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Zune's Wireless Almost Totally Worthless
mikesd81 writes to mention an article at Engadget exploring what the Zune's wireless is good for. It turns out that, at least for now, that's not much. From the article: "You can search for and find other Zunes nearby. You can send songs / albums for the 3 x 3 trial. Songs past the three days / listens are deleted at next sync, but catalogued on your PC for record-keeping should you want to purchase them later. No word on whether Microsoft is going to keep track of which files are traded. You can send and receive image files for 'unlimited viewing.' (Oh, so copyrighted images aren't worth DRMing?) You can't: Connect to the internet, Download songs directly from the Zune store via WiFi, Sync to your computer via WiFi."
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
This from the company that brought us Bob and Clippy. MS is so consumed with keep aliances with companies by having heavily restricted DRM methods, it should come to no one as a shocker that the Zune is basically a "me, too" to the iPod, except it doesn't even do what the iPod can do.
Anything that has DRM and fails is a good thing.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Can't wait for homebrew\open source firmware for the Zune. DRM free sharing over WiFi :D
Wouldn't an obvious business model be to sell music over the internet and allow people to buy/download music direct on their media player instead of needing a PC. This makes the device sellable to those without PCs. You can then do deals with wireless hotspot providers to offer your users wireless access like nintendo has done.
hello? cell phones are where the mp3 playing action is at - sony ericson has the lead at the moment.
Microsoft has to actually come up with something new and worthwhile but they are not exactly a creative bunch.
The iPod sales are likely to slow down in the next couple years anyway, merely as a matter of change in fads. But I'm not gonna dump my Apple stock because of the threat from MS Zune.
Late to the game and adding nothing. If they hadn't lucked out with MS-DOS, you might never have heard of them.
The wireless feature was a great idea, they just screwed it up. Maybe they can fix it before Apple steps in with an iPod Shareable(TM)
Summation 2
WiFi. More space than a Nomad. Lame.
They should be told about this crap before they buy it or ask their parents. This is not about being anti-Microsoft (I am) but that DRM thing is getting way out of control. Tell people to buy other players: both iPod and Zune suck when it comes to the consumer rights to use them as they want.
This sounds like a great way to inform the general public on why DRM blows. Look at all the cool functionality in there, imagine the awesome potential! Now... here's how we castrated it. How long till they crack it and get OSS running on it? Will there be wifi drivers for the hardware?
I'm still waiting for any mention of whether the Zune only lets you trade music purchased from the Zune Marketplace, or if it will allow you to trade any music files you have. I've seen endless speculation on what happens when it DRMs certain songs (see the recent Creative Commons fracas), but I have yet to see hard confirmation one way or the other on whether it will even allow you to share songs not purchased from MS.
This guy's the limit!
...before someone cracks the software. Look at all the trouble Apple went through to make getting songs off the iPod and onto a 'new' system impossible. Now there is software that allows you to pull files off it directly and in the original file structure. Give it time, and you'll find new software and firmwares that will allow us to not only bypass DRM but sync via wireless, etc. I love what hackers can do :)
Who knows, maybe we'll be able to use it as a network fileserver like the XBox ;)
For the major stakeholders, i.e. IP holders, it's quite useful. It's just useless to _people_.
I, for one, am happy and proud to be part of this next Microsoft step into the 'products that people actively try and avoid' space. Further initiatives are to include a portable game platform that makes the sound of a crying baby, and a new mouse that randomly fires blasts of deadly, mutagenic radiation, all the time, for no reason. Also Vista.
It's all a difference in philosophy. Old Microsoft was about _giving_ people what they wanted, in the hope that they would then _give_ money in return. They would send people out who would discover needs (like the need for a Euro sign character, which the planet's committees and standards groups never grasped the point of) and then fulfil those needs. This kinda sorta worked a bit, but it was a bit pedestrian. Since 2000, New Microsoft has been focusing on actively _taking_ money out of the marketplace and _avoiding_ giving value in return. The Zune is part of this -- see, it has complex and interesting features, but they're there to prevent you from extracting value from it. It's like when they suddenly started charging for the Office /
Basically, what MS understands that nobody else on the planet really grasps is that V + P = K, where:
V = value delivered to the rest of the world
P = profit for MS
K = some constant
See how decreasing V is just like increasing P? It's brilliant once you get it. So this Zune serves to drive V down just a little bit further. Next step? PROFIT!!!
When I say 'profit' I must admit I mean 'ever decreasing relevancy'. But that's because I'm not a technical visionary like Steve Ballmer.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I think you are right.
That would be a killer player. I would buy it.
Microsoft knows that this player is going to be hacked. As in windows piracy will be its success, people will buy it because it will be able to share music illegally with an illegal firmware. Once spread microsoft will close it a little more and open a "itune" online store rival.
Story repeats itself...
I'm not sure I would *want* to be able to purchase songs via the wifi connection on my Zune. After all; I lose it or one of my friends borrows it for a while, they could really rack up some charges on my account. Sure, you could require a password be entered on the Zune - but with what? The touch wheel? That seems pretty silly to me. Further, there is a complaint about not being able to sync to your PC via wifi. Well, since the majority of wifi networks aren't secure - or require long, difficult to enter wifi keys (again, how do you input a 128-bit, 40-character ASCII WEP key on your Zune - or worse, a WPA key at 64 characters!) Sure, you could set that up on your computer and it would program the wifi settings on the Zune during a sync, but that brings forth the question - who would want to sync via wifi? I don't know - if I'm going to be syncing my unit up, I probably just setup Zune Media Center with a few new files I downloaded... I'm at my PC anyway, what's the big deal about dropping the unit in the dock while I'm there and waiting for it to sync? Most wifi routers in use today are still 11Mbps, too - any idea how long it would take to sync a Zune with even 50 new songs via wifi? I hope you brought your AC adapter - it will be a while. It seems like people are just poking holes in this for the point of poking holes. I mean - internet browsing? Maybe if there's a demand, but already in the USA, most people have internet enabled cell phones with pretty decent screens - and very few take advantage of true internet browsing on their phones. Whatever happens when this is released will be interesting, but I just wish people would stop acting like "they could do it better" - if so, why haven't they - or Sandisk, or Samsung, or Creative...?
The trouble with wifi, although it seems like a great idea, is that its slow, takes a lot of battery power, and you can't charge the device using it. They could do a lot more with it, but it would kill the battery of a portable device fairly quickly.
I really can't figure this device out. Knowing how the Zune is an MS only device (Linux and Mac users need not apply), its seems likely to me the reason for zune is an "get locked into MS Windows/ Windows Media Player".
MS is not making a profit on the device, and content sale revenues are tiny.
Zune is a progressive attitude from Microsoft. However with Microsoft's penchant for tying Windows into everything, Zune will soon become hard-bloatware by the time it releases.
As it stands today, Zune (even with its crippled WiFi) MAY prove a formudable competitor to iPod, if the screen resolution and usage factor is good and NO bloatware.
The KISS attitude is a far cry for Microsoft. Their products tend to be bloatware almost always:
Expect the following "feature" from Zune when its released:
1. WiFi connection to internet (thus opening up way for new Worms and viruses).
2. Ability to add an SD Card.
3. Runs Pocket PC OS version 9.9 !
4. Comes with 30 GB hard-disk out of which 25GB is available to you! Rest 5GB is for the OS.
5. Comes with 128MB internal RAM !!! To run Zune Pocket PC OS.
6. Comes with a voice-activated interface that's enabled by default thus allowing your train pal to just say Maroon to make it switch playlists and start searching for Maroon 5 songs.
7. Comes with mouse-pointers.
8. Comes with virtual keyboard.
9. Plays AVI, WMV files inside Media Player inside Zune. Microsoft forgets Zune itself plays WMV natively.
For Microsoft multi-platform means Windows Mobile, Windows CE, Windows 98 SE, Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows MCE, Windows Vista. All OS have to co-exist with one another and use same API. So Zune OS would be a version of Pocket PC Version 9.9
If Microsoft could pull its head out of the sand and Windows A*s am sure they would build a great new OS for Zune alone. Of course, it would never be compatible with Windows (as OS), but then who cares. Apple didn't exactly open up iPod API to developers.
No, Seriously, iam saying this is a good start, but am sure Microsoft will screw it up.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Sure my phone cost a couple hundred bucks more than the Zune (So did my iPod when I bought it) but I can also use it as a phone, browse the Internet through T-Mobile's data service or wifi if there's a node in range and use it to connect my laptop to the Internet. And use it as a camera or a video camera. And get a GPS fix from any nearby bluetooth GPS...
We're going to be seeing more and more of these smart phones in the USA within the next couple of years and they will make everything the Zune promised to do possible without the odious DRM restrictions from Microsoft. Those will be the devices Apple really needs to worry about.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
What (to use everyone's favorite extreme example) if someone decides to "push" child porn pics on all neighbouring zunes? Can he be identified via a serial number or similar traceback mechanism? Is there any way to "agree" to a transfer or "deny" all but a select few?
What if someone uses a poisoned mp3-file (initially sounds like a very low volume, current pop hit, then abruptly cuts to full volume static or sheetmetal noise)? In most other P2P communities there is either a central oversight (torrents) or a user community rating system (like in eMule) to avoid such malicious behaviour - will Microsoft take responsibility?
Oh, and another thing: Can you imitate a zune using a WLAN access point and send out files this way? Certainly there is right now no software available to do that, but think of the opportunities in the future: stores sending targeted high-tech-ad-jingles or catalog pages to all zune owners in range; anarchists distributing (audio) versions of the anarchists cookbook or recipes for drugs or explosives; political offices sending the (audio) equivalent of leaflets to everyone passing by...
Sounds like a really great idea, if there's anything people want then that's more spam!
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
DRM is harmful to the economy. It results in businesses who create devices like the Zune, or software like iTunes, to spend millions of dollars adding this DRM.
Now, one might say that it is good for the economy, as the hardware and software developers who implement the DRM get paid for doing so. In a sense, such a suggestion may be right. But considered further, we see that such a suggestion is completely wrong. While those developers are producing, what they are producing is of little, if not negative, intrinsic value. On top of that, the consumers of the devices are forced to pay extra for this DRM functionality that the vast majority do not want or need. The end result is that resources are wasted, and that is always harmful for the economy.
It's much like the parable about the windowmaker who pays children to throw rocks through all the windows in the town, just so he can get paid fix them all later. It's well known that such a situation is not beneficial to the economy, because real value is not being created. The money paid to fix the broken windows, or in the Zune case paid towards the purchase and development of DRM, could have been better used in more productive ways.
Microsoft, for instance, could have released a DRM-less Zune as you propose. Then they could have put the money they saved towards improving the security of Windows. So in the end the developers still gets paid, the consumers aren't forced to waste their resources (ie. money) on DRM functionality they do not want or need, and the consumers further benefit from the security improvements to Windows. In short, DRM causes major harm to the economy.
...another company from coming out with sharing via wifi without DRM? I already have the ability to share between two wired MP3 players with my current setup (unless they are iPods), so surely sharing via wifi without restriction can't be far off.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Putting an alternative firmware on it to peer-share any and all your files and to sync with a computer wirelessly will happen and almost makes the Zune a tempting project. But I don't need a wireless backup hard disc that also plays movies and music. Yet.
aaah, there's nothing like a cup of microsoft-sux to get the day started.
I think people are focusing in on the "share with others" feature, which is how Microsoft is advertising the Zune but not really... pertinent. It's just all they can offer with the wireless now.
/. crowd expects.
Where this is going is to an "it just works" system where you can just bring your Zune into your car, the stereo detects it and you can start playing from it. It's basically undercutting the iPod/car adapters model since you don't have to go through the hassle of adapters and wires, etc. If they can do that and steal the iPod's battlecry (effective simplicity), they could steal a large chunk of the market quicker than the
People said the same thing about the first generation of Windows, and then the Xbox...
Now Windows is the dominant OS in both the desktop and server market.
The first Xbox was able to even displace the mighty Nintendo in the console market, and the 360 is doing gangbusters.
When will people learn to NEVER count Microsoft out of anything they get into. They may make a few mistakes along the way, but when they want to be in a market, they eventually succeed.
People also seem to forget how upgradable the OS and firmware is on the Zune as well... how soon before you CAN browse and wirelessly synch?
It would be a world that you could do EVERYTHING with your wrist watch, sunglasses or cellular "communication center". EVERYTHING including computing, music, video, communication, internet, reports, movies, games, networking and more.
Thanks to RIAA, MPAA, and other similar shit, we arent living in such a world.
Read radical news here
Especially when you start talking about video, 30 GB is not all that big anymore. Not big enough for my complete "media library." I would have definitely picked one of these up if I could pick it up and grab new files from my pc wirelessly.
people here are focused too much on the sharing/DRM thing. the functionality is not meant for you anyways. its meant for kids who might actually use/enjoy it. people who actually think myspace is cool and who send far more text messages than email. if you are not in this audience then your opinion is rather pointless.
DONT buy ANYTHING that has the word DRM or any resemblance of it in its box, specs, even its rumour.
Teach some particular shit of an organisation type that knowledge and creation belongs to PEOPLE, not some fat white ass morons who are already on their way to the grave from old age.
Read radical news here
Without the Wi-Fi that will connect to the Internet, to at least get new songs from the Zune store, this media player is worthless. I would rather buy an ipod for its price or at least wait until iPod with true wi-fi comes out. Another stupid move by M$. There's a perfectly good product idea starring them in the face and they look right passed it.
Can I bum a sig?
...yet someone thinks I'm bashing Microsoft and it gets modded down. Will someone learn from history this time?
Microsoft releases version 1.0 of a product. It lacks all sorts of features that you expect, has some serious problems, really isn't all that good. But they've got their foot out there. And they listen. They listen very well. Version 2.0 comes around, a bit better, but still needing work. Finally, Microsoft releases version 3.0 of a product. This is what you would have expected from another vendor's product release. Good set of features, starting to look like competition.
Its then that Microsoft releases version 4.0. That's the one with the killer new features that make you really want to buy the Microsoft product. This is the product that is close to what the market really wants.
So the article is correct in that version 1.0 of the Microsoft product [insert name] isn't worthwhile. Not worth spending your money on. But I'd keep an eye out two revisions down the line.
Wireless.
More space than a nomad.
Lame.
It's a second rate copy of the iPod and its online store is a second rate copy of the iTMS. It's got a couple of features over and above what the iPod / iTMS offer but it's not nearly as easy to use as the iPod / iTMS combination. It's like the typical Microsoft v1.0 product, a day late and a dollar short.
I just don't see how Microsoft can turn this one into a winner unless Apple drops the ball Sony style. They haven't been successful yet in leveraging their desktop dominance to drive customers away from the iTMS. You know they'll try with Vista but I don't think that will have much of an effect on consumer's portable music player of choice or their online music store of choice. People have already made their bed when it comes to purchasing DRM'd music online. People who have bought from Apple will stick with Apple unless they really drop the ball because of Apple's DRM. People that have gone with Microsoft DRM will stick with devices that can handle Microsoft DRM because they have to. So when you really think about it, the Zune is a bigger threat to companies that have patterned with Microsoft by supporting Microsoft's DRM than it is to Apple.
Look, I think Zune is going to be yet another iPod wannabee that falls by the wayside - but in what way, shape, or form is this news at all? Basically this is saying that Zune's wireless is going to work like... well, like the way Zune's wireless has been described to us ad nauseum.
What new tidbit of information was revealed here, exactly?
#DeleteChrome
You mean Microsoft view the economy as a zero-sum game, while the rest of the world view it as a positive-sum game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-sum_game
If Apple does do that I hope they do the exact opposite of this:
Just including WIFI is not enough you have to have the right software feature set.
...when will it run Linux? :-P
If it could be made to run rockbox or linux, it would make a great portable player, and you could use the wireless in more useful ways.
I imagine they've made it difficult to break though.
I certainly won't buy one unless it is made able to run homebrew, and even then... I dunno.
OK, I don't think I've seen or heard this rumor anywhere else, so I guess I invented it myself. You know the new upcoming Apple iTV? What's the point? I mean, they already sell the Mini for use with your TV, right? So why develop this iTV thing with Wi-Fi? Just so you can wirelessly view movies & TV shows that are sitting on your Mac Pro? I don't think so.
I believe Apple is developing an iPod with WiFi for use with iTV. Or, a better way to put it is that Apple is developing iTV as an accessory for the new WiFi iPod that will be out next year.
Comments?
---------------------------------------------
SERENITY NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seems a little silly for me to be (apparently) the only one to notice this, but is it a big deal that you can't sync wirelessly with your computer. Compared to USB2 and Firewire, 802.11g is pathetic speed-wise. Ever try copying a bunch of files onto one of those old USB1 flash drives? Impossibly slow. Wireless (at least in its current popular implementation) is too slow to do full syncs. A song or two is fine and amazingly convenient, but don't think that you can suddenly transfer gigabytes in seconds. The device would run out of power even if you had sufficient patience. Don't hold your breath on Apple somehow magically inventing new wireless technologies, much less new wireless standards.
They are currently profitable. Apple has a good enough feel for the market that I'd bet they have the designs complete for the next 3 versions of the ipod and are just waiting for the right time to take them to market.
As for Microsoft, it reacts to the market and hopes things stick. It can afford many failures as long as it has the inertia that it does. An occasional success will keep its big katamari ball rolling as long as it has the number of desktops it does.
As for a phone, I would not want my music player tied to a particular phone company.
Although, there does exist the extremely remote possibility that the mod who marked the GP as redundant is not a mindless drone and actually recognized the reference - but has a perverse sense of humor...
Is there any new information here? It is common knowledge that the WiFi will only be utilized for those things when the Zune ships. Not sure where anybody ever got the idea that it would connect to the internet as per posts on /. weeks ago it seemed pretty obvious. However, the one point of value that I suppose Engadget and the poster have in going into this again is that those that were not quick enough to put 2 and 2 together now know the facts straight from the horses mouth.
Justin
http://hatchedeggs.blogspot.com/
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
My feeling is that, as it stands, the sharing feature will not be very useful for music, but will be great for pictures. People around here share a lot of pictures, usually using cds or flash drives, which are both much less convenient than just sending them over WiFi (that is, if whole folders can be sent).
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Sounds diabolically clever to me. Short-distance short-time song sharing sounds to me like something that would really get used if you have friends who have Zunes.
A lot depends on just how that three-day limit works. If you give a song to a friend and it expires, can you give it to him/her again?
I think quite a lot of music might get sold on the basis of short-term trials when the music was, in fact, recommended by a friend.
I can also see a lot of social gratification in being the first kid on the block to have paid for and bought a hot new tune, and therefore being the one who's in the position of being able to give trial versions to everyone else. (If Microsoft is smart, you will be able to give fresh trials over and over. Then the kids who haven't bought the music need to repeatedly go to the kid who has, in order to get their new time-limited free copies.) All of this in turn provides powerful reinforcement for wanting to buy the tune and be the go-to kid.
Actually, you want to do it in a hurry. If kid A gives you a free trial version, and you can afford to buy it, you'd want to buy it quickly, so there are still kids whom A hasn't given it to yet—kids for whom you can be the wealthy song-dispensing patron.
Furthermore, if there are a fair number of Zunes in play in a social group, then the kids with iPods are excluded... they see the kids with Zunes trading tunes and they're out of it, even if the kids with Zunes are their personal friends.
And I don't think these kids are going to spend much time stripping DRM from their music or exploiting the analog hole or anything like that.
The big "if" is whether the Zune garners enough critical mass for any of this to happen. If only two kids in school have Zunes and neither of them is interested in being a social patron of the other, it isn't going to work.
Mind you, this isn't what I want from a "wireless" mp3 player. But that doesn't mean it won't be effective.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You left out non-content-creator-related corporate greed. A prime example being Verizon Wireless who cripple the functionality of their cellphones (disabling OBEX and other bluetooth profiles) so that they can try to force you to buy their ringtones, wallpaper and other related crap.
In a non-crippled bluetooth world, I'd be able to set my phone down somewhere near my computer and it would automatically update my contacts, calendar, download photos, upload ringtones, etc.., all while I'm doing something else. But then VZW wouldn't make their money every time you emailed yourself a photo, etc.. Ratbastards. There are workarounds (the open source BitPim for example), but they're not elegant solutions.
So yes, it sucks when EXISTING functionality is crippled for the sake of greed, but remember it's not all due to DRM.
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness
...deserve great software. I hope it's not been locked down too tightly so that we'll be able to replace the firmware.
What do we know about the Zune? Well, the first generation at least is apparently a rebadged Toshiba Gigabeat media player.
The rumors are that it runs Windows Mobile on a 400MHz DSP processor. This isn't strictly true because Windows Mobile doesn't run on DSP's - it only runs on ARM / XScale CPU's. However the Zune is likely to be similar to its close cousin the Gigabeat S. This uses the Freescale i.MX31 CPU. This is a 533MHz ARM11. It's not a huge leap of the imagination to think they'll use the same cpu or at least very close. If MS chose Toshiba as a partner for this its more than likely its because of their existing working product is a good starting point.
Given that, it's at least plausible you'll be able to run linux on the CPU. The only problem is hinted at in the FCC pics with the yellow sticker on the PCB stating "Fuse Blown". If you look at the it appears to have an eFuse on board making it as much a pain to re-flash as the Xbox. We'll see what happens I guess...
~Pev
Anyone who can spell "Microsoft" and has enough scratch lying around to drop $300 on a music player is interested in paying and $1 per song likely has a computer already.
Otherwise you'd be looking at the universe of people who own only a standalone CD player and buy CDs exclusively.
(Cuz if they had MP3s they'd already have the computer cuz that's where you get the files...)
I believe you could get all those people together in the main lobby of Redmond.
If they can ignore the Mac and Linux community, they can ignore these folks.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
...is my 4G 60GB iPod photo after the 7.0 iTunes update. As soon as the Zune is released I'm going to get see if I can convert my iPod into a portable hard drive. I don't care about DRM, iTunes, WiFi, et al, I just want a decent media player that plays songs and if I can watch a show or two on my train commute to work so much the better. I don't listen to contemporary music, the lat CD I bought was the Allman Brothers box set 'Dreams' and The Band's 'The Last Waltz'. I have over 30GB of 192kbps AAC audio files I'll need to re-rip to 128-164kbps WMA audio files but with Apple's responce to the iPod deaths due to the 7.0 update I'll gladly get a Zune.
We had those stories a few years ago, about people being mugged because the mugger saw their white ipod earphones. We get all excited about RFID passports, because they broadcast our information. And now Microsoft produce an ipod-alike that positively identifies itself, via wifi, to anyone who cares to listen? That can't be a good idea.
The problem with the Zune's wireless is that it's just the result of Microsoft sitting down and saying, "Let's copy the iPod exactly as a baseline, then see what we can add to make it stand out." Wireless is a "natural" feature to include, so Microsoft figured out the quickest way to include support for it so they can release marketing trash that says "Hey! Look at us! We do everything Apple does, plus wireless!" Changing what the unit actually does with that wireless is just a matter of getting people to update their software once MS figures out what that something actually is. My guess is they'll figure out what to do with the wireless about 6 hours after Apple unveils an iPod with wireless. For now, the Zune at least has the hardware support for it, so MS can still ostensibly claim superiority... somehow.
rooooar
Yes, they keep their alliances with DRM, but they are all about DRM. They tie up their software with DRM. I would say that they are not just complying with the partners wishes to keep things tightened with DRM, but I believe they are encouraging their partners to tighten the DRM that they are using.
Why you ask? The more you are used to DRM in all aspects, the less you feel that Microsoft is the big DRM baddie. If everyone is doing it, then Microsoft really isn't so bad after all. I'm sure Apple has the same plans. DRM is bad for everyone.
Fight DRM!!
... anyone would bother with one of these when they can buy a top-end mobile phone with a 2+ GB memory card and digital radio for damned near the same price. Give it a year and memory cards will be in the 10+ Gb range.
Reminds me of an old joke:
- Waiter!
- ?
- The food is awful.
- Sir...
- And why the portions are so small?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Yes, but the downside is that our streets would be full of unemployed record company executives. Think of the poor execs!
I think you mean: Think of the unfortunate people sharing the streets with the execs!
Zune is not a product, at least not a product worth a damn. It's a testbed for the pain threshold people have in putting up with different DRM schemes. Then MS will take that information and build it into some version of Vista. Expect Zune to exist as a product for about 18 months then it will be withdrawn and you will hear "Zune functionality on Vista" or some equally facile nonsense.
I agree with you; one of the strangest things about our "intellectual property" fetish is that it's creating -- in my opinion -- a situation where 20th century arts are likely to be unavailable/unimportant to the rest of human history. I know you can quite easily go rent The Lion King now, but in 2019 you'll have a watch that can copy any non-DRM'd movie into any machine you want. The Lion King will be comparatively Difficult to Find, and will have another 75 or so years of copyright protection before it gets much easier.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Today on Slashdot, more of the same: Microsoft Sucks, Apple and Google are gods gift to technology, and legions of antisocial haxors just line up to suckle on Steve Jobs' iRod.
....It turns out, that apple needed the music industries backing just as much as Microsoft does.
It's all about how you spin it. On one hand, the Zune can only share songs under the "3/3" limitation. On an iPod, there is no such limitation. Why? Because *you can't use the iPod to share songs, period.* If I plug my iPod into someone elses PC and try to access the library, I will get a friendly iTunes prompt asking if I want to attach my iPod to that PC. If I say "yes" it nicely deletes all the music from the iPod. If I say no, it gives me no access to my content.
The only way to change that is to use a hack, like the WinAmp ml_ipod extension.
Why would apple do that? Aren't they the most awesomest bestest company?
If people weren't so stupidly biased, the headline would read "Zune sharing is crippled, but still waaay better then what you can do with the iPod"
Click here to edit this song
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
>...with the increased sharing, people are exposed to much more new music than they normally >would (think P2P effect on speed), and therefore find more bands they like and want to support. I don't. I've only ever been to one concert - Rush's Roll The Bones tour back in the early 90's I think. But I pirate music left and right. I bet most downloaders are the same. AC to protect the downloader. :)
I don't know... last time i checked, google good, apple bad, microsoft worse... Linux better than anyone and BSD behind linux but better in... some...way...
The trouble with wifi, although it seems like a great idea, is that its slow, takes a lot of battery power, and you can't charge the device using it
Given all the things you mention are obvious to anyone technical, it doesn't seem like a great idea at all - does it? Why on earth did the designers include it when you know it also made the case that much larger?
I really can't figure this device out. Knowing how the Zune is an MS only device (Linux and Mac users need not apply), its seems likely to me the reason for zune is an "get locked into MS Windows/ Windows Media Player".
I'm with you there, it's like Microsoft had on the monopoly glasses for this one and only saw how Apple managed to keep people using iPods while missing the fact Apple didn't tie users to any given OS (even Linux users can make use of an iPod).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
with iTunes 7 you can copy back off your ipod, and copy to your approved computers which I believe is up to 5
The problem with the current implementation is it only copies music from ITMS, not just burned stuff - I'm not lableing this feature complete until it can backsync the whole iPod.
They are afraid of getting sued for propogating the stuff they do not know if users bought...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So there is no internet now... who is saying it cannot be done in a new release or with add-ons down the road? It is a 1.0 MSFT product and those releases are notoriously lacking historically. Did you think they would give you carte blanche to just send music pell-mell? shame on you.. :]
sig goes here!
It may work well for sharing pictures, but I don't think everyone who likes sharing pictures is going to run out and buy a Zune just to be able to share pictures with each other. It might be a little more useful if Zunes could connect to anything other than other Zunes, but they can't. Once again, MS has crippled what could be a really useful feature.
As it stands today, Zune (even with its crippled WiFi) MAY prove a formudable competitor to iPod, if the screen resolution and usage factor is good and NO bloatware.
Then they already have problems as they don't use a scrollwheel for control, and the Zune screen is only somewhat larger - with exactly the same resolution as the iPod.
Add to that it's bulkier and has lower battery life.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That is the problem is Slashdot users think they are a majority when really they are a small minority. They will never get over the fact that people just do not care and continue to use their products and service while this community around here wants to tear everything open so they can dissect it.
Microsoft is about to get a little lesson in why the public is not going to go for this DRM crap. I predict
the sales to be very dismal at best.
Got Code?
The thing that is news is unexpected limits on the use of WiFi, I'm pretty surprised you cannot buy music directly on it or even wirelssly sync.
WIrelessly synching sounds like a bad idea (slow), but if you are doing daily updates and just downloading a few songs and podcasts it could be fast enough to be useful.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The thing that pisses me off the most here (ok that was a hard decision) is the inability to sync over wifi. This is the same stunt MS pulled with the very popular Windows Mobile 5 platform. Devices that run Windows CE (in its many names) prior to Windows Mobile 2005 can sync over wifi. But starting with WM5 which requires Activsync 4, Microsoft has removed this feature. Why? They claim it's to close security holes. Well I believe that it's security related with MSFT's stellar record in this area. But I think that they had a 3rd party look at the code and they came to the decision that it would take too long and too much money to fix the wifi holes so they removed the feature and called it a "benefit" of upgrading to AS4. Too bad it's a mandatory upgrade...
I'm in education.
Gaming consoles are selling largely because of three reasons
(1) they're entrenched since the days of $2000 computers and $200 consoles;
(2) they beat the pants off a reasonably priced PC for gaming performance;
(3) they play games.
The same "people hate computers and will gladly pay to avoid using them" theme was supposed for WebTV / MSNTV. At their best, this service had a million users. MS isn't looking for WebTV numbers here, they're looking for iPod numbers.
Or in your comparison, Xbox numbers - which is upwards of 6 million per year.
The kids won't get access argument doesn't work if the parents use the parental controls. Which they do. Which iTunes includes and MS would too if they do the inevitable feature matching.
Can you imagine peeking thru a music player screen to shop for songs online?
Old people in fact can use computers and are the largest growing segment. People who never had them still likely don't use them, but the baby boomers, all wired - are about to become seniors - the "silver tsunami" is about to hit. Those who can't or won't use a computer are likely not pining for a standalone network device complete with networked subscriptions just to listen to music.
I was a grad student once too. They often don't have home PCs becuase they get use of one for free in the lab and we all lived on $0.50 top ramen for far too long.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If you aren't a kid in highschool (and a non-technical one at that), you probably shouldn't bother having an opinion about the Zune. It's evident that socially active eight-to-eighteens are Microsoft's target market for the Zune, and they aren't going to be taking input from anyone else.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
Wait for Apple's second revisions and Microsoft's fourth editions.
Change the settings to "manually manage content" on the iPod and you'll be able to play everything on it on your friends computer. I had to ask an iPod engineer how to accomplish this feat, but it is doable. I don't know why the interface to it is so bad.
Why would anyone pay to be tormented like this?
Ok so it can't sync by Wifi and it can't browse the web. Bummer. Both things can be fixed with software upgrades -- which can be delivered wirelessly!
:-)
Let's not forget that the Zune was built in 9 months. This is from the same people at Microsoft who built Xbox. The original Xbox was mostly on par with the PlayStation, like the Zune will be with the iPod. The 360 had more time to be thought out and appears to be capable of blowing the PlayStation 3 out of the water. I'll be waiting to buy a Zune 360
I don't want to browse the "web" on a Zune, but I might like to browse a custom set of web applications designed for the Zune. Here's one crazy idea that I would love to see: wifi communications from my digital cable tuner (or a Media center PC?). The tuner could broadcast an ID number of the show I'm currently watching and the current time into that show. I often say "aw man -- what is this song they are playing?" Whip out my Zune, click "Current Show" and then "Recently played songs", preview them right there, buy immediately.
http://brandonbloom.name
Wow, I read this article. I see if I were to buy a Zune, I'd be able to share songs and unlimited pictures with all my friends and co-workers. That is so very incredible. I can genuinely see this as a category killer. I mean, just like my Palm Pilot (I currently have a Zire 72) which has this IR transfer thingy. I've found it so useful. In fact, since I've owned a Palm - about eight years - I've used that, um....
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
How close will the Zune packaging be to the iPod parody video?
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=431377269
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Deductive Reasoning perhaps? Look at their track record with v1.0 products.
Actually, as this is /., the headline should be "Odds being placed in Las Vegas as to whether the DRM removal hack for the Zune will arrive before the device".
The smartest people don't work making DRM schemes; the smartest people play at breaking DRM schemes.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
If you think that is old school, you should hear the They Might Be Giants song "I Can Hear You," recorded on a wax cylinder at Edison Laboratories. It's on their Factory Showroom album, and was recorded without using electricity.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
There are programs that pull music of an iPod, the filenames are not valid but they all have id3 tags so it doesn't matter.
What I was talkabout about though is the ability of iTunes 7 to provide sanctioned, automatic syncronization of iPod content back to the computer - so you can have a computer at home and at work, both authorized, and load stuff from home on an Ipod which then automatically uploads to your work computer from the iPod.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I see MAJOR hack-potential.
...and I'm definitely not gonna get it in that "skidmark brown" color.
Imagine how nice it would be to swap movies(Crossing my fingers for Divx/xvid)... with a decent connection, most movies should be transferrable in a few minutes...or TV shows - one episode should take less than a minute to transfer.. You're talking to someone and they have a movie/show/clip you haven't seen - just pull out your Zune and swap it. It reminds me of the "good old days" when I had my palmpilot and I would tell someone about a cool program I had - I could just beam it to them and they'd have it, no hassle.
So yeah, as soon as it gets h4x0rd, I'm rushing out and buying one... and come on, you KNOW it's gonna get hacked. It's not really a question of IF, but WHEN.
Zune updates the 1990's infra red "beaming" of business cards introduced by Palm and used by nerds. And I am sure that the wireless feature will be used as often as you beamed or received business cards....
Nerdy.
How is this worthless? It allows you to share music with other Zune users in the vicinity, which seems to be the intended purpose. If these were popular, it would be a very nice feature.
Disclaimer: I am a Mac and iPod user.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
At least make it mandatory that media have to be deposited in DRM free format with some agency to make sure that the future will have access to todays cashcows (cash mice ? Mickey comes to mind), just in case congress at some remote point in the future decides that Walts estate has earned enough dough.
... you want a Library, run by Congress ...
So basically
(slaps head) I've got it! The Library of Congress!
Seriously though, that concept was one of the original motivations behind requiring materials registering for Copyright protection to send copies to be deposited there. The idea (or at least, my understanding of the idea) is that the copyright holder gets a monopoly on it, but in return society gets to keep a copy of it safe for later. And, it acts as a convenient record in case of dispute over who filed it first, etc.
Unfortunately, the LoC hasn't done a very good job at keeping up with the times. First, depositing materials there isn't required anymore to get copyright protection, which was probably a mistake to change. Although having an automatic copyright does help the "little guy" from time to time, it seems like we could make it a requirement that if you're going to make more than 10,000 copies of something and want copyright protection, that you have to send in 5 copies or whatever to the LoC.
I think restrictions on what formats are admissible is also a good idea. When the LoC was founded, really the only "format" around was words on printed paper. It's pretty universal, assuming you can read the language, and the preservation of paper is well understood, if fairly complicated. Today we have a plethora of formats for storing similar content, and many of them aren't easily accessible. I would definitely support making a number of formats officially recognized, say ink-on-cotton-paper, ASCII text, analog audio on 78s or LPs, and PCM audio on CD. Video would be a little harder, but I'm sure we could come up with something. Each standard would have to be fully documented.
Then, with the originals in hand, digitize and copy everything. The past has shown that the key to preservation is replication; the more copies exist of something, the better chance it has of surviving into the future. Preserving things in this way would require a constant and never-ending commitment of funds to continue to copy the collection forward using the best-available technology, but I think that the preservation of our culture -- arguably the legacy of our entire civilization -- is worth the expense.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This joke will never get old.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
New music is a scarce resource. Recorded music is not. You can not treat recorded music using conventional economics and expect a sensible outcome.
This is the best point I've seen in this discussion so far.
I've tried to say this elsewhere, but never so succinctly. I think it's the absolute crux of the issue.
You don't need DRM and self-expiring songs in order to create a demand for new music. There will always be a demand for new music, because it's new. Even if you have the entire back-catalog of human civilization at your fingertips, you will still find a market for new music, new writing, and new visual art.
That market will probably be smaller than the market is right now, because today we make old recorded content artificially scarce (e.g., the point someone made about Motown earlier, how it's nearly impossible to find), thus creating a demand for new music which wouldn't otherwise exist.
But to say that in the absence of DRM that artists will just 'stop making music' is ridiculous. Some of them probably would, and this is a good thing because there is probably an overabundance of people in the content-creation industries right now anyway (due to the artificially inflated demand mentioned earlier). However some of them won't, and they'll be the ones feeding the public's insatiable desire for new stuff.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
In fact, since I've owned a Palm - about eight years - I've used that [...] at least twice!
And of course your anecdote is proof that everyone else found it just as useless.
I used it quite a lot until recently. What happened is that I started running into people who were using cellphones and Blackberries as their PDAs, and so could neither send nor receive IR.
Of course Microsoft couldn't reliably do IR in their PDA software until 2002, and it's never been as convenient as Palm even in PPC 2002 and later... so when Palm dropped the ball and decided to go head to head with Microsoft's "baby laptops", and handed Microsoft market share, that hurt beaming as well.
Let's not forget that the Zune was built in 9 months.
The Zune wasn't built by Microsoft. It's a rebadged third-party device.
Draining your battery no time flat!
If I plug my iPod into someone elses PC and try to access the library, I will get a friendly iTunes prompt asking if I want to attach my iPod to that PC
iTunes will ask you if you want to use iTunes to automatically sync the strange iPod you connected. You decline and now you are free to move any and all songs from the PC (including Apple DRM'ed ones) on the iPod.
Thanks for playing!
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(If Microsoft is smart, you will be able to give fresh trials over and over. Then the kids who haven't bought the music need to repeatedly go to the kid who has, in order to get their new time-limited free copies.)
You can't be serious. This scenario does not acknowledge the present-day realities of media and the Internet.
If I had a Zune and some kid gave me a trial copy of a song and I liked it, once that song expired I would not go back to the first kid: I would go online and obtain my own copy, legitimately or otherwise. There is nothing for your scenario to reinforce in a world where media can be obtained from multiple sources. If, on the other hand, these files could only be obtained through Microsoft's music store, something of what you're imagining would happen among very naive users (i.e. teenagers). Adults would purchase their own copy immediately or wait until it became available elsewhere.
Finally, your scenario also ignores the fact that there are people who distribute songs on the Internet through other means. For example, if I wanted to share songs with a group of people I know, I would simply upload them to my webserver and point folks at the URL (password protected, of course).
Maybe it's good I don't work for Microsoft because I fail to see how sharing of audio advertisements over WiFi is going to sell either devices or media files.
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Everything adds to value, and I think people will appreciate the possibility of sharing pictures a lot. But yes, your last sentence is undoubtedly true.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Interesting point, because this must be an inherently insecure device - probably the MOST insecure that could possibly be created as it must contain BOTH the private and public keys in order to create these "3x3" files. No matter how obfuscated the code is, these keys are both in there and surely will be extracted, and the whole Zune DRM trust chain will disintegrate.
If you don't think a big chuck of marketing is about *shaping (rather than reacting to) people's desires, then I seriously am beside myself. Seriously.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I think that they were trying to stuff enough stuff as they could into this thing just to try to say it has more capibilitys than the ipod. sfuff like this does not prove useful unless you make the software for it, ultilize everything like Apple does. Apple will have something that is going to blow this away just becuase they will be able to take advantage of everything
If there were any facts I would expect the Slashdot crowd not to forget, there are two that I think are applicable to this story.
1. Microsoft software is full of holes. If Microsoft made it, then it will get cracked sooner or later.
2. DRM only hurts the consumers because it makes legitimate users jump through hoops, while those who remove it get free and unfettered access. It is also ultimately pointless, because there are no protections schemes which are unbreakable.
Considering the Zune in light of these two facts, I say that the Zune will kick major ass as soon as someone figures out how to subvert the intent of its creators. There is already an open source firmware replacement for the iPod called Rockbox. It allows playback of OGG and FLAC files on the iPod and frees users of the need to use Apple's crappy iTunes software.
So, if the Zune becomes capable of sharing unprotected files without limitation, then it will be a truly revolutionary product indeed. Given the history of Microsoft, DRM and Microsoft's implementation it, it should only be a matter of time.
Why are you making excuses for them?
You don't know whether that's actually the reason or not.
I'm not making excuses for them, I think it sucks.
I'm just explaining why they are doing something harder than simply copying all the files over, and of course the basics of what they are doing (protected AAC only).
It's just as likely the did it because the want to make it harder to deal with music that was not purchased through them.
An interesting and yet totally incorrect observation that makes no sense. Why would apple do anything to make it harder to use your own music? All they have done is added a feature that will sour people on the whole copying to another computer feature, not sell more tracks - no-one is going to buy tracks they already own again just because the iPod copy does not work, they wlll simply take the CD into work as before and curse Apple for the need.
Apple would have been better off simply continuing to not support backsync instead of adding confusion to the user experience.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But I know it will.
Basically there are some things you can dismiss, and the claim I was responding to was one of those things you can simply dismiss out of hand because it does not make much sense.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First, I'm only rated "Troll" because of the usual slashdot fanboi's. I have Excellent karma, with pleanty to burn by TELLING THE TRUTH.
/. are the dumbass linux geeks that can't make a living in the windows world and therefore have lots of freetime to setup their OS and mod-down and MSFT supporters).
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What I like the best is that you were so ANGRY when you wrote the post that you actually said "YOU DON'T KNOW SHIT, TROLL"
Well, leaving aside the fact that I was only marked as troll because I, GASP!, supported Microsoft in this argument (and we all know how wrong that is on slashdot. The people with mod points on
Anyway, leaving that aside, you, the fanboiest of fanbois, we're W-R-O-N-G!!!!!!!!!!!
Read my post. Did you read it? It said "If I plug my iPod into..."
Ok. Now, go read this: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30
See, that's a document on APPLES WEBSITE that explains that, I, the sane one who does not let dumbass allegience to one company over another cloud my judgement, am right. And you, the guy who got so angry that you actually ATTACKED ME VERBALLY because I insulted a huge megabilliondollar corp that doesn't actually care about you in the slightest, are TOTALLY WRONG.
So please, Go read that article, and then don't reply to me so that way you can act like you didn't even see this and can then continue living in your fantasy world where you are the super awesome guy who knows what he's talking about and I'm the dumb troll who "doesn't know shit."
You have no idea how much pleasure I've taken in writing this post.
Score 4, Informative. Yes, very informative you were.
And it's obvious by my EXCELLENT KARMA that I'm a complete and total troll. HAHAHAHA
Wireless uses up a lot of power, and you can't charge your zune using the wireless connection for obvious reasons. Is it really that much harder to plug the ipod into a socket and have it charge at the same time?
I can select whatever songs I want and add them to the shuffle.
So what are you on about in your original post? That you can't move songs from your iPod to a PC? As I said in my post before this one, iTunes does not facilitate moving files from your iPod to your PC but it is trivial to do, either by hand or by using a third-party application.
Regarding "sucking on steve jobs' iRod," I'm really not sure what pointing out that you are a TROLL has to do with performing fellatio on the CEO of Apple. Maybe I'm missing something over here.
I am proud, btw, to have you on my freaks list. Good show!
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That wasn't my last post, but this one probably will be.
This article had instructions for PC users.
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