Slashdot points to a Reuter’s article announcing a new phone that Motorola will be coming out with that will be fulling compatible with iTunes. The Slashdot post notes that it will only hold about a dozen songs. Neither the Reuter’s article, a competing AP wire, nor the mutual press release make any mention of this 12-song limitation.

Now I’m all for the former bedfellows to cozy back up with each other, but I honestly can’t figure out this 12-song limitation (indeed, I’m not the only one - this feature seems to be having the most airtime on the subsequent ranting with the Slashdot crowd). I mean, if you’re going to add the functionality to the phone, why not offer it as a competitor to the iPod? If I’m going to have the ability to listen to songs on my phone using my (hifi) headphones, how much sense would it be have to keep around an iPod to handle the rest of my music catalog? I’d rather just not pay for that particular premium and get a phone that has phone features I want and keep the iPod for music. Truth be told, I’ve never been one for the combination of my cell phone with any other device. PDA? Heck no - you want your cell phone to be small, but everything about a PDA screams for a smallish size that’s just too-large-for-comfort for a phone.

Of course, this eventually leads into a conversation I was having with a co-worker as to what I thought Apple’s Next Big Thing™ was going to be. To be honest, I don’t really have a guess. Aside from Jobs’ personal vendetta against the Newton, with Palm increasingly distancing itself from the Mac I would like to think PDA. Then again, you have to recognize the weird inroads that people are injecting into the iPod to get that sort of functionality. Noting the headache that would result in coming out with a cell phone (which is now rendered moot by this announcement), I never gave that one a snowball’s chance in hell.

My co-worker offered a wifi-enabled digital video recorder (à la Tivo, or even as a Mac solution already, Elgato’s EyeTV systems). Closing the “digital hub” loop. Possible, but that ignores the can o’ worms content copyright issue (that bit ReplayTV in the butt right after I got the ax there, and is currently gnawing on Tivo’s hide). Jobs’ stunning wrangling of the RIAA aside, I’m not sure if this would be within his abilities or not (or whether it even interests him). Who knows?