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  • Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

    • 8 out of 10
    • Arctic Monkeys
    • Get on your dancing shoes
      You sexy little swine

      -Arctic

  • Supernature

    • 10 out of 10
    • Goldfrapp
    • On their latest CD, Supernature, Goldfrapp has put together a successful mix of 1980-era New Romanticism, German cabaret, and T. Rex glam that leaves you riveted even through the album's lulls. It's a great amalgam that sounds current without sounding at all dated.

  • Supermodified

    • 10 out of 10
    • Amon Tobin
    • The genius is in the beats. Amon Tobin creates fantastic, groovy beats behind beats. "Supermodified" rolls through your expectations of breakbeat music, and turns them up a bit. It's a mellow album, p
  • Aretha Sings the Blues

    • 6 out of 10
    • Aretha Franklin
    • While she didn't always have the best taste in song selection, Aretha Franklin is a must-study for anyone with interest in the human voice. She has the kind of powerful, recklessly passionate deliv

  • Goodbye Jumbo

    • 8 out of 10
    • World Party
    • Released in 1990, World Party's

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News

Microsoft’s J Allard: Never Say Never to MS Phone

Microsoft’s J Allard, Chief of Microsoft’s Zune group, said that he’d "never say never" to a Microsoft-built mobile phone, according to Saul Hansell in his New York Times Blog on Friday.

"A cynic would describe Microsoft’s approach to the music player market as simple Apple envy.... So I’ve got to imagine that many in the inner sanctums of Redmond are hot to introduce a slick phone from Microsoft," Mr. Hansell wrote. So he put the question to Microsoft’s J Allard, who was circumspect about the Apple iPhone.

"People are buying it because it’s an Apple phone, not because it’s an iPod. It’s a lousy iPod. You can’t skip a track without looking at it. You can’t go running with the thing. It is the first consumer product that has done browsing [on a cellphone] extremely well," Mr. Allard said. He added that the success of the iPhone is the result of Apple’s "hangover from their relentless pursuit of building beautiful products for 25 years. That is their brand."

When asked about why the carriers have kept Microsoft from making good software for those phones in the past, Mr. Allard praised Apple. "In the past, the cellphone carrier was the final decision maker [about how phones were designed]. A cellphone operator is not best positioned to decide how to lay out a menu. I think the iPhone came out and showed people a great experience, and in some ways got everybody to check their ego at the door."

Finally, when asked about Microsoft’s motives for introducing the Zune, Mr. Allard offered this: "We didn’t create the Zune because we were dying to get into the hardware business and take inventory risk. We felt we had to do it. It’s tough from a P&L [profit and loss] point of view. Windows was incredible. We got to create most of the magic and take none of the financial risk. History isn’t going to repeat that with consumer goods."

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