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."

Comments

Makes me wonder

[Lord_Dweomer]

Whenever I hear about crap DRM like this, it really makes me wonder what kind of technological world we'd live in if we didn't have these restrictions. We'd probably have fully wireless players that could play any format we wanted and could stream songs to anybody around us using a P2P streaming format to distribute the bandwidth/battery power. There would probably be a lot more diverse music going around as well. One can only wonder...

Re:Makes me wonder

[Kamineko]

Total wireless free sharing hyper-media super-internet. YouTube on legs.

Coincidentally, that's going to be the Zune 2. Or at least, the Zune 2 is going to approach it. The Zune 5 might have something similar to it, and they'll claim to have invented it too.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

And the people who created all this content got paid how exactly?

I'd rather live in a world with has DRM and copyrights that expire after 5 years. P2P and copy all the old shit, leave the new stuff for artists to make a living.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

And the people who created all this content got paid how exactly?

They get the same shitty pay-cheque from the record company as always. The record company executives, on the other hand, are starving in the gutters.

Hey, a man can dream...

Re:Makes me wonder

[Lord_Dweomer]

And the people who created all this content got paid how exactly?

Nice try AC, but they get paid for this content because 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. Thus, they end up going to see more live shows, and purchasing more merchandise.

For the bands that are smart enough to go with a label that supports sharing, or are Indie, they will thrive because thats where the majority of their income came from in the past and this would amplify that. Remember, traditionally bands really make their money touring, not from music sales which the labels gouge them on.

Re:Makes me wonder

[jacquesm]

I *hate* drm, and the distrust of the end user that comes with it.

I'm working on a daz.com site that will hopefully solve that problem once and for all.

It is my nsho that record companies are dinosaurs that just don't quite realize they're already extinct and it will be my great pleasure to help nail shut the coffins.

Check out Janis Ian vs the RIAA to see how bad it really is.

Re:Makes me wonder

[proxy318]

We already have those players. They're called "Laptops".

Re:Makes me wonder

[GunFodder]

Yes, but the downside is that our streets would be full of unemployed record company executives. Think of the poor execs!

Re:Makes me wonder

[TheRaven64]

I don't mind them locking the door at night, but I would object if they handcuffed me to a security guard while I browsed to prevent me from stealing anything.

Re:Makes me wonder

[jacquesm]

hehe, it probably will. On another note, think about how nice it would have been if DRM would have been existant throughout history. Try to imagine archeaology with a past that had used DRM, encrypted scrolls, dutch masters that you can only see with the right kind of glasses, statues that desintegrate after being viewed more than three times on the same day by the same people.

It's telling that our culture seems to put emphasis on how shortlived it really is, instead of thinking of the future and how we can best preserve our legacy for those that will come after us.

I'd hate to be in the shoes of a 23rd century researcher trying to play back a 2005 issue SONY drm'd compact disc or the last copy of a tune surviving on some ancient file server in encrypted apple iTunes format.

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.

Re:Makes me wonder

[acvh]

"And the people who created all this content got paid how exactly?"

We have had artists and musicians for a few thousand years now. They produced some pretty good stuff without worrying about DRM.

"leave the new stuff for artists to make a living."

That statement confuses me. Is there some secret stash of new music that artists go to when they need a song? Or are you saying that only newly written songs should make money? How about old songs with new recordings? Old songs in a new package?

There are some strong examples of recording artists who made very little from selling albums, but got filthy rich by touring. The good thing about that model is that it means the labels and the RIAA get squat.

Re:Makes me wonder

[__aajqwr7439]

Link's above.

I'd also suggest:
http://www.myspace.com/livegirlsknockyouout
http://www.myspace.com/triplesevens
http://www.myspace.com/thefairiesband
http://www.myspace.com/thepill

Downloads available for all of them, and everyone but The Fairies (London) play regularly in NYC.

Or does my sarcasm-o-meter need new batteries...?

DN

Re:Makes me wonder

[James_Aguilar]

The study of economics proposes that people respond to incentives. P2P deincentivizes the purchase of music, because there is a substitute good for a lower price. This is the opposite of what you are suggesting. Do you have any data to refute this cursory analysis of your argument?

I ask because I see this argument all the time, but I have never once seen data to back it up. The status quo assumption should obviously be that, if people can download something for free, they will not buy it. A serious skeptic would offer some evidence that this is not the case. Otherwise, it's just an unsubstantiated conjecture.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Archangel Michael]

"t's telling that our culture seems to put emphasis on how shortlived it really is, instead of thinking of the future and how we can best preserve our legacy for those that will come after us."

In the case of Britney and Paris, I might actually think this is a good thing. I don't want them to be a legacy. :-D

Re:Makes me wonder

[BemoanAndMoan]

Welcome to the reason I stopped visiting/contributing to /.; the hypocracy of the 'cheap justifying weazel' syndrome that pervades this community: "I shouldn't have to pay for X; everything should be free ('cause I'm just to lazy to earn it for myself)".

It never ceases to amaze me how many excuses people can come up with to not pay for somebody's intellectual property. If you want to own a song, PAY for the bloody thing. If you want to watch a movie, stop pissing your money away on Dorito's and Big Gulps and buck up! Don't pretend that you're standing on a soapbox against Corporate America, musicians who so arrogantly want to get paid for their work, RIAA/MPAA, or anybody else. The fact is, you're just being cheap weazels who can get away with something, and then parrot the self-justifying crap that the other thieving weazels have spouted. I'd be willing to bet that 99% of the people who steal music, movies, and software have never contributed anything to the OSS/intellectual property realm beyond their unfinished Star Wars VII script and a couple of blog postings on Jessica Alba's ass.

I agree that DRM sucks, and rootkits and corporation's dull witted approach to protecting their property sucks too. But the *reason* this stuff exists is because of the weasels like Lord_Dweomer who steal and justify more regularly than evangelists sin and repent.

Justify all you want, but a low-life is a low-life no matter how good or common his excuses might be.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Ucklak]

Damn. Was Cleopatra hated by her peers?
We'll really never know.

Believe it or not, there are some real admirers of Paris and that is a disgusting indicator of our society.
I happen to be in a position where I am privy to teenage essays and you'd be disgusted at the percentage of teenage girls that idolize her.

Re:Makes me wonder

[eltonito]

Remember, traditionally bands really make their money touring, not from music sales which the labels gouge them on.

This is P2P propaganda that is unsupported by reality. Some bands, like "The Dead" maybe make most of their money from touring. Most bands, contrary to Slashdot rumor, do not make a killing on the road. The more popular the band/artist (Madonna, The Eagles, Phish) the more they can make. The smaller the band (Interpol, Deathcab For Cutie, Sigur Ros) the less potential they have to make a reasonable sum of money on the road.

Just like major label record deal, playing a live concert introduces contracts, fees and complications that tend to sap money out of lesser artists. Coco from Man or Astroman once posted a great article (can't find the link) on the subject on the bands website. In short, as they became more popular and played larger venues to more people, they made less money touring.

Jumping from the bar circuit to the larger club circuit doubled or tripled the fees they were responsible to pay. So, on top of their transportation costs, food costs, lodging costs, maintenence costs, managerial fees, they were now responsible for advertising fees, booking fees, security fees, insurance and a host of other miscelleanous fees and expenses that nickle and dimed them to death. His conclusion was that they made slightly more playing to an audience of 150 in a bar than they did playing to 600 people at a club. This is true for many indie bands and less than platinum selling acts playing medium sized venues.

On the other hand, synch royalties is where its at for smaller artists, which is why you are seeing Deathcab for Cutie, Sigur Ros et al on so many TV soundtracks and in advertising these days. One commercial, one TV show or one movie can make a smaller artists year and it boosts their sales, which in turn brings them more mechanical royalties.

Re:Makes me wonder

[soft_guy]

On another note, think about how nice it would have been if DRM would have been existant throughout history. Try to imagine archeaology with a past that had used DRM, encrypted scrolls, dutch masters that you can only see with the right kind of glasses, statues that desintegrate after being viewed more than three times on the same day by the same people.

It's telling that our culture seems to put emphasis on how shortlived it really is, instead of thinking of the future and how we can best preserve our legacy for those that will come after us.

There are people who are trying to preserve things for the future. I heard a story on NPR perhaps a couple of years ago about a group of people who were creating brand new 78 rpm records of current music. The reason was for preservaton because a 78 RPM records is apparently extrememly easy to play even without much technology. Personally, I fail to see how the music of eminem is going to help future generations living after the collapse of technology (perhaps as a warning of what to avoid?)

Our society may ultimately be remembered only for the work of those individuals.

Who is to say that our view of past societies isn't mostly based on things that those societies chose to preserve for the long term. They may very well have had other artworks that were shorter lasting that we won't know about.

I was reading about the history of photography. One thing I learned was that there were photographic techniques created in the 1700s that could take a photograph, but they had not yet developed technology to "fix" the photograph permanently. So, those images only lasted minutes in most cases.

Re:Makes me wonder

[Mateo_LeFou]

The point of the whole free-culture position is that it does *not make economic sense to purchase what is downloadable for free. We're on the same side of that fence. Those who wish to make money need to find something non-digital to sell. The experience of a live show is one of many hundreds of possible examples.

"The study of economics proposes that people respond to incentives"
---
"According to the econodwarf's vision, each human being is an individual possessing "incentives," which can be retrospectively unearthed by imagining the state of the bank account at various times. So in this instance the econodwarf feels compelled to object that without the rules I am lampooning, there would be no incentive to create the things the rules treat as property: without the ability to exclude others from music there would be no music, because no one could be sure of getting paid for creating it."

"The dwarf's basic problem is that "incentives" is merely a metaphor, and as a metaphor to describe human creative activity it's pretty crummy"

http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/my_pubs/anarchism. html

Re:Makes me wonder

[mrchaotica]

I've got a Modest Proposal to solve that problem, if you want to hear it...

Re:Makes me wonder

[Mister Whirly]

No problem -
http://www.bridgeclubmusic.com/ -website
http://www.myspace.com/bridgeclubyo - Myspace page

See you at the next show, it is on the 7th at the Uptown Bar. We are headlining, so we will probably go on around 12. Thanks for the interest.

Re:Makes me wonder

[qnetter]

That's sure consistent with the open source anti-capitalist argument: that you should only be able to accrue income for labor, not for owning the fruits of that labor. Yes, bands will make more money by people going to more shows. But that obligates bands to play and play and play, to tour nonstop rather than earning on record sales.

Re:Makes me wonder

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Also trying to point out that the vast majority of Slashdotters, including the one to whom I replied, produce nothing in the way of copyrightable content, let alone make it their primary occupation, yet want to sit on the sidelines and offer advice as to how the actual producers should conduct themselves in their business.

Hi, I'm a professional content creator. The majority of my income is from creating copyrighted works. Does that somehow make my opinions more logical or factual?

All the while we the producers are happy with the current arrangement, as are most normals.

Are you joking? Most of "we the producers" are not happy or sad or much of anything because we're long since dead. The majority of copyrighted works are not available to the public, at all. They are not for sale. Take a look at motown records, for example. I think something like 5% of their catalogue of copyrighted music is available for sale, and they own the majority of the works in an entire genre of American music. I don't know about you, but I doubt those artists would be too happy about that and those of us that would like to listen to it sure aren't.

As for the previous poster, he's entirely right. Copyright costs most musicians money, rather than makes it for them. In order to reach a mainstream audience they have to go through the RIAA, and for most artists that means they pay money for the privilege of handing over all their copyrights. They make their money with live performances and merchandise. For the average musician, no copyright at all would probably increase their revenue.

The point of all of this is not to say that copyright is not a useful incentive in some cases, it is to make you aware that the current implementation of copyright in conjunction with cartels that have monopolized the distribution channels is broken and needs to be fixed.

Re:Makes me wonder

[igb]

And yet, since the rise of filesharing, people who used to tour rarely now tour continuously. Springsteen is about to make his third swing through the UK in twelve months. Jackson Browne has been doing his acoustic solo/with David Lindley thing a lot, and I think I've seen him play three times in the past three years: prior to that it was twice a decade, if that. More prosaically, I've just bought tickets for Evan Dando --- charging 15 quid a head in a ~2000 capacity venue --- and Van Morrison, playing for 30 quid a head in a ~1000 capacity venue. Again, both were historically infrequent tourers. Morrison is these days doing gigs in small venues with a large band, usually only at weekends, and after the gig you can see him driving himself off in a somewhat ratty looking BMW 3 series. I refuse to believe that he's losing money on it, simply because he famously doesn't do things that lose money, and he's probably grossing less than 25K a night. Springsteen by contrast is charging 50 quid in an 8K venue, which is £400K per night: again, I refuse to believe you can lose money on that.

Re:Makes me wonder

[GenmaKun]

If they have trouble reading the DRM, all they will need to do is push the "Enhance" button on their Tricorder and the files will play back just fine, except maybe for some slight analog distortion some disgruntled code monkey added when coding the "Enhance" function.

Re:Makes me wonder

[kfg]

The reason was for preservaton because a 78 RPM records is apparently extrememly easy to play even without much technology.

You don't even need a source of electricity. Put the needle (a real needle, just a sharpened sliver of steel) in the groove and spin the plater. Sound comes out. The process is purely mechanical, not even electromechanical. Electromechanical cartridges are to send an electrical signal to an amplifier, not simply to reproduce the sound.

In early days these things were sold from the back of a van, i.e. a covered wagon.

And because the recording is a phonograph, i.e. it is a visible analog recording, even imaging technology can be used to recover the data.

KFG

Re:Makes me wonder

[iluvcapra]

The reason was for preservaton because a 78 RPM records is apparently extrememly easy to play even without much technology

This was the theory behind the Voyager Golden Record, which one side of is nothing but audio. It is of course easy to play a record without much technology, because they were invented in the late 19th century and people back then, by our standards, "didn't have much technology," so maybe it's all a wash.

If we'd put the music of the Voyager Golden Record on a USB key in iTunes Fairplay ALC, I have little doubt that aliens with the capacity to recover a space probe from interstellar space could have decoded it (they have to be at least as smart as DVD Jon). Hell, it might have made it interesting for them.

Our society may ultimately be remembered only for the work of those individuals.

If the last hundred or so years are any indication, the only music that becomes culturally significant is the music that can be authoritatively notated on paper. The recordings themselves are like gold on Inca temples: they're beautiful, far to beautiful to avoid being being stolen or otherwise being permanently locked away once the culture that honored them disappears. Paper is too boring to steal.

Re:Makes me wonder

[sh00z]

I heard a story on NPR perhaps a couple of years ago about a group of people who were creating brand new 78 rpm records of current music. The reason was for preservaton because a 78 RPM records is apparently extrememly easy to play even without much technology.

Um. (Sadly?) that was an April Fool's Day joke.

Re:Makes me wonder

[stuuf]

Do you think it's right to ignore a part of history just because someone doesn't like the way it sounds or looks? Should a government be able to say "We don't like what this author is saying, let's make sure no one ever reads his books again?"

Re:Makes me wonder

[captainjaroslav]

I'm not a huge DRM fan or anything, but isn't this kind of a false analogy when you talk about ancient scrolls or Dutch masters? The "D" in DRM is for digital and it is an important aspect of understanding why this is such a big deal now. Before digital information, there was no way to make an infinite number of *exact* copies of a work of art or literature. Copyright became more of an issue as the technology for copying things improved, but even with the advent of the printing press, it wasn't like everybody had one and, even if everybody did have one, it would be a lot of work to take a paper copy of a book you owned legally and make plates for your printing press so that you could run off copies on you own. Pre-digital copies were always distinguishable from the original as well.

Re:Makes me wonder

[reanjr]

We have the ability to recover a probe from space. On the other hand, if we had never had USB, DRM, ALC encoded audio, I think we'd be in pretty poor shape to figure out what was on that USB key.

Re:Makes me wonder

[pilgrim23]

Record companies gouge? I will have you know the one and only album I had rights to that I am on sold a good 100k copies and to this day I still have a photocopy of my one and only $20 royalty check. Gouge? I WISH it was only a gouge! Gouge, gore, rip consume, spit out and/or defecate. Then they hit you up for manufacturing costs and you end up owing THEM!

Re:Makes me wonder

[QRDeNameland]

I'd hate to be in the shoes of a 23rd century researcher trying to play back a 2005 issue SONY drm'd compact disc or the last copy of a tune surviving on some ancient file server in encrypted apple iTunes format.

I'm picturing the end of A.I., when the future robots find Haley Joel Osment at the bottom of the frozen sea, and when they also find the 2005 Sony CD, one sticks the CD in its chest and is instantly rooted, clutching its head moaning "Damn XP legacy code!!"

Re:Makes me wonder

[kfg]

The downside of the technology is that information may be lost and/or added with each retrieval.

KFG

So?

[Pharmboy]

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.

Re:So?

[jdogg82]

The iPod's default format for ripped CDs is AAC, which is not proprietary.

Re:So?

[beren12]

Apple's preferred format, AAC, is not propriety, it is a full standard. Try looking something up before you type, or stop spreading FUD. Just because a company chooses not to add AAC support to it's players doesn't make it propriety. It's probably as free as mp3, so I don't see your logic. Anyway, you can rip music into AAC, Lossless compressed, wave, aiff, and mp3. Oh my god, choices! Guess what, the ipod can play all those formats too.

Apple may not have a nice gui for copying songs back off your ipod, but that doesn't matter. They don't *stop* you from doing it, not on a mac, not on windows, that's the point. There are no secret drivers with hidden APIs that override the system ones. They are just in a folder marked "invisible". Nor do they encrypt all songs when you transfer it to your ipod. They just copy them exactly.

--Sadly, text alone cannot convey the depths of my sarcasm.

Re:So?

[Llywelyn]

- Ogg and mp3 "support DRM" by your definition: Fairplay is just a wrapper added to the audio format. ...and yes, I have played them after copying them off. I had a hard drive crash and rescued my music off of my iPod precisely that way. Virtually my entire library was once on my iPod and had to be copied back.

Re:So?

[mrchaotica]

I don't know about your player, but my iPod uses HFS+, which is not rudimentary at all. However, even crappy little no-name flash-based players I've used still kept the same filename that was on the computer, give or take a few special characters. The iPod, on the other hand, randomizes them on purpose, in order to obfuscate them so that it's harder to get the files off in a useful way.

Re:So?

[Blakey Rat]

It's not "randomizing them", it's hashing them. And yes, it's on-purpose because it makes searching for the specific song faster. (Whether or not it actually IS faster or not might be debated, but the point is that's why it's done. It's not random, and it's not pointless, and it has nothing to do with obfuscating them.)

And if you copy those 4343ddacs332.aac back to another copy of iTunes, iTunes will automatically rename the file based on the ID3 tags in it. (Which the iPod does not change in any way.) So it still works fine in any player that accepts that file type and uses ID3 tags instead of file names to organize files.

Custom Firmware

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't wait for homebrew\open source firmware for the Zune. DRM free sharing over WiFi :D

Re:Custom Firmware

[Rik Sweeney]

Can't wait for homebrew\open source firmware for the Zune.

Rockbox then?

selling music via wireless

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

obligatory

[MonoSynth]

WiFi. More space than a Nomad. Lame.

Good... No great

[manno]

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?

still waiting

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

It won't take long...

[gergoge]

...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 ;)

Re:It won't take long...

[timster]

Look at all the trouble Apple went through to make getting songs off the iPod and onto a 'new' system impossible.

Not true; Apple didn't do anything at all to prevent this, they just didn't write software to do it. The files are stored on the iPod in their original form, but with a database index as the name. The database isn't at all difficult to read.

Almost totally useless _for users_

[kahei]

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 / .NET interop package; they created useful functionality, in such a way that nobody could actually derive benefit from it.

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.

Re:Almost totally useless _for users_

[z0idberg]

For exhibit A see the DRM magic planned in Windows Media Player 11 http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/21/13 29208

It's exactly the same thing great for everyone, and by everyone I mean Microsoft and all the major IP holders.

Not so great (actually pretty shit) for anyone that actually wants to buy and use the product.

Funnily enough this seems to be a pretty common theme for products that revolve around DRM.

Story repeats itself...

[Yag]

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...

Unrealistic?

[CorporalKlinger]

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...?

Trouble with Wifi?

[acomj]

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.

Re:Trouble with Wifi?

[cyberformer]

It's more the other way round. Most people are already locked into Windows, so MS hopes to leverage the Windows monopoly to sell the Zune. The reason for making it is an attempt to control online music (and ultimately movie) distribution, something Apple has been much moer successful at.

They won't make much (any) profit on sales of the Zune itself at first, but that's mostly because they don't anticipate selling many and so won't have many economies of scale. As with the Xbox, they expect that to change. And most of the money isn't in the device itself.

Re:Trouble with Wifi?

[nine-times]

It's not about immediate profit, it's about control. Someone is making money in a computer-related market, and Microsoft doesn't control it. They have no piece of the iTunes/iPod action, and apparently they don't like that. They'll be willing to lose money on the venture all the way up until they've established control, and then they'll rake users over the coals once users have been locked into the Microsoft platform.

That's what Microsoft is after these days-- an all inclusive end-to-end dominance on anything resembling a computer. Handhelds, MP3 players, servers, desktops, refrigerators, web browsers, e-mail, game consoles, etc. The result will be that, any emerging computer market, no matter what the market is, will need to go through Microsoft, and Microsoft will dominate it.

Microsoft is not in the business of providing consumer products or OEM software-- they're in the business of dominating markets and eliminating competition.

Microsoft's penchant for tying up Windows...

[freedom_india]

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.

Re:Good idea, badly implemented

[Freaky Spook]

Yeah, it does sound a tad cripple-ware. I wonder how different the wifi features are compared to what the guys in the concept & R&D labs first built.

Why the hell would I want a WIFI enable device if I can't even connect it to an AP or AD-HOC it to my notebook, it makes it really useless.

My Phone has bluetooth on it, and I sync it with my notebook wirlessly to change my playlists or archive my messages, its fantastic and its really got me to use the MP3 player in it. I don't think ill need to by the Zune if it can't even do what my phone can.

That Makes my Cellphone a Better MP3 Player

[Greyfox]

I can send a couple of gigs of mp3s from my laptop to my cellphone using bluetooth. Unfortunately it doesn't support stereo bluetooth headphones natively, but I can get some software and stereo headphones that work with it from a company called i.Tech Dynamic. Although I haven't tried, I'm sure I can also send images and mp3s to another bluetooth device with the owner's permission.

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.

Re:That Makes my Cellphone a Better MP3 Player

[glesga_kiss]

I can send a couple of gigs of mp3s from my laptop to my cellphone using bluetooth.

Ironically, I have a cellphone running a Microsoft OS and I can do the same. It can also do it over Wifi using samba, FTP or HTTP. If it had an HD it would be better and smaller than the zune, but with SD cards at approx 20UKP / 2 gig it's not a big deal.

Sure my phone cost a couple hundred bucks more than the Zune

With 12-month contract mine actually cost a lot less, approx $50 USD.

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.

That's where the irony just rolls over and dies. The MS phones cannot interact with MS wma DRM at all. They only way to listen to music is technically illegal, unless you are converting Creative Commons media.

How about illegal pictures?

[PontifexPrimus]

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!

Re:How about illegal pictures?

[Abcd1234]

Sweet! Finally, goatse for the masses! It takes this (don't worry, SFW :) to a whole new level.

DRM harms the economy.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The hacker potential...

[wild_berry]

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.

fresh-roasted

[etheriel]

aaah, there's nothing like a cup of microsoft-sux to get the day started.

Wireless car adapters...

[TCQuad]

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.

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 /. crowd expects.

Re:Wireless car adapters...

[mrchaotica]

Right, so you could get an iPod which requires an adaptor, aftermarket stereo, or new car, or you could get a Zune which... requires exactly the same thing, but is wireless so it can't be recharged by the car at the same time. So again, how is it better?

In other words, if you cam make the assumption that you had a car stereo with Zune support (not just Wi-Fi; it needs the proper software too), you can just as easily make the assumption that you had a car stereo with iPod support. In fact, the latter is actually a more reasonable assumption, since at least it already exists.

Let me tell you what kind of world would it be

[unity100]

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.

The Zune Itself Is Worthless

[Luscious868]

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.

Re:The Zune Itself Is Worthless

[Zamfir]

I see. So the well-review product that you have never seen is "second rate" and the music store that no one has ever seen is not easy to use. No anti-MS bias here!

This is news?

[93 Escort Wagon]

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?

Wireless Speed

[Chrononium]

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.

If it works well for pictures it's great already

[rbarreira]

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).

Sounds good (and diabolically clever) to me

[dpbsmith]

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.

Re:Sounds good (and diabolically clever) to me

[glwtta]

gratification in being the first kid on the block to have paid for and bought a hot new tune

Yeah, cause nothing seems cooler to kids today than paying for music.

Trouble with idea

[SuperKendall]

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).

Kind of...

[SuperKendall]

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...

I am willing to bet

[codepunk]

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.

Re:23rd Century

[Steve001]

Mateo_LeFou wrote:

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.

This sounds similar to a situation involving movies and books. In the case of movies, many old silent movies are being lost due to the unstable film stock that was used at the time. The films are literally disintegrating on the shelf and will be lost unless they can be transferred to a more lasting film stock.

With books, for a time (I think it was 50 years) many books were printed on paper that was prepared via a process involving acid. Due to this, the life span of these books are limited and as with the movies mentioned above, thousands of books will be lost forever. I remember reading somewhere that this will result in the biggest loss of information in history.

Finally, this is also an issue with computer files. Although copy protection is not much of an issue in this case, many files are no longer accessible because the program used to create them no longer exists. This has become a big problem with historical documents since they need to be accessible decades from now, and in some cases centuries from now.

I find it ironic that the thing which will supposedly save the music industry, DRM, will actually destroy music while the music with out DRM, which will supposedly kill the music industry, will actually save the music.

Zune's for Teenagers

[thethibs]

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.

Re:23rd Century

[WhiteWolf666]

I disagree.

There is a fair amount of material that is not DRM'd.

If you look at the past of human history, you see societies that we know lots about, and societies we know little about.

The societies we know lots about wrote material down in not particularly difficult to translate media.
The societies we know little about wrote down little, and what they did write was indicperiable. They remain a mystery.

Phish, for example, will last for a long time, regardless of whether or not people like it. It's DRM free for copying, so it can remain alive forever.

Metallica, on the other hand, will vanish in the sands of history, because no one will bother with a player that can run the discs, and after the last encryption code vanishes, no one will bother to decrypt it, except as a potential academic product in the annals of some obscure journal.

We won't see the whole 20th century go into the darkness. We will see GPL code that lives in the future as library/museum type stuff, while Windows will only live on in pictures/videos.

It's not about capabilities-its about posibilities

[SnprBoB86]

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.

Re:Of course, for the iPod, people look the other

[paganizer]

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.

You don't know shit, TROLL

[MisterSquid]

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!