Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

Don’t Worry, Motorola Isn’t Announcing Anything at Guy Kawasaki’s “Private Event”

moto_adMotorola’s Guy Kawasaki is having an event this week, but if you didn’t get an invite, you won’t be missing out on the launch of key new products.

As soon as the invitations hit social media, some jumped to the conclusion that this must be the launch of the much-vaunted Moto X phone.

Conspiracy theorists found support in the picture that accompanies the invitation, which shows two people jumping into a lake. A man has his arms and legs spread wide, something that could be seen as an “X” shape, while a nearby woman is vertical, say in the shape of an “I,” or a “1,” or whatever else one wants to make out of the modern-day Rorschach test.

But, sadly, the truth is it’s just two people jumping into a lake. And Kawasaki’s event will feature his fun, folksy charm, but won’t mark the debut of the Moto X, the Moto Xi, or even the Moto X-1.

While some journalists are on the invite list, the gathering is a “private event,” and not one at which product announcements will be made.

Here’s what we do know about the Moto X — mostly from CEO Dennis Woodside’s appearance at our D11 conference. The phone will be made in the U.S., will be priced aggressively and harness the company’s strengths in battery life, and will contain various always-on sensors. It will arrive by October, Woodside said.

A recent ad suggests that it will be customizable. Even there, folks would be wise to remember the kinds of things that are easily changed (face plates, engravings, colors, amount of memory) and the things that aren’t so easily changed (chips, screens and other components.)

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik