv. For whatever reason, the market just didn't want it. I guess the market has skinnier thumbs than me, because typing on even a 6.6" touchscreen feels like typing with boxing gloves on.
  - i80and 4y ago
    I got to play with an HP Veer circa 2011, a phone the size of a credit card, specifically to try out the keyboard (specifically, I remember visiting this website). It was a far better typing experience than the iPhone SE ever was. Tactile feedback was solid, shockingly so.
    - onli 4y ago
      The Veer's keyboard really worked well. The small screen was problematic for many sites, sure, and not having a good browser hurt it a lot (and especially the bugs, like reloading a webpage on first touch after inactivity, which means reloading it immediately after a long load time...). But the keyboard makes me want to use it again.
Kon-Peki 4y ago
> Then iPhone came out a couple years later. I still remember the COO/CEOs downplaying it in town halls, saying things like "Where's the keyboard! No one is ever going to use a touch screen based device!". ... knowing full-well that Motorola had no-keyboard Linux-based smartphones that they refused to sell. Back in the 1999-2000 timeframe, Motorola took them to college recruiting events and let kids play around with them. It worked on me. I was in the Arlington Heights labs testing UMTS systems with those smartphones from 2001-2006. We used to stream ESPN videos on them, for "testing". Every once in a while, we'd slip up and accidentally let them connect to the real mobile networks, and saw first-hand what everyone that bought in iPhone in 2007 saw with data rates...
nier 4y ago
Seeing that the original iPhone used Infineon chips gives me the impression that Apple learned from Motorola how NOT to build mobile phones. Wondering how many Motorola employees went to work at Apple back then.
- nvarsj 4y ago
  A lot did. Apple had regular recruiting events down the road from Mot HQ around that time (2004-2006), specifically to poach Mot engineers.
  - nier 4y ago
    Would love to read more about those recruiting events down the road from Motorola headquarters. This sounds like something that would have needed to be kept on the down-low.
    - nvarsj 4y ago
      Well I went to some of them :). It was pretty funny since I knew many people there - and we even talked about it at work. Around that time (2006) it was clear Mot was going to die so everyone was either looking for a new job or trying to get laid off with a nice severance package. Apple booked a hotel conference room down the road from the Schaumburg office and had Apple engineers there. I even met with some of the original iPhone software team. They spoke with us and took our CVs, and if they liked you, flew you to 1 Infinite Loop for interviews.
meltyness 4y ago
I guess the huge leap of capacitive touch over previous technologies is kind of a footnote, but definitely bears mentioning here. Probably CEOs/COOs would have been plenty familiar with resistive touch which was much worse technology before 2007. Gamecom, Palm, Casio would have employed this virtually unusable stuff, and the very idea of a touchscreen might have still seemed funny, if you hadn't have tried it yet.

by nvarsj 4y ago

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

Even by today's standards, the RAZR is a marvel of engineering and industrial design. It's insane how thin it is for 2004 considering the swappable battery and dual display. Only thing holding it back was the sluggish SW and terrible UX, but that plagued most phones of the era. >C level was incredibly incompetent. Please name me a major western consumer electronics company of the era other than Apple that didn't have incompetents at the helm. Nortel, Nokia, Blackberry, Ericsson, Siemens, Alcatel, Philips, all these phone makers are extinct. They all failed to see the writing on the wall that mobile HW is becoming a commodity and the SW and UX will make the difference. The original iPod proved this. It was built with off-the-shelf parts that every hardware maker had access to. Same with the original iPhone. Just off-the-shelf parts and the secret sauce was in the SW not the HW. It feels like the only way to get to C level is to be as incompetent as possible.

bluGill 4y ago
I've often heard it said that a great CEO needs to be a visonary to see the future. (s)He needs as a "right hand man" a great finance person who sees the numbers and reins in all those dreams and ensure they don't overspend and run out of money. The problem is then the CEO retires and his "right hand man" is the obvious choice - but the right hand man doesn't have vision of where to spend money, only where to save money and that lack of vision kills the new development pipeline. Even companies who make the least innovations (there isn't much you can do to make better soap or toilet paper) still need a visionary CEO to see investments that could pay off (could be automation to reduce costs, something to increase quality, or sometimes there really is a better soap).

korroziya 4y ago

I wish the CEO's had been right. Keyboards > touchscreens. The iPhone allowed normies to ruin everything. Instead of programs, we have apps. Instead of websites, we have walled gardens. Instead of bbs systems and forums, we have IG, Facebook and TikTok. Blame the normies. Edit: Your downvotes mean nothing to me. I've seen what makes you upvote.

bluGill 4y ago
The only problem is nobody knows how to make a useful keyboard that fits in my pocket. I hate touch screens in general, but a phone in my pocket is useful in many situations where I wouldn't bring a keyboard.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Some people still give rave reviews to the Blackberry keyboard
- silisili 4y ago
  The moto backflip, despite being a flop, actually had a really cool idea on how to handle that. So did the blackberry priv. For whatever reason, the market just didn't want it. I guess the market has skinnier thumbs than me, because typing on even a 6.6" touchscreen feels like typing with boxing gloves on.
- i80and 4y ago
  I got to play with an HP Veer circa 2011, a phone the size of a credit card, specifically to try out the keyboard (specifically, I remember visiting this website). It was a far better typing experience than the iPhone SE ever was. Tactile feedback was solid, shockingly so.
  - onli 4y ago
    The Veer's keyboard really worked well. The small screen was problematic for many sites, sure, and not having a good browser hurt it a lot (and especially the bugs, like reloading a webpage on first touch after inactivity, which means reloading it immediately after a long load time...). But the keyboard makes me want to use it again.

Kon-Peki 4y ago

> Then iPhone came out a couple years later. I still remember the COO/CEOs downplaying it in town halls, saying things like "Where's the keyboard! No one is ever going to use a touch screen based device!". ... knowing full-well that Motorola had no-keyboard Linux-based smartphones that they refused to sell. Back in the 1999-2000 timeframe, Motorola took them to college recruiting events and let kids play around with them. It worked on me. I was in the Arlington Heights labs testing UMTS systems with those smartphones from 2001-2006. We used to stream ESPN videos on them, for "testing". Every once in a while, we'd slip up and accidentally let them connect to the real mobile networks, and saw first-hand what everyone that bought in iPhone in 2007 saw with data rates...

nier 4y ago

Seeing that the original iPhone used Infineon chips gives me the impression that Apple learned from Motorola how NOT to build mobile phones. Wondering how many Motorola employees went to work at Apple back then.

nvarsj 4y ago
A lot did. Apple had regular recruiting events down the road from Mot HQ around that time (2004-2006), specifically to poach Mot engineers.
- nier 4y ago
  Would love to read more about those recruiting events down the road from Motorola headquarters. This sounds like something that would have needed to be kept on the down-low.
  - nvarsj 4y ago
    Well I went to some of them :). It was pretty funny since I knew many people there - and we even talked about it at work. Around that time (2006) it was clear Mot was going to die so everyone was either looking for a new job or trying to get laid off with a nice severance package. Apple booked a hotel conference room down the road from the Schaumburg office and had Apple engineers there. I even met with some of the original iPhone software team. They spoke with us and took our CVs, and if they liked you, flew you to 1 Infinite Loop for interviews.

meltyness 4y ago

I guess the huge leap of capacitive touch over previous technologies is kind of a footnote, but definitely bears mentioning here. Probably CEOs/COOs would have been plenty familiar with resistive touch which was much worse technology before 2007. Gamecom, Palm, Casio would have employed this virtually unusable stuff, and the very idea of a touchscreen might have still seemed funny, if you hadn't have tried it yet.