The Zune Cometh

Well, except for those hiding under a mountain of used iPod batteries, it's fairly well known that the Zune iPod-wannabe killer is coming out Monday/Tuesday. There's a piece in the NYTimes about counting on the wireless part of the Zune to take down the iPod as well as some interviews with people involved in the creation. But OTOH, RoughlyDrafted (which has had a series of pieces about the Zune) points out some issues with the DRM systems, and forecasts a number of issues — and also calls out what they called a "Digg Fraud Campaign". But soon — the market decides.

Comments

Not a big intro

[sbraab]

I noticed while looking through the newspaper adds this weekend that there isn't much of a marketing hype around Zune. It was buried in all the adds and the biggest selling point I found was that you could put your own picture on on the background. It was also interesting to see that the Microsoft name was no where to be found. I was really expecting to see front pages ads, WIRELESS in big letters and Microsofts weight behind it all. It was also interesting to note that the accessory packs advertised with it were $80-$100, I guess they are trying to beat apple at the sucker game. All in all I didn't see anything to win over the mass market.

Re:Not a big intro

[santos_douglas]

Ran across a Zune endcap display at a local Target. Backlight was set to immediately turn off making it impossible to use until I switched it to stay on permanently. After playing with it a while, found the UI acceptable if a bit unintuitive. Like others have noted, I was shocked at the bulk of the thing. No prices listed, I guess because it wasn't actually available for sale yet, which also seemed a bit odd. The feature list, which presumably is meant to entice buyers, read more like a Top 10 Lift of reasons not to buy. A 30 GB portable hard drive that you can't use as a portable hard drive...WTF?! I've never seen such a disaster waiting to happen.

Intentional or error?

[gnasher719]

The submitter calls the Zune an "iPod wannabe-killer".

That would make it something that kills iPod wannabe's, like Creative or Rio or Sandisk players. I wonder whether that is what the submitter meant, or did he mean "wannabe iPod" or "wannabe iPod-killer"? And I wonder what Microsoft's goal is?

RoughlyDrafted and Digg

[SewersOfRivendell]

RoughlyDrafted [...] also calls out what they called a "Digg Fraud Campaign"

Pot, meet kettle.

I've noticed that this round of MS products...

[bealzabobs_youruncle]

has been very heavily promoted via astro-turfing. Every BETA and RC release of Vista was followed within an hour or so with 2-4 articles explaining why it was great and apologizing for it's lack of features. Some were from legit news outlets, others fan sites and blogs, but the quantity and timing felt forced to me. I see the same thing with Zune; I keep seeing articles telling me it's an iPod killer but then explaining why it's deficiencies are not only acceptable, but a benefit to me as a consumer??

I think this will work with the OS as poeple don't really try to understand how their PC works, but I question this dethroning the simplicity and popularity of the iPod and iTMS combo.

I will also point out the obvious that MS has seeded quite a few landscapers here on Slashdot lately, but I'm sure one will come along soon and prove my point...

Kill the iPod?

[mmzplanet]

Microsoft is not even challenging the most popular of the iPod lineup. Seeing that the iPod nano is the most popular of the iPod lineup (even without video).... how exactly is the Zune an iPod killer? The Zune is not a killer to anything until MS has a device to challenge the tiny iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle. One device is not going to "kill" iPod, or even hurt it.

XOBX HUEG

[CharAznable]

Checked one out yesterday, the 60's Soviet looking shit-brown one. The screen is gorgeous but the unit itself is OMG XOBX HUEG. What's with Microsoft and huge hardware? It is too big and bulky to be carried in my pocket.

Comparisons and caveats

[UnknowingFool]

The problem with the Zune is unfortunately that it will be compared to the iPod. On it's own the Zune seems to be a decent enough MP3 player. To differentiate from the iPod, MS has put in some interesting features. To me though, these features all have caveats. For example, MS is marketing that the Zune has wireless. Technically true but it's not wireless like you'd expect in a laptop. Really, it's limited wireless sharing with another Zune. It plays video but you can't really buy any from Zune marketplace right now. It's got a bigger screen but has the same resolution as an iPod so your pictures are larger because the pixels are larger. It's got the same capacity as the 30GB iPod but you can't use it as a portable harddrive. And so on. I'm not buying it because there are no killer features that I really want. I feel sorry for those who don't research these things and end up with a player that doesn't do what they thought it would do.

Re:The War of the News & Products

[UnknowingFool]

Remember the Switch campaign from Apple? Apple got real people to get on TV to tell why they switched to Macs. The campaign worked because it was from genuine people. Microsoft tried to do the exact same thing but it backfired terribly when someone noticed that the picture of the first Microsoft "switcher" was a stock photo. Was there a real person that switched? There may have been but the method of how MS did it was so underhanded that it immediated discredited their whole campaign.