Slashdot Mirror
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
I did read TFA, but I didn't understand how the scrolling UI works. The photos weren't much help. If the Zune does have a wheel, though, that will be a very interesting development - that's really the feature that makes or breaks the iPod, and I was under the impression that Apple patented it. If Apple didn't, why haven't any of their competitors picked up on it yet?
* Wireless
* More space than a Nomad
Raging success I'd say!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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
First, they rip off OS X and create Vista, now they rip off the iPod and create "zune".
Steve: Well, Bill, what successful thing is there left in the market that we *HAVENT* ripped off?
Bill: Umm... There's the PSP, and the DS...
Steve: The team is way ahead of you bill, they've already got a Xbox360M in the works!
(Just my speculation, of course)
Just announced, Zune will only be available for corporate customers in November. Consumers can get it early in 2007.
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? If I were a MS shareholder, I'd want the company to focus on improving its OS and other software products - ya know, the stuff that made all the money in the first place.
I think Apple should develop a random product, say an iToaster Oven, just to see if MS will follow suit...
There's no buzz about Zune. Microsoft will need a significant and unique advertising campaign to make this thing sell.
y =apple_ipod_vs_microsoft_zune
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entr
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?
Well, this has further cemented my opinion that while the Zune certainly would make me very, very afraid if I were the CEO of Creative, I'm not sure that it would have me shaking in my boots if I was in Steve Jobs' position.
I think it stands a chance of being clearly superior to all the other iPod wannabes, and basically wipe up their market-share and send them into some other line of work, particularly because of the WiFi feature, but there's just nothing compelling about it that would displace the iPod.
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."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I am surprised that more devices don't use a (mouse-like) scroll wheel for navigation like the Blackberry or Rio Karma. It is much nicer than the up-down buttons that are universal for cellphone menu navigation. It has an advantage over the apple touch-wheel in that you have tactile feedback for moving up/or down a single menu item - on my iPod I am constantly moving two spaces when I meant to move one. Of course it has the disadvantage of having to pick up your finger. As far as reliability goes, I know the Rio Karma had problems with it breaking, but that device had QA issues galore, and AFAIK they seem to survive on the Blackberry just fine. Is the use of a scroll-wheel on a handheld device patented by RIM or someone else?
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. "
for the Zune; It has a color screen that only displays a single color, their patented shade of 'Blue Screen of Death' blue.
You may all go to Hell and I will go to Texas - Davy Crockett
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
...does it run Windows?
"When I wake up in the morning I piss cryptographic excellence." - Bruce Schneier
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
No FLAC? No, thanks.
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.
I believe he may be snorting lines of PHP. I dunno, but it kinda looks like it. Look at how big this "first post" was, sumthin's up with that.
Just ain't normal for a FP
Bless Linus
If Microsoft really wants to be like Apple, now they need to file a suit against iLounge for leaking the pictures.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
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? Because, otherwise it could be quite difficult to penetrate the market with this new device. We already have Apple and Creative and they both provide well-known music players. And I have this feeling (so, no real knowledge) that the music player industry is like mobile phone industry. You have to be hip to be on the belt of a teenager. Right?
So, the question is, is there such a movement - like behind Linux or other subcultures we are familiar with here in Slashdot - for Microsoft products? And now I'm not talking about business software. I'm talking about the passionate young people with ideologies and ideals.
... you ugl-eh!
Seriously though, those photos are terrible quality.
Although I do like the idea of a relatively large screen, I feel it is a total knock-off of the iPod. Not that I like the iPod or anything, as I am a proud owner of the amazing iAUDIO X5 -- a little bulky, but plays everything[OGG, FLAC, etc.], and mounts as a USB Mass Storage Device on any OS, and not a DRM-infested steaming heap of s**t.
It's probably the same guy who told me that he wouldn't want a hydrogen powered car because hydrogen's explosive.
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
Seriously, this thing looks so much like an iPod it's ridiculous.
If Microsoft can threaten people who put up Gravity Wars clones then I think Apple should threaten Microsoft for creating an iPod clone.
Summation 2
I'm sorry but that thing is ugly. It looks like a giant cassette case from the 80's.
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.
Wow; an mp3-player that runs Dos!
How to enable garbage collection on a system without protected memory: #define malloc() ((void *) rand())
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 are about to make their big entrance to the digital music party.... ....again.
......... guys, I said "TA DAH!" .....over here with the scroll wheel thing that isn't.....
Ta dah!
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..
What EXACTLY is MS going to do to improve my mp3 "experience"? Seriously, it's a codec, a screen and some controls. This isn't Star Trek you know. And there are lots of non iPods out there that do yeoman's service. I have a Chinese USB thumbdrive mp3 player that doubles as an optional encrypted data drive and a voice recorder. If they wanted to stoke my "experience" they'd make the screen a little bigger and double the flash. But for the $30 it cost me, I don't care. In fact I could buy another one and carry both of them.
$300? C'mon. I got one of those for one of my kids who HAD to have a video iPod. Guess what - after about a month of squinting he stopped watching videos. Now it's a just a big audio mp3 player. It's nice to have that storage but functionally it's LESS functional; e.g. heavier and more fragile, then my other kid's 4GB nano. So the 'function' tops out at about $129.
Next we come to what I call the Furious Factor. Let's face facts; it's an MS device. It will require gobs-o-hardware which translates to limited battery life. It will probably try to force me to adopt it as a PDA or ignore the duplicative PDA functions.
It will likely ladle on generous scoops of DRM making is useless for most people.
It will likely not interface well with any other MS code let alone the 'other' MS hardware, the Xbox360.
It will likely not interface at all with any high end phone.
It will be over promised and undermanufactured creating instant unavailability.
Holy crap, you're right. But---get this----what if we mounted it upright on (i.e., normal to) the music player's surface? Then you could reach out, maybe with your thumb and forefinger, and ... I don't know, rotate the thing? Twist it? "Turn" it?
I could totally imagine this on the front of music players everywhere for volume control and maybe to select between different wireless "channels" (TODO: figure out how to modulate multiple streams of music in a band of EM radiation).
Actually, this could be even bigger! We could use these kinds of controls in any situation where fine-tuning and coarse-grained adjustment are necessary (say, on microscopes), or really on any kind of mechanism where the act of turning the control can be made to do useful mechanical work (TODO: maybe this can be used on water faucets? doors? something like that).
I'm stuck on a name for this physical, continuously-variable, cylindrical widget. Any ideas?
At best, weve heard predictions that Zune will fight for the same fraction of tech geek market share (15%) that Apple hasnt yet taken.
That sounds reasonable, but there's no way it's going to happen. People who have have avoided iPod have done so because they are getting the same functionality from cheaper devices and don't want DRM crippled music. According to the article, M$ has DRM crippled Zune's wifi sharing with some kind of silly "one day" only listening for other people with a Zune. Prediction: big flop.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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