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Microsoft Zune MP3 Player Interface Revealed
bain writes to tell us that iLounge has put up details on the Zune, Microsoft's MP3 player. According to the article, "Zune is a bit bigger than a standard 30GB iPod, and apparently made entirely of plastic." Interestingly, Microsoft forgoes a touch-sensitive scrollwheel in favor of wheel-shaped buttons. Included are WiFi capabilities, an FM tuner, and (in stark contrast to the iPod) a white-on-black color scheme. The 30GB model is expected to sell for $300.
This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.
The one thing missing for Microsoft, is panache. There's nothing hip or cool aboug having some music device from a giant corporation. Without that certain cachet of having something from a company which makes very stylish computers and operating systems and got U2 on board.
It could say Ronco on it for all the Microsoft connection will be good for. It'll sell to some who want to experiment beyond the bounds of iPodness, but with that plastic case and wheel-like buttons it says WalMart-chic all over it.
Of course, we can't discount the notion that Microsoft might further piss-off the EU and risk a severe look from US trustbusters, by bundling some shit into Windows Vista which only works with the Zune and means you have to have one to get those Zune-casts...
Smells like another waste of money from a company that just doesn't understand that they are only profitable at a few things and should stop this kind of nonsense. FFS, who are they trying to be, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Don't believe anything you hear and only 1/2 of what you see.
Those photos make for a good story but likely have very little to do with Zune.
-r
iPod isn't just popular 'cause it's cool. It's popular because it's really easy to get music onto the thing. Buy it, install iTunes, plug in the iPod, and start ripping or downloading music. I just don't see Windows Media Player as competing in that space, especially not without blowing Microsoft's whole market strategy of giving users choices when it comes to Windows audio players.
I have a feeling they'll get thousands of people buying these things. They'll get them home, try to install them, not be able to get music to upload, or the thing will crash all the time, or their PCs won't be able to see it when it's plugged in. Pack it up, take it back, and just go spend the $300 on something that actually works.
Nice thing about this is Apple will probably lower the price of the 30GB iPod to $250 just to stick it to MS. Then I'll dump my mini and finally get a video iPod.
What the hell? Is that the best picture they could get? Would it be too hard to remove the headphones? Would it stress the camera too much to take multiple angle shots?
I have no doubt that Microsoft will capture close to 100% of the market: but the "market" for this device is "MP3 players other than iPods."
Actually, they won't have the cellphone-mp3 player, PSP/other portable video game-mp3 player or cheep mp3 player market, either. They aren't simply a late entry into THE market, they're a late entry into a NICHE
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Don't think so. The pictures that have been floating around claim that the each unit has a difffent color combination. By using BW photographs, the origin can't be traced back to the current holder of the unit. Of couse, this may be making the fatal mistake that MS didn't code the units so gray-scale images wouldn't reveal the current holders.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Will someone PLEASE explain why a *software* company feels its necessary to enter markets in which it has a competitive disadvantage years after the competition?
To sell DRM technology. ACC is the target, not the silly iPod thingy, but they've done ok with mice, keyboards, joysticks, etc.
KFG
a) be behind the competition
b) bring out something with more features and is the hardware equivalent of bloatware
c) As the wi-fi feature only works with other Zune models it seems pretty pointless to have such a feature until it becomes popular enough for this feature to be worth including
d) be more expensive than the competition
Video Game cheats, hints a
Eh. Apparently you can use the Wi-fi feature to "loan" other Zune owners music for some short period (a day), giving them the opportunity to buy the tracks themselves from the Zune music store. While this is a cool idea, and could work well for ubiquitous iPods, it gets an "eh" here because you're unlikely to randomly bump into other people who have Zunes, and unless Microsoft actually gives away music, you're even more unlikely to find people who are willing to purchase tracks from its latest music store.
I am not sure what this guy is on to here. While it is very wise commenting for any music player from a company like Creative or iRiver, this is just dumb. Microsoft already told people it will market this thing even at a loss. Although I doubt it's going to be as cool as what we're likely to see in the next iPod, I think it is very safe to say that a lot of people will buy this thing. A lot of people speculated this way about the Xbox, but that one turned out great if you ask me. Say all you want, but Microsoft is very successful with hardware. They sell a lot of keyboards, mice, Xboxes and probably also mp3 players.
It is difficult to speculate what Apple has to offer on their next generation of iPods, besides the very large touch screen that has been rumored for so long. Honestly though, I have two iPods next to me that I've stopped using many months ago. I have the latest generation of iPods and the Nano. The big one I don't use because it is simply too big for my taste. I've come to the conclusion that keys, a mobile phone, a wallet and a music player is a lot of stuff at once, and you hardly want to mix the tools because they will just make scratches on the other one (aside from the wallet, which requires its own pocket). So what I did was to get a Nano, but I quickly realized that the small form factor was even offered in phones, so I got a phone with a 6 GB hard drive. Now I'm very happy with that choice. Fewer items to wear in my pockets, less to care about, less to forget, less to charge when I get home.
The summary: I honestly think that cell phones with growing hard drives and flash drive capability are the future. I doubt it would go from mp3 players to phones simply because PDA:s have taken that path with not so much success. It's probably because of the form factor, but also the fact that people want this device to work primarily as a phone, secondarily (yet with ease) as a media player and then every thing else overshadowed. As for businessmen, there are plenty of phone/PDA/media player solutions already, but kids, teenagers and probably a whole lot of other people are probably more and more interested in phones with mp3 capability.
Microsoft will sell Zunes all over the world and I am sure people will buy them. I just don't think Apple and Microsoft can compete with such players as soon as phones increase capacity to 10 GB and with a better interface. I know Nokia is investing in their own music store, so it is a safe to say that we're going to see a lot of new media phones very soon. Bulky players like these will obviously always be there, because some people still prefer large displays and video capability, but I think that larger phones with a large 300 DPI display and 10 GB drive would beat it if it was offered at $300, like Zune and about like iPod.
Full Tilt
They tried that. They got annoyed that none of their industry partners could make hardware for their software that could successfully compete with Apple. So now they're trying a more direct approach.
This is third article today that ended with some shameless plug about a guy called Saied Pinto who is editing LinuxWorld for the day.
There are already advertisements at the top of the page. Do we need them in article summaries too?
Look, MS has $1,000,000,000 in profits every month to put in the bank.
They can afford to take a few punts to see what works.
If I was an investor, I'd be pretty pleased with this (well,
actually I'd be more pleased if they paid some dividends or
got their stock price up, but hey... this aint bad).
All power to them - they want to create a complete
home entertainment experience, and this is an essential part
of the pie.
Signed
A happy iPod owner.
"Zune is a bit bigger than a standard 30GB iPod, and apparently made entirely of plastic."
Magical plastic that has the power to conduct electricty and display graphics!! ZOMGZ0RZ!!!@
Douchetards.
The reason they branch into other areas is because they need to continue to grow to make more and more money. Face it, Microsoft products saturate the market place, there is nowhere for them to grow. There are no stong competitors and I truely believe that the would could run on Windows XP for another 5 years without problems. There is no real incentive to get a new operating system out.
However by branching out they can find new markets to get into, they branched out into an office suite market that was dominated by others and look where Office 2007 is now.
Microsoft (branded) mice are quality products, people buy them and I warrent MS makes a bit of money out of it.
If you look at their SEC 10K statements for the last 5 years you'll see that they have lost $4.7 billion net (revenue - expenses) and are on track to lose $1.2 billion this fiscal year for the business unit that the XBox is in. They've only had one profitable quarter ever, the one Halo 2 came out in.
Explain to me how in any sense this is a business success to the shareholders?
------- Code to try when you're bored: qsort( 0, UINT_MAX, sizeof( int* ), IntCompare );
Hopefully, DRM will become a higher & higher bullet point item on big-name reviewers' bullet point lists. If that happens, let the most unencumbered player win, and you can bet that won't be Microsoft's.
(Although, I wonder what the economic impact will be for the explosion of new sites devoted to Zune hacking....)
Pi Ran Out
That damn Maseratti better have enough cup holders.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
"This made me wondering, if there is somewhere people wearing T-shirts with Microsoft (or Windows) logos and chanting the Microsoft name. Is there such fanboyism, which will guarantee the sale of this kind of device?"
It's not quite the same, but there are people like that - I work with one of them. Nice guy, but he tends to give Microsoft credit for everything. Such as predicting IE7 will kill Firefox because of its tabs and nifty search box. But thing is, these folks fall into a pretty narrow group - Windows admins, teenage boys and cubicle jockeys who get asked by their friends and neighbors to fix their computers; folks like that. While plenty of Apple fanboys fall in this category as well, Apple seems to have enough "cool" fans to offset this.
So I'd guess Zune will sell to people like this, and to their immediate families... and if MS sells it at a loss they'll sell to the moms and dads whose kids put "iPod" on their Christmas list, then go to Walmart and get told "oh yeah, this is even better than an iPod - I'm sure this is what your kid meant to write down, but just forgot the real name." But I'll be really surprised if this makes much of a dent in the iPod's market share.
(Boy it'll be interesting to follow the moderation of THIS post...)
#DeleteChrome
Off-topic for this article, but relevant to this site:
What's up with Slashdot tags these days? Articles seem to have few if any tags whereas a couple of months ago every article had 3 or 4.
You can even see informative, relevant tags listed in the Examples when you expand tags for any given article so they are still being submitted.
Supposedly the rate of tag 'submissions' has declined after the initial novelty wore off, but I would have thought SlashCode would compensate by displaying the top 4 tags once each one passed a troll-filter threshold of, say, 2 occurences.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I'm pretty sure it requires WinXP/Vista/Whatever and WMP10, hence why I won't buy it because it's my mp3 player. Not Microsoft's vehicle to get me to change OS.
That's why what we see now, is a Microsoft who tries to enter every segment of about any tech market where a company has a successfull product and compete with them (so far, YouTube being an honorable exception); it's as if the company's current vision and strategy simply is: "don't innovate, immitate".
Their stronghold in the IT world is decreasing day by day as the underlying OS is becoming less important (re: online services), companies which they screwed in the past is openly fighting them, they struggle on the bugs/virus fronts as well as releasing products on time which are not crippled versions of the original product; simply the previous OS with some new slick bells and whistles attached to it, strategic alliances are formed against them.
Some day, the bully will get what he had coming.
But more to the point: Steve Ballmer is uncertain as to where to take the company next (may I suggest the chair industry?), so they are just watching the industry, sees what catches on and tries to use their bulldozing machinery to enter those market segments, squash the competition and get the monopoly they are used to for pure revenue.
I wish one of them (i.e. Microsoft) would just concede to the other and be done with it - let us buy our music from anywhere and play it on any device. Or at least reach a pact where each supports the other's unprotected format, at least allowing some interchange between devices for content people may have ripped for themselves.
Microsoft may soon add features like picking up your music files from Home computer while you are away from home... I won't be surprised if MS captures sizable share of this market too..
I'd want the company to focus on improving its OS and other software products
And they are. Any experienced programmer or project manager will tell you that after a certain point, dedicating more people and resources to a project will not make it any better or bring it to completion any faster. In fact, due to increased communication and management overheads, it can make it worse and take longer.
I don't know whether or not MS have reached that point, but I think we can probably safely assume that they're not far from it. Given that, and what I asserted above, why *not* branch out into other markets? They have the money, they have the people (at least in numerical terms, if not skills), and with the PC market more or less saturated and their software under attack from free/Free alternatives, they must find alternative revenue streams.
As another respondent more or less said, if I was a shareholder, I'd be very worried if they weren't exploring other markets.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Maybe. And you could say the same for Coca-Cola and Pepsi. But despite the fact that you can get supermarket cola for a quarter on Coke's dollar, you buy the brand-name every time.
Nobody wants an mp3 player. They want an iPod. That's the genius.
Lies about crimes
If that's the case in ten years, I expect Apple to STILL have the market sewn up.
Today, one can buy a COBY brand progressive-scan DVD player at the drug store for thirty bucks, yet people are still eager and willing to go to a real electronics store and spend a couple hundred for a player that has a familiar brand name on it (and most likely much better quality as well).
Branding and name recognition still count for a lot. I think there's a greater risk of Apple losing the "ipod" term to trademark dilution then there is to the MP3 player market being dominated by nameless cheapo shitboxes.
I'll be stating the obvious, but here goes: AFA the Zune's chances in the marketplace, I must say that it does not matter who you are, how much marketshare you have, how dominant you are, if M$ wants to eat your lunch, you are toast. I've seen this repeatedly for the last 25 years+ in this damned industry, where dominant players were anhiliated (sp?) and/or bought out by M$. Think Novell, WordPerfect, Lotus, Borland, Digital Research (CP/M, DR-DOS, etc.), Palm (not dead yet, but in trouble), Ashton-Tate, IBM's OS/2... and I'm not even scratching my head too much here.
/ac
M$ are like the Borg, in the bad sense (*): there are relentless, will not tire, will keep on going after you until they hurt you big time.
It does not matter if the Zune is a sick joke and that it looses a boat load of money at first... or at second... Billg & co are in for the long haul and will pump money into this as long as it takes.
The goal here is not to make money for M$, it is to:
(i) "f*cking kill" the iPod, to prevent Apple from benefiting from it to regain marketshare in computers (the "halo effect").
(ii) to kill what stands between them and imposing WM{a|v|} and related DRM as *THE* media formats for everyone -- which is the iPod/iTunes combo. This is a quest for complete control of flow of information (**) and getting money from every exchange of information (audio & video), every sale of media (***) at BlockBuster and/or Tower's. Why do you think the Xbox came out? It was not to make money for M$, it was to get a foothold in the living room and getting the power to dictate the format of your entertainment. Think even more DRM and think "goodbye" to fair use.
Apple is no corporate angel, but M$ is far, far worse. To see the Zune succeed will mean seeing the M$ monopoly extended even further, the consequence of which scares the hell out of me.
As long as Jobs & co keep on making good decisions, Apple's lead should remain more or less the same. But when your opponent is M$, any mistake you make can become lethal. Had Palm faced anyone else, they would not be in the dire straits they are right now (hmm, maybe Palm was a bad example).
Anywho, time will tell. Who knows, maybe the PMP market might turn out to be exception to the rule, maybe M$ might only get a black eye out of it, I don't know.
(*) contrary to the FLOSS movement that is like the Borg in a good sense: collective IQ, a swarm of individual minds working together (or not) towards (usually) a common goal, etc. The faux-SCO joke is a perfect example of this. The minute Darl's supposed "proofs" of code theft were leaked out two years ago, *a lot* of minds & eyeballs went to work and within hours had ID'd every single line of code's origin and pedigree, putting the kibosh big time on Darl's accusations.
(**) like thinking of hi-jaking the internet protocols for the same purpose, like mentioned in one of the Halloween documents.
(***) "if you don't pay us our fee, none of the new CD players out there, none of those newfangled TVs out there will be able to play anything!" Whilst I'm not sure M$ would resort to blackmailing humanity (sorry for the extreme wording here), I don't think they are above trying to make money off the flow of audio and video in the Real World Out There(tm).