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146 Comments
- threepio, on 10/12/2007, -5/+40Way to go Stevie B - have you learned NOTHING from the Apple model?
As a Mac customer, it hurts sometimes but it's a smart way to do business. The product you have on the market is the GREATEST. THE BEST. THE ONLY ONE YOU NEED.
Quietly inventory on this product will dry up. Then it's Tuesday.
BOOM! One more thing! Look at this new Widget! It's the GREATEST! THE BEST! THE ONLY ONE YOU NEED!
Simply put, you don't cannibalize sales NOW for something you PLAN ON in the future. - JDoggqx, on 10/12/2007, -8/+37@TGMD
"I get more for my money than I would get for an iPod"
How is that?
The Zune can't be used as an external hard drive like the iPod can (which is a big minus for me.)
The store for buying tracks is a rip off (spend $5 to get credits to buy 5 songs for $0.99, it would take purchasing 495 songs to ensure that MS doesn't "keep the change"* from your credit purchases.)
Its big and ugly (though I suppose that is a personal opinion. I do kinda like the rubberized exterior, though I'd be afraid it would get real dirty really fast.)
And costs the same amount of money as the iPod.
I like the idea of the wireless on the Zune, but it was poorly implemented (make it blue-tooth for easy connectionless syncing to a PC, or make it capable of connecting through a hot spot to buy music.)
The thing that I think really hurts the Zune is that it comes in one flavor (though three shades.) The iPod comes in a variety of form factors and has a large number of accessories that allow each owner to personalize their iPod.
That is why I think the iPod is better than the Zune. Though I'm sure the competition in this sector will reward consumers of both devices.
*See twit.tv podcast #76 they calculate it there. - neoform, on 10/12/2007, -6/+33Yay! let's talk about features that aren't even being promised!
"Microsoft Corp. plans to add a video-sharing feature to its Zune player and will eventually sell a model that combines the device with a phone"
Note how they aren't really saying that it WILL have it, but instead that they "plan" to add it.
"The video function would probably be used to transfer content created by Zune customers"
Sounds pretty vague if you ask me. There is a subtle difference as their 'plan' can very easily change. How about they 'announce' that the next version 'will' have the ability instead of just starting rumors. - allenb, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25It's interesting to note the different strategies of Apple and Microsoft. Nowhere is it better demonstrated than with iPod and Zune.
One keeps details of upcoming products utterly secret, the other promises features perhaps years before they'll materialise. Speculation about a 'true' video iPod has been rife for years, and an iPod phone perhaps even longer - yet Apple has said nothing... but with the first gen Zune barely out of the door, Microsoft are talking about future iterations already.
Microsoft over-promised and under-delivered with Vista. It'll be interesting to see how Zune fairs in comparison.
It's also interesting to see what Microsoft took from Apple's way of doing things (vertical integration, closed system, "Hello from Seattle", hipster marketing) and what they've done in the old fashioned Microsoft way (pre-announcement, undercutting of the competition, Windows-only).... I'm not convinced they have the blend right, some of the things they are doing really don't sit comfortably. They really should have left the 'cool' thing to Apple.... reading the captions on the Zune install screens makes you want to cringe. you aren't going to out-cool the iPod, but you can beat it by competing in other areas - like price and innovation.
Crippled Wi-Fi isn't enough for the latter... but there is no way this Zune is the end of the line. They'll be back, and next time it'll be better. - jbelkin, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24Well after 9 years of trying of trying to knock off Palm (who has yet to really upgrade their OS), they still behind there. It's taken them 6 years to copy 65% of OSX and after spending $12 billion dollars on the Xbox, they'll still be third at the end of 2007 - Fifth if you count the nintendo handhelds as separate markets. They had a 6 year head start on the online music market and was essentially wiped out in a month. MS is the GM of technology. They are fine in selling to enterprise and fine when they could control the desktop pre-internet but now, their best days are behind them. They have failed in EVERY consumer venture since 1995 from MSN to MSN search to webtv to talking barneys to the watch OS ... what MS OS and applications buyers should be asking is - why are we so overpaying for what they're best at to support something they have no real clue about? That $12 billion (or about $400 spent to sell each Xbox) is coming out of your pockets when you pay $400 for XP or $400 for Office. They spent $4 billion on MSN to lose to AOL ... yea, AOL - what does that tell you ... How much of YOUR money are they throwing at Zune? Or better yet, using that profit to buy back shares to boost Steve Ballmer's holdings ...
At the rate Apple is growing, they are over 55% of the revenue of MS with only 6% of the market. MS will be passed in revenue at that rate within 5-6 years unless they actually start to get into markets that bring in additional money instead of throwing away money on market segments in which they are ill equiped to take on - let alone compete. - halleyscomet, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22@neoform
"Yay! let's talk about features that aren't even being promised!"
Now, now, it's not like Microsoft has a history of "planning" or even announcing features that never materialize.
Why, I can't WAIT to get my hands on the relational file system in Vist-
What? They canceled that feature? WinFS is gone?
What about the Avalon presentation engine?
Indigo web services???
So you're telling me ALL of Microsoft's "Pillars" for then Longhorn now Vista have been pulled?!?!?!?!?
Wiskey
Tango
Foxtrot?!?!?! - uptown, on 10/12/2007, -7/+25Device is outdated on day one..... I'm sure their marketing department is thrillled.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18"yeah, the guys microsoft pays to digg stories about it care."
if you only knew how right you are, but it's not just microsoft. astroturfing is rampant among fortune 500 companies. - stealthboy, on 10/12/2007, -7/+24I'm thinking Ballmer is realizing the Zune "hype" isn't working, so he has to hype the next Zune to get anything noteworthy mentioned.
This just smells of desperation. - uptown, on 10/12/2007, -5/+22They can firmware-upgrade it into a phone?
- cbiz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17MS is and always will be "The Man".
- RuffRidr, on 10/12/2007, -3/+18@kirupa
Well then maybe we'll wait until they add some of those features. Until then its not like we'll be missing out. I'm not going to go switch MP3 players now for the HOPE that someday Microsoft might send out an update to add funtionality. - allenb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16"'Zune is a big investment for us,' said Gates, who called the device 'very cool.'"
Hmmm... do you really want Bill Gates identifying coolness for you? - Phil246, on 10/12/2007, -10/+24yes, a huge financial loss in order to get a foot in the door for its successor.
- chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19yummy. you can almost taste the DRM they're shoving down your throat.
- cbiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Looking at a sleek 80 gig iPod next to a big fat 30 gig Zune - Sorry, you can keep Anne Nicole Smith.
- br0ken1128, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13This suddenly puts apple's secretive nature into perspective..
Now why on earth would I go out and buy a Zune today when I know that Microsoft is planning to add these features to later models?
The point of keeping secrets, whether we like it or not, is so that people WILL go out and buy the current version.
The only way this would make any sense to me is if it's either going to be a long way away before they do it, or if they're planning to make them a good bit more expensive because at least then there would still be a market for the current version of Zune. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+18@anicejew
The Xbox360 has a very nice interface, IMO. They got that one right. - inkswamp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Dear Microsoft,
Please stop using the phrase "will eventually." Just do these things instead of talking about it. We're all really impressed by now with your collective ability to gab these things to death, but for the love of all that is holy, can you just *do* something and stop talking about how cool it will eventually be. - montage, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13So why buy one now...perhaps I'll wait for the phone
- jtjdt, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14@Ablek
How many airlines support watching your videos from the Zune to the screens on the planes?
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/nov/14ipod.html - rcran, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13It doesn't matter how long it has been around. They, very simply, have waited to long. Statistically, they can't get anywhere with this. The press for the Zune is so negative already, and it has only been around for less than one day.
Apple has given us this holy grail image of the MP3 player that has been created with years of refinement. And here comes microsoft stumbling into the market with this player that we think is a piece of ***** because apple's iPod is better.
This zune is a last dash at the finish line. It is a poor attempt to trip apple up and show off their market share in the PC market, hoping all the people who use windows will flock to it. Well. They are mistaken, and they will soon find out that apple has won this battle. Microsoft was a no show when apple targetted this market.
I am proud to see apple winning microsoft over, and I hope to see them progress further in the future.
R.I.P Zune.
November 14 2006 - Early 2007. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Perfect. We'll just give everyone a free Zune and then we'll have 100% market share. Better yet - we'll melt it to their hands, and if they try to pry it off, we'll kill 'em.
That's how IE won. If Netscape was so *****, how did its core engine grow into Firefox? It may not be ubiquitous, but its not dead. - monkeyrun, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I see no reason why the three day / three play "feature" is going to be a huge hit at all.
- sincewednesday, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10@sotopheavy
Kenwood head units support USB devices that can act in mass-storage mode (i.e., hard disk mode) which the Zune currently cannot. - Jimzip, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Who's 'we'?
Are you the borg?
Jimzip :D - hobgobbler, on 10/12/2007, -31/+40yeah, the guys microsoft pays to digg stories about it care.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -24/+32No it isn't. They have never got design or interfacing right. They are totally clueless when it comes to that stuff -- Windows Vista looks like a list of everything you could possibly ever think of doing on a computer sticky-tacked in every possible place you could think of hiding it with pretty shading.
- cbiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Paying Universal is enough to stop me in my shopping for a Zune tracks.
- Lynxpro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8
I've seen two of the Zune commercials, and I must say they are terrible.
For a marketing campaign that is supposed to focus on wireless music transfer, they should do their best to conceal the headphone cord. Sure, it has nothing to do with the wireless transfer, but it is distracting and the camera does focus on the cord accidentally since it is supposedly zooming in on the Zunes essentially syncing.
The Xbox commercials are much better in comparison. - gumbright, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10What a mindbendingly stupid announcement. Lets play it out in a familiar fashion (and some license)...
1)We have just released a new piece of hardware for the holiday season.
1a) It is reasonably important to get a user base to critical mass to be able to make any money and create buzz.
1b) I have now given damn near everyone good reason to wait for the next rev, while this first rev gets beat up in the press.
2) ???
3) Profit!
Dumbass. - rcran, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Balmer just killed any hope for the zune.
- MadEnvoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I wonder if Microsoft is going to pay the MPAA a buck per Zune also.
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Universal_Music_CEO:_iPod_owners_are_thieves_ - AhmedB, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9two famous quotes...
"Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!
Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"
"The problem with MS is that they have no taste, and I don't mean that in a small way, I mean it in a big way" - SJ - RuffRidr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Exactly, I'll wait for this feature. The current version is not worth the switch, imo. I'll also keep an eye on Apple, who could likely leapfrog Microsoft and beat them to the punch.
- theone3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Pffft... typical pretentious tech industry spectators. "The iPod? WTF is that?" "Nintendo DS? What a dumb idea!" "Wii? What a dumbass name!" "Music store? No-one will use that" "We'll all be making video phone calls by 2005" "The switch to Intel will kill Apple" "Who the hell wants a hard drive in a music player" "No-one will ever need 2GHz"
Wild speculations of people who understand technologies, not markets, are usually wrong. Especially when a company is doing something bold and different. Wait for a while and let the market decide. Accept the fact that you can't know what the people decide is important on this product. Maybe the social interaction of wifi *will* be a killer feature, or maybe it'll slide in to obscurity. Maybe the software will be a deal breaker, maybe it won't. We don't know. We don't know markets. - envy860, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7...and the PSP camera and GPS look retarded..
- DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8"if the Zune is a success it will force Apple to up there game."
It's a nice, yet naive thought. In general competition is a good thing. This is Microsoft we are talking about here. They are better at making shady deals and employing questionable tactics than they are at designing good products. Once they enter a market they do everything they can to take it over, even if it means winning by attrition (losing millions or even billions of dollars) in order to starve their competition. Then, once they succeed at that, they stop improving the product since the alternate choice is more expensive or not as good.
Apple, on the other hand, has a hold on the mp3 player market yet they have been steadily improving their products. Not revolutionary changes, mind you, but evolutionary ones.
It's similar to the way Honda handles the Accord...constant improvement. Microsoft is more like Ford. Instead of making evolutionary changes to the Taurus, they made changes for the sake of changing something...and now it's being discontinued. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+13lol
- robojerk, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I don't see the Zune dethroning the ipod. First off for thosepeople that pay for music on itunes are locked in to their ipods, throwing their spent money away. Also how many people are going to replace their ipods for a zune just because it's microsoft or different?
iPod is here to stay #1 market share holder. Unless M$ can offer something absolutely amazing or Apple pisses a lot of the consumer base off Zune could possibly replace the ipod after years of competition. Good news is that the consumers might get a break on price and bring some cool innovative technology to us. - chris9902, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10the iPod doesn't add DRM to every track like the Zune does.
The Zune should let you share files without DRM with no limits. Instead they jumped in bed with the RIAA and it's the consumers that get it up the arse because of it.
The only thing that sets the Zune apart from the iPod is the worst feature it has. - pathy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I don't really want Gates or Jobs defining coolness for me.
Actually, I don't care. I don't find anything cool about the iPod, or Macs (They're very pretty though.), but then again I'm not a hipster.
I think the Zune looks pretty damn cool because of the 'doubleshot' effect, the black/blue one looks pretty sweet. But then the iPod is pretty damn shiny, and I do like shiny black... I have a black PSP after all.
I can't even remember the point of this comment. Perhaps it was that I think people shouldn't buy things that simply appear cool? Eh, who does that anyway?
I hate consumerism. - JDoggqx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@halleyscomet
I just replaced my last windows PC with an iMac and I don't plan on looking back. Though I do plan on running parallels with both Windows XP and hopefully Ubuntu (for development purposes), I just don't want to rely on Windows anymore for my personal use since I don't like the direction Vista is going in (DRM galore.)
MS has supported Apple hardware in the past (I love my MS mouse for my Macbook), so I'm sure that will come in time. But I wonder when and if it will be too late by then. I should probably state that I don't blame MS for the lack of support for OSX, after all Windows is the dominant OS, but it is a factor when you consider the increase in Mac sales. - alvinrod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Explorer didn't do too much different than Netscape and wasn't worlds better, but it was free at a time when Netscape was still charging money. It also came bundled on Windows systems which meant people didn't need to download Netscape or any other alternative browser.
I'd also think that many people would agree that the automobile was something amazing when compared to a horse and buggy, both in its time and still in ours. I don't think this example is all that great in making your point.
Since I'm not educated enough about Gopher to make any points about it, but I am too lazy to bother looking it up since your last two examples didn't make your case all that well. Even if you are right this time, one out of three ain't great. - jwdav, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'd rather own 180 songs I liked at the end of 12 months than have nothing except the opportunity to keep a subscription going at $15/Mo
- RuffRidr, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Great, thanks for the update.
- allenb, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@lacronicus
Doing it their way is one thing, but doing it their way and doing it well is quite another.
Microsoft do not do cool well. They never have, and I doubt they ever will (before anyone says it, the Xbox isn't cool like the iPod is cool). Their philosophy is entirely different to Apple's, they are very different entities.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot they do well - they wouldn't be where they are if they didn't - but I stand by what I said: the Zune will never be cooler than the iPod. - cbiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5But I think you may need that rubberized case the Zune offers.
- TGMD, on 10/12/2007, -41/+46Microsoft pays??
What's your problem?
I happen to like the zune, I get more for my money than I would get for an iPod, not to mention I'm sure it's going to be hacked like no tomorrow soon.
And video sharing is a good idea. If the Zune was an apple product it would be hailed as the next best thing but because it's MS (which I don't really like either but I can look beyond something as trivial as an OS) it sucks!... - kirupa, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13Considering how they have been able to extend the Xbox's functionality through updates, I wouldn't be surprised if they manage to incrementally add better network/sharing features to existing Zune's in the near future.
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