FRED MANTEGHIAN BLOG

I've got the next hot product for Apple, the hardware cum music company, not the Music company the Beatles conceived or even the fruit that ultimately made Eve conceive.

Normally I'd simply retool my garage into a multi-national manufacturing operation and hire thousands of undocumented workers to produce this gismo, but Caesar just waxed the car and I don't want to leave it out in the rain. Therefore I'll be magnanimous and let Apple (the company, not the pie) have this one. Remember Steve, you owe me.

I represent an untapped and vast market of business users who already carry around one device too many. I don't own an iPod. I listen to music in the car and at home, but the bulges in my suit pockets are reserved for wads of cash. I do carry my Blackberry around though. It's a phone, an eMail client, an internet browser, an address book and, if I could run my life on as primitive an application as Microsoft Outlook, a calendaring system as well. The new model 8700c I have is a huge improvement over the 7250 it replaces in screen sharpness, resolution and brightness, but sonically, it's just another pleasant ring tone.

Okay Apple, here's what you can do. Get into the business of mixing business with pleasure and design a small hand-held device no bigger than the device I'm using at the moment to type this blog (yes, really, the first draft was on the Blackberry – though the editing will be done on my laptop in MS Word so I have access to a steel checker) that can do everything the 8700c can do and hold at least 1,000 songs!

With a device like that, I could hook it up and have tunes in my car. I could read (relax – only at red lights) and respond to my emails while listening to my iTunes on a Blue tooth headset. I could take it to the gym - heck I'd even take me to the gym if I had one of these.

Skip the camera – anything worth taking a picture of is worth taking a picture of with something better than a camera phone. And skip the video. Business folk don't watch videos while they're thinking, but what they would appreciate is listening to music. One thing I don't expect is the ability to download songs unplugged, no matter how many of those guys are following me around pretending to be my wireless network. But I expect to use the same cable that synchronizes my Blackberry address book with my computer to update my music from iTunes.

Oh, and being Apple (the company, not the yet-to-be-ridiculed-in-a-schoolyard child of Gweneth Paltrow and Chris Martin), you'll need a better name than the RZ-270.

How about the MacBerry? Pretty good, huh?

Make mine in titanium gray. It goes well with the suit.