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Critical Review of the Zune
ceallaigh writes "Andy Ihnatko of the Chicago Sun-Times has a critical review of the Zune. "Avoid," is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity."
"Wireless. More space than a nomad. Awesome."
Never mind that Andy is usually an advocate for Apple's products, however, as he is often, Andy is right on and I agree with his sentiments. In addition to his comments, I got to spend a little time with a Zune and initially liked the large screen until I actually turned the device on. I found it to be clunky, awkward, irritating, non-intuitive, completely incompatible with previous Microsoft music standards, and has none of the features that make the iPod so completely useful (ability to hold various media and data, even allowing you to boot from Firewire iPods). And forcing users to rely on the Zune application to move data onto or off the device is infuriating (kind of like the Creative devices. Is it possible to "open" a Creative media player and put data onto it without having to use the Creative application?).
I simply cannot believe that Microsoft *ever* asked itself how users might interface with such a device and it's obsequious pandering to the music industry in an effort to out-compete Apple in this space rather than putting the effort into making a better product to the iPod quite simply offends. Hey Microsoft, how much did you spend coming up with this marketing, because I am simply stunned at how bad this is. If Microsoft *really* was interested in making a better product and not acting as a pimp for the record industry, they would also not have relied on "Zune Points" to purchase music. As anybody who has ever taken Marketing101 knows, you should always facilitate the process of getting people to spend money on your products and anything that steps in-between or slows this process down had better have a damn good reason for existing. Why do I have to buy "Zune Points" to then make music purchases? It's just stupid.
Oh, and Microsoft..... Just a suggestion: Very few end users want their products to "squirt" anything at them. That is just bad marketing.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I'm not saying that the Zune is good by any means nor have I had a chance to play around with one. Which is why I read this review--I was hoping for a good review on this new MP3 player.
But I found this to be a particularly bad review. Perhaps I don't read a lot of reviews but I prefer them to be thorough. One thing that stuck out about this review is that it didn't even have room for something nice to say about the Zune. Not one thing. I'm sure a high school student could write me a review with a PROS/CONS table that would be more informative than this. I find it very hard to believe that this reviewer managed to not find anything good about the Zune.
Here's a simple question I didn't see answered anywhere, "Did it work?" If it did what was its sound quality like? Is it durable? How heavy/large is it? Every point of this article a mark against the Zune. I think that a 'review' entitles you to be subjective & look at it from all angles then weigh in at the end about whether or not you would recommend it. Instead this review starts off with the quote, "Yes, Microsoft's new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I've spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face. 'Avoid,' is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity." Why should I even finish reading your review if that's the first thing you say?
And then Apple enters your review. I can understand a comparison to other competitive MP3 players but you just start using the brand name Apple. Why? Why not give me a rundown of this versus iRiver or Creative's MP3 players? So the Toshiba MP3 player is $40 cheaper, doesn't tell me much if it sucks even more. Are they also compatible with podcasts and WMA codecs?
Reading this review causes me to question Andy Ihnatko's motive. Is he reviewing the Zune, grinding an ax or trying to get me to buy an iPod? I know the thing sucks but at least be fair if you're going to write a review for the masses.
My work here is dung.
they'll get it right on the third version...
Seriously though, Microsoft will probably keep throwing money at it until they get it right. Personally I doubt I'll ever pick one up though, Rockbox will keep me happy until my iRiver dies and then I'll just pick up another player that is supported.
Summation 2
...those are my thoughts upon finally encountering an iPod Nano up close and personal. Nice touch-sensitive clickwheel, but why Apple couldn't just make it work like a USB drive? The menu system would work well for folder-based playback. This reliance on iTunes (which is very invasive) ruins an otherwise excellent product.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
I thought this guy did a great job of summing up the Zunes features.,
once more into the breach
The Zune can be an incredibly cool and useable device as soon as the hackers get into it and create a differen Firmware/OS for it like they did with the ipod,iriver,creative and other popular mp3 players.
the Zune is a decent piece of hardware hobbled and destroyed by management idiocy. It's the perfect metaphore for what is wrong with corperate america.
That said, I'll be snapping up a used one cheap the day the first OSS firmware becomes available for it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's not so much a review as a rant. Hardly any info is given about how the thing works. The software didn't install? Big deal! When I updated the firmware on my brand-new iPod 3 years ago, it bricked it. Most of the other complaints also apply to the iPod - works only with supplied software (theoretically, both players have workarounds), not compatible with other on-line stores, DRM, yada yada yada. Since most people don't actually buy from the store and rip their own CD's, maybe he could have talked about how that works for a bit. Or sound quality, or battery life, or how the UI works. But no, it's more fun and easier just to rip out a bash. Yay lazy journalists!
The Zune can be an incredibly cool and useable device as soon as the hackers get into it and create a differen Firmware/OS for it like they did with the ipod,iriver,creative and other popular mp3 players.
Sounds interesting, but it seems to me Andy's job is to review products as they are now, as shipped by the OEM. His reading audience isn't out to pimp their ride; they're out to get a device that does great stuff right out of the box.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This is daft. Is the DRM imposed by the client or the server Zune? What if a band wants to promote their music by, for example, setting up free downloads of selected tracks after a concert? Why should everything go through the Zune store? Also, is there any way to get a server other than another Zune to interface with the thing wirelessly?
I hope this product does become popular enough for many different hacked firmwares to be released. Seems like a decent hardware with shitty firmware, but that's correctable :) - that's what I call "product support"...
-b.
If that's not enough, the reviewer then weighs in with:
This suggests that for your typical tech-journalist, the issue of the power of music companies and the damage it does to consumers' interests is perfectly clear. However, I don't know anything about the Chicago Sun Times - is it a big newspaper? Does this review suggest that the mainstream media in the US is ready to turn a critical eye on the music companies?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
a positive review for the Zune, could make it as a story on slashdot?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Remember Robert X Cringely's dictum about Microsoft - the third product is always the real one. The first two are just to scope out the market.
In every single black friday ad I got in the mail and paper and went through, Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart, etc, not one bothered to even mention the Zune for my local stores. Most of them had the iPod on page one or two or in the hot gifts section. Their displays are kind of sad little things next to the area full of iPod gear and accessories and of course the iPod itself. One of the stores had more space for Sandisk players than the Zune. It would seem even some retailers know this is probably just going to be an expensive side shelf paperweight.
As for the iPod, the local grocery store now carries the iPod and accessories back in the TV and Game aisle and the corner gas station had shuffles for sale next to the compact flash cards, aimed at travelers and vacationers. You just don't get more pervasive than that. Until the Zune can even near this and can branch out into other small flash based devices as well, Microsoft just isn't going anywhere with it.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Joe Stalin gives the thumbs up to iTunes and it's draconian DRM. When can we expect the early morning knock of the seceret "IP" police?
From TFA:
To which the goldfish replied:
Very insightful article until this remark. Microsoft will sink their entire ship before they let the Zune fail. Its key to their drive into the living room. The Zune may not ever be a financial success, but it will be out there for some time to come.
One thing I didn't realize that he pointed out was that Microsoft's model for payments, while completely asinine, gets rid of a per song credit card authorization fee. That's likely a significant cost in Apple's scheme.
1;
If the Zune had a true workaround, you could use it with Linux - or even a Mac! That is a "workaround".
A registrry hack that lets you drop your own files on the Zune that it is free to then ignore is NOT a "workaround".
And only Microsoft already had an online store (several in fact) that they chose to make the new player not compatible with. So Microsoft definatley deserves more scorn on this score.
And I guess he wasn't that negative after all, since he didn't even talk about the battery life...
You're right he should have talked about CD rippig (I think you meant to see most people still rip CD's?), I've not seen that process described. Since you have wmp11 and also the Zune software, whcih one wins when you insert a disk? Does it automatically displace iTuens if you have that set as primary?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
well i have to say it, i cannot imagine this is from same company (/. jokes aside) that made one of the most useful (useful as in whats getting used) products of our time (windows). 1. lets start from appearance. its big, bulky and brown. tries to imitate click wheel but has pushbutton beneath the wheel.. why the hell they have to copy ipod if they cannot due to click wheel patent. wheel is not the end of the world. 2. user experience - websites are full of installation errors and the background picture they chose for it -- women having orgasm! can't they have QA'ed it some more on their own machines! 3. wireless -- great idea implementde just the wrong way on all the wrong fronts. you cannot connect to your computer using wireless. it can only connect to buddies to whom you can trasnfer songs (3day/3times limit). on a device where poewr consumption is critical and zune already sucks, they chose to have .11 in a lame way just to differentiate from ipod.
4. they have marketplace-- where you buy a song for 79 points (wtf dollars are for?). and you can buy 80 points for one dollar. but you can buy only in increments of 5 dollars. looks like MSFT is trying to increase calculator sales. god knows why!
5. their own playforsure is not supported
6. they make this future gadget which is not compatible with their OS of the century (vista).
if you search for reasons for ipods success, first and foremost thing is its simple to use and it works! microsft tried to copy ipod and finally came up with this incredibly complex incredibly useless functionalities!
someone rightly said microsft innovates at places where it shouldnt. if they had just copied ipod and put their market force behind it, it would have been better.
I dont know how nuclear reactor works but any college grad can tell zune is an utter bullshit product.
All iPods mount as external storage, are you complaining because a USB jack is not inbuilt?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Subjective review", eh? Reviews are always subjective. Sounds like you want benchmarking, or a table of specifications, not a review. You realize that your comment itself is subjective, and you are reviewing the review?
>Why should I even finish reading your review if that's the first thing you say?
You appear to be speaking directly to the author there, and I'm not the author of the review, but the answer is obvious: because it is valuable feedback on the product. Microsoft -- as a company mindset -- tunes out all criticism, and the result is the Zune.
What is going on here?
Is the Zune supposed to be some sort weapon?
(ps, I am old, do you kids "get it"?)
I like microcars
I am sick up to the nose with all these bad reviews that hit the web about the zune. I am an ipod dude. I own every single version since the first generation. I am an Apple fanboi. I love Apple products. Now, my g/f got me a brown zune just for the heck of it. I plugged the little guy into a PC laptop running XP. I had no problem updating the firmware or connecting to anything. I don't care about DRM. I have all my stuff in unprotected mp4 and that plays without any gliches on the zune. Of course there are some issues: gapless playback is my major issue. But knowing that Apple took 3 years to fix that on the iPod, I expect MS to take less time. I love the color brown. It is amazingly beautiful in real life with green contours. No picture can do the translucency of the material justice. I also have to admit that WMA sounds great on my stereo at 128Kps. The UI is really kickass and I never cared about the wheel because it's so imprecise anyway that I always missed the thing I wanted to click on. There are no games, and I don't care because I have a cell phone with java. There are no calendar and stuff that are useless because my cell phone sync up with blutooth. So the Zune is mostly here for music and some videos. The screeen is just better to watch anything. I can run the zune with a PC powered USB by just closing the zune app on the desktop. I never could do that on the Mac. The zune app looks fine. The sync is working great and I never really cared about Windows Media player anyway. This is the first release, MS is losing money on it, so basically I suspect that Wifi doesn't cost the customers one dime. I am also interested to see what comes up from MS later on, and what are other going to hack on the device. I just don't understand what all this negative press is about really.
This is not a review from PCWorld. It's a writer with the Chicago Sun-Times giving advice to parents for the holiday buying season.
The purpose of the review is not to give geeks a rundown of every single feature and whether it performs as expected. The purpose is to inform the reader about whether this is even a worthwhile product, given all the hype that surrounds it.
The reviewer did point out other options that don't suck as much as the Zune and are cheaper. So he's done his job in giving the average consumer an idea about whether this is a worthwhile product... just as a movie reviewer in the same paper would give you an idea about whether ANYONE should consider going to a particular movie. Most movies have some demographic that might enjoy watching it... but the same is not true for technology products, which may or may not even work as expected. There were at least two features the reviewer pointed out that do not work as expected, given the way they are portrayed on the box.
So it looks like the Zune isn't even worth considering. I'm glad that reviewer was honest enough to say so.
I think the ad is trying to convey the following. If you own a Zune you can share music with others thus changing their life for the better.
Oh and the flames mean if you purchase a Microsoft product you will be flamed for all eternity, or something like that.
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers"
Hey, it's a microsoft product! Version 1 will be dreadful, 2 will be better but no one will care, but 3 will dominate the market. Who wants to take my bet?
Will the War in Iraq get better or worse in 2007? Vote here
Can we please get a poll? I feel naked without a poll.
I will continue to burn karma until a poll is posted!
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Does the Zune support Plugins like Winamp does? I ask this because I have mostly Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files in my collection. There's no way I am going to transcode just for one player. If the Zune doesn't support plugins I am sticking to the ones that have native support for these formats.
I've used an iPod. I have a Zune. They're both fine players. I had no problem setting up the Zune software on three different machines, I have had no trouble with the player or downloading music to it, and I love the built in FM stereo (why couldn't the iPod have had this years ago?)
If the iPod and iTunes were to come out today, I really wonder what this journalist would have to say about them.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
By your user ID, I can tell that you certainly should, by now, realize that posting a well-written, objective review of a Microsoft product will gets your (-1 Troll) here! Were you drunk, perhaps, when you posted this? Did you think that you were posting to a site with some more level-headed people?
I thought it was a good article. Thanks for posting. Sssshhh! Don't tell anybody!
Before you head bursts from an acute case of fanboy-ism, please note that sound quality-wise Creative devices have been repeatedly rated above Apple's. Why? Because Apple currently has no incentive to make things radically better (unlike its underdog competitors). Most of iPods have had incremental if not cosmetic facelifts in the recent revisions. As far as the iRiver is concerned, while its current offering is lacking, iRiver H1xx series are to this day reigning champion of features and sound quality (please notice I did not mention form factor/sex appeal/whatever). Don't believe me? Most pro-audio colleagues as well as sound connoiseurs to this day seek to buy this discontinued model due to its high quality sound output and more importantly CD-quality recording feature which includes also optical I/O. On top of that it also has a user-replaceable battery and hard drive so that you are not stuck in the "do-it-the-way-Steve/Bill-wants-you-to" wonderland.
So, yes, an objective comparison of features (not "everyone's-got-one-so-I-ought-to-have-one-too" commmon denominator approach often used when reviewing OSs by comparing it to Windows, or as is the case here comparing an mp3 player solely to an iPod).
At least I read (and cringed some) at the term as found in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" published in January 2003. Despite this I tend like his writing and ideas.
This usage may appear earlier but I do not know where.
If you change the following sentence from:
The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.
to:
Windows 3.x is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.
You'll realize that this is just a typical Microsoft "throw something out there" first effort. It was obviously never intended to be an iPod killer, or even to be successful at any particular level. However, you can bet your MP3 player (whatever it is) that there are a bunch of someones at Microsoft reading every public comment about the Zune that they can get their eyeballs on. It's just as important to know what customers think is stupid or otherwise dislike as it is to know what they do like (they need only look at the iPod for that information.) That's Marketing 101, and if nothing else Microsoft does know how to market.
Windows 1.x, 2.x and 3.x truly sucked at pretty much every level but at least 3.1 made a lot of money. Windows 95, for all it's many flaws made even more money, and 98+ made even more money. Don't expect anything positive for the first few years after Microsoft enters a particular market. Historically, they usually fail economically (if not technologically) at anything but operating systems and office suites anyway, but given time they could do well in the portable media player market.
Either way, Apple had best not rest on its laurels for too long. Microsoft isn't the only competitor out there that wants a piece of the iPod pie.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
That's not just bad marketing, it's a marketing showstopper. Remember Ball-buster-man's comment "You might want to squirt me pictures of your kids"? Sorry, anyone who puts squirt and kids in the same sentence should be locked up, IMHO.
Seriously, it sounds like Ball-head-man was desperately trying to come up with a catchy name for that wifi thing the device does so badly. He's the most executron-looking dweeb I've ever seen; he typifies the image of the whole company to the yoot who buy such gadgets.
So please Mr. Ballmer, don't squirt on me, K? Thanks...
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
Uhm, he didn't compare it solely with an iPod. Did you read the article? A quick skimming even mentions PlaysForSure devices, Sandisk and Toshiba.
Jeremy
I saw my first Zune a couple of days ago. It was an unattractive brown, clunky looking, and I didn't even want to bother turning it on. This is something that looks more like a Heathkit build-it-yourself than a polished commercial product. But that's almost an insult to Heathkits (okay, they weren't always pretty, but you took pride in the finished product).
"These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it," said Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. "So it's time to get paid for it."
Well, Morris is just a big, clueless idiot, of course. Do you honestly want morons like him to have power over your music player?
I stopped reading it after this, the article felt way to biased for me. I don't necessarily disagree with many of the comments made. But when I'm reading a "Critical Review" and I come across a statement like that, I just stop. How can I trust anything he says after this?
The statement is not explained, it's biased, it's emotional, and doesn't have any place in a "review".
I've messed with one of these. I quickly wanted to throw it into a wall.
It was clunky, shoddy, and fuck, one of the available colors is shit brown.
It's obvious microsoft wants this to fail for one reason or another.
Probably for tax losses, or, maybe the remote chance of blaming apple of holding a monopoly on patents or some lame shit like that.
I'm sorry, but I'm not investing in any more "portable" devices that have what I call built-in tunnel vision.
:)
Not until they combine an mp3 player, pda/portable pc / cell phone, wifi, slim touchscreen into one convenient and affordable device.
I know there are such devices already out there, but many of them are weak in one category or the other. For example most cell phones have terrible mp3 playback quality.
Oh yeah.. DRM sucks too, but everyone already knows that
P.S. I also would like to be able to change my OWN BATTERY!! apple idiots.
I'm aware that Apple is not the best offering in the industry, but whether we like it or not their product is so ubiquitous that the average reader in fact expects such a comparison to be made. Most people will hear about the Zune and think, "Is it better than iPod?"
Whoever wrote the column is also very aware that his readership is thinking along these lines, so it comes as no surprise whatsoever that Apple was thrown onto the table. It's also no secret that Microsoft's Zune has been regarded as a challenge to Apple long before it was even released--they're even designed similarly.
They said parts of it simply didn't work, like sync with xbox, like how it crashed right out of the box, no vbr, but they still managed to give it a 7 out of 10 as it's just software.. It's a "great product but flawed"
I also predict success for one reason, and one reason only: Heavy grinding by the Microsoft Machine that bulldozes their way into amy market thay want by. FUD, etc etc. The only unside being better integration into Windows (possibly).
I don't think the spyware issue is anything typical users care about. I don't think iTunes is really anything special.
Apart from the fact that "squirting" evokes images of Clinton and dresses, probably close to 0% of potential customers would have heard or registered this dopey statement. For most people it didn't even happen.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This would explain why it seems to be a bit of a Bob.
Is this really a case of Microsoft wanting a "me too" product, not with the intention of capturing a market but rather as a Christmas iPod spoiler.
If you are refering to those pathetic 2 sentences which can be summarized as "Zune sucks because it is more expensive than a Toshiba and not enough like iPod, unlike nano-like Sansa" then, yes, you are right to state that article did *mention* other players but their comparison/context is so shitty, instead of calling it journalism, it's called a word-turd-stew spread accross a webpage canvas.
The interesting thing is that even though many think first-gen Zune is not that good (and therefore, apart its from the inflamatory-turd-instead-of-real-content character, their thoughts are in sync with this article), this author has managed to introduce so much bias that his article has lost any credibility...
it's curious... normally for small devices like these there are tons of posts about "does it run linux?" or other talk of hacking the hardware to do what it wasn't meant to.
Is it such a bad hardware design that even misappropriating it to run linux or rockbox would be a waste of time? It seems the MS-inspired nature of the device has been enough to even ward off the most dedicated of hackers.. very rare indeed. I have pretty much seen NO talk of wanting to hack this thing, which I find really curious.
I for one could see a little wireless mp3 player running custom software to be a very useful device.
Is the fact that it requires special software a HARD limitation or is it something in the firmware that could be overridden?
Imagine a DRM-less wireless mp3 player / PDA / portable video game machine...
I really wish the topic of 'Playforsure' vs. whatever the new standard is wouldn't come up. When Slashdot readers who've never purchased a playforsure encoded file list it as one of the negatives it just smacks of 'I wanted to make my list of complaints as long as possible'. Probably 5 people in the world have playforsure libraries, pity them but don't make it a focal point of your reviews -- it's too obvious.
I disagree.
.files containing attributes, I have to go to the terminal and pull a find /Volumes/iRiver -name ".*" -print -delete just to remove ugly .files everywhere.
I own both an iRiver iHP-120 and an Apple iPod.
The iHP, I have to manage all my files manually. I drag over the folders into the directory I want and bingo, it's done. However, that takes time and effort. If I rip new music on to my computer, (which I do often, I'm a musician) I have to figure out what folders are already on there and which aren't. Plus because I'm on a mac, and OS X generates all sorts of hidden
With my iPod, all my new music I rip in iTunes is placed neatly in my music library that I don't have to look at. All I do is plug in my iPod to charge, and *poof* all my new music is updated onto the device! I don't have to take time to dick around with folders, figuring out which songs I've added since my last manual update. As a boost, all the artwork is on there too, and I'm a meticulous tagger, so everything has art.
There are some nice benefits to the iRiver, of course, such as OGG support and a built in recorder, but over all, the iPod + iTunes experience has it beat, hands down.
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
We certainly wouldn't expect Slashdot to cover a positive review of the Zune.
i really think that Microsoft, Apple, Creative, etc etc etc would prefer not to have any DRM on their devices. Apple didn't have much of anything until they started negotiations for the iTMS. iirc the only thing the iPod did was make the /music directory invisible, and there was a VERY simple fix for that. i don't know if that still holds true or not though.
i don't 100% understand the Zune DRM (i just don't care enough to research it), but Apple's is really only on the files you buy from iTMS. on the iPod, the files themselves are not encrypted, but the device makes it harder to get them off than a regular HDD. i would think there could be a fix for this, though i never looked. i suppose maybe if Microsoft (or anyone else) dropped any association with an online store (including their own), they could do whatever they want? kind of like MP3 players were 5 years ago. i think that was only pulled off because the music industry didn't really know what MP3 players were. they were not selling in any numbers, and only the Nomad was any kind of threat (in terms of a roving pirate ship). it probably didn't sell enough to be on the radar. other players were what, 32 MB? seriously, they were tiny flash players. my friend would put a gym mix playlist on his and that would pretty much fill it. it was neat, but you paid a lot for that digital mix tape. oh how things have changed.
From TFA
"And why (for the love of God) doesn't it support podcasts? That's pure insanity."
It's simple.. they tried... over and over... and the poor MS engineer's head exploded at 3 am when a paperclip popped up on the screen and said
"Hey, it looks like you are trying to make a podcast! You want some help with that?"
was ... hey this is slashdot, what other type of review did you expect to see?
load "$",8,1
The Zune is literally a marketing catastrophe. Andy I. is alerting his readers of the trainwreck it represents. He's identifying the showstoppers that make this a poor purchase. When we're talking about a $250 buy-in, it's important to warn consumers that the glitches are not minor. Even if MS got everything else right with this player, it would be something for parents to avoid purchasing if they're going to have to manually create and install
There's no sense for Andy to discuss the finer details of weight, size, etc. The problems cancel out how superior the form factor might be over the iPod. It's like you're asking for a reporter to discuss the positive aspects of Osama Bin Laden-- "Well, he exhales carbon dioxide, which plants need for photosynthesis." Yes, I'm in agreement with Andy on this, the Zune is the Alqueda of mp3 players.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Andy is pretty much a full on Apple advocate so I can't take his review to seriously.
There are dozens of ipods and other MP3 players above it. Let's put it this way, the people who buy the Zune deserve what they get.
Deleted
I think the ad is saying that Microsoft are buying batteries from Sony...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Oh, fantastic, I can roast quails with it!
Umm my nano works as a usb drive without even having to load drivers.
Itunes? Well, i agree its bad to be tied to a single interface, but there are alternatives out there.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
When you can buy mp3 players for $40 or so that you can use and load just like a USB drive, why do you need iTunes to manage loading your mp3s? ...and the ability to "sync my music library"? Please, folks. 120+GB isn't gonna fit onto a Nano.
You just answered your own question.
Yes you can drag folders onto other devices, that also lack the space to store your enitre music library. That's what makes iTunes, with a variety of smart playlists and ability to randomly load selected songs and podcasts out of a vast library, so useful. Then you don't have to do as much music management yourself.
And it still doesn't explain how the Zune is even as good as the iPod in this regard which was seemingly the original point - at least with the iPod you have alternate tools you cna use to load the thing, or even install Linux and be done with it!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What a surprise that the most negative review of the Zune that anybody could find would be posted on Slashdot.
I guess we'll just ignore the many, many more moderate reviews that rate the Zune as good, but no iPod killer. After all, we wouldn't want to represent the general consensus.
I could just as easily post very positive reviews of the Zune, but I guarantee those will never been seen on Slashdot's front page.
If I recall, virtually everybody dismissed Microsoft's entry into the game console market in much the same way. People criticized the Xbox as being inferior to the PS2, although in general they gave more credit to the Xbox than they're giving to the Zune. (Perhaps because the iPod fans have a bit more zealotry in their blood than the Sony fans.)
But as we learned from the Xbox360, which according to almost everybody is the tentative winner of the next gen console wars, Microsoft often uses the first release of a product as a test bed for their eventual successful strategy.
I suspect we'll look back in a few years as see the Zune as a predecessor of the device that finally kills the iPod.
Only from the standpoint of people receiving one who really wanted an iPod. :-)
Trust me, the Zune won't put a dent in Apple's Christmas season iPod sales. This is not hubris talking, it's a plain fact. The thing has gotten almost uniformly bad reviews and has even been soundly mocked on CNN. Zune 1.0 is nothing for Apple to worry about. By the time Microsoft gets a worthy competitor to the current iPod out the door (if history is any guide it will be their 3rd generation Zune), Apple will have advanced the iPod further, still leaving MS at a disadvantage.
The network effect of the iPod is probably just too great for Microsoft to ever overcome-- there are already thousands upon thousands of iPod accessories out there, and the majority of new cars now offer iPod connectivity as an option. Furthermore, it's doubtful many companies will jump to make Zune accessories in any great hurry, seeing how willing Microsoft is to abandon things at the drop of a hat when they decide what they're doing isn't working out. In short, by going up against the iPod Microsoft is learning what it's like to be a competitor to Windows, where they are the ones enjoying the network effect.
~Philly
How did you finally do it?
I haven't figured out how to format the whole stick, apparently, because the U3 crap keeps coming back.
To read complaints about the competitors products?
Quack, quack.
Replaced my own Mini battery just fine with a kit.
The hairdryer phases were the only boring part.
Then again, that part is probably to force Apple to pay when their label contracts come up, which effectively INCREASES the leader's cost, when normally it drops.
So the real question is, does the MPAA or any label have the power to make that happen?
When contract negotiations come up again, if Universal asks Apple to pay royalties, Apple can just blow them off - and if Universal threatens not to sign, Apple can just say "bye-bye!". Universal would be hurt worse than Aple by such a move.
If many companies try to force Apple's hand, Apple has options:
1) Promote the hell out of Indie lables and shift the whole market away from major players.
2) Sue the labels based on the secret audio recordings Jobs made while in negotiations
3) iTunes now ships with iTorrent integration!
I think if anything the music companies strategy has to be to get a rival online music presence up to the level of strength that they can force both players to bend to the wishes of the MPAA by playing them off against the other, and Microsoft was desperate enough to avoid irrelevance that they agreed to be the first patsy of the two. In short, I don't think it's possible to have a healthy online music industry until the core of the problem (the MPAA companies) have been rendered powerless or at least have competing elements just as strong as they are offering music.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can't imagine they are a very large paper - didn't most of Chicago go up in some kind of fire?
Undoubtedly the work of a provincial rag operating from a shack by the slautherhouse.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How can any comment that includes the line, "The software didn't install? Big deal!" be considered "insightful"?
Saw this on another post. Thought it was well said, and I agree completely.
A lot of people seem to think that Apple will rush out an iPod with wi-fi to "catch up" with the Zune. I personally feel that it will be a long time--if ever--before Apple incorporates wi-fi. Apple's philosophy seems to be to keep the iPod design straightforward, uncluttered, and non-gimmicky. Wi-fi (at least as Microsoft has implemented it) is a gimmick, pure and simple. There are many other DAPs that have a bunch more gimmicks (FM, voice recording, etc.) than the iPod, and their sales figures are lost in the noise compared to the iPod. If Apple is kicking the competition's butts by offering a simple, easy-to-use product, why would they garbage it up with all the "features" that their losing competitors have?
Just look at all the things that are outselling the Zune... among them is a digital picture frame, at spot #59 - and a whole $1300 plasma TV in a sales rank even better than that!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They are going to market this thing with tons of weight, so the actual quality is irrelevant. Here i Norway, Apple prodcts is also difficult for shops to receive, handle and get support for, while M$ products comes through their normal channels. This means they will avoid the hassle, and sell Zune rather than the iPod.
It will be a success simply because M$ says so, and because they are, as allways, hungry for the market they don't have.
After playing with the unit for a few minutes and being disgusted with the UI, this is what I noticed leaving the store:
The "zune" logo on the translucent marketing material, when viewed from the back, looks a lot like "anus".
That about sums it up.
OK, so I want to look at the Zune website. It would make sense that the Zune website would be Zune.com. What is zune.com? Some error message in Spanish.
So I use Google to find out that it's Zune.net. The page looks downright ametureish. Only after switching User Agent Switcher to tell it that I'm IE on XP (I'm really FF on Ubuntu) do I see the real page.
"Most pro-audio colleagues as well as sound connoiseurs to this day seek to buy this discontinued model due to its high quality sound output and more importantly CD-quality recording feature which includes also optical I/O."
Problem is, in the real world as soon as you say "Most pro-audio colleagues as well as sound connoisseurs" peoples' eyes glaze over and they stop listening. Most people couldn't care less about audiophiles' opinions - we have all heard way too much of their pointless (to us) droning. They're as bad as the worst of the anime fans.
I'm not saying you don't have a point - I'm just saying that, to most people, it doesn't matter in the least.
#DeleteChrome
Q. Can I remove U3 technology from my USB drive?
A. Yes. To remove the U3 technology from the drive, simply go to the U3 Launchpad and, under Settings, select U3 Launchpad settings and click Uninstall. This will completely remove the U3 Launchpad from the drive.
I still won't buy a flash drive with this auto-run crap on it, simply because I don't trust them not to stealth install some spyware or rootkit or something (yea Sony, I'm looking at you) - but according to Sandisk it can be removed from the drive.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Well forget it. It seems to me that article is a little biased towards the ipod, but overall it seems to hit the nail on the head. I was hoping that the Zune would cripple the ipod then I could come here and laugh and get neg modded.. But that's probably not going to be the case. I haven't even seen a bloody commercial for the Zune. There's apparently no solid release date for Canada yet. Not that I'd buy one after that scathing review. MIND YOU, Microsoft could very well go the same way they went with the Xbox and bleed money till they get it right. It would be nice though if apple includes a native radio player in their next incarnation of the ipod, that could be at least one good thing the Zune would accomplish.
It amazes me that every review of the Zune has completely missed the point:
In today's day and age, with always-on devices with mandatory updates, DRM, and proprietary file formats, who you buy from and trust with your memories, pictures of family and friends, music collections, videos, pictures, letters, etc., is a very, very important decision.
Will you be able to look at the digital pictures of your child 30 years from now? Yes, we have entered that age.
The fundamental problem with the Zune is Microsoft's lack of integrity. Not the Zune's design. Not the Zune's user interface, or anything else. The problem is the lack of character of the company behind the product.
The Zune showed that Microsoft is more than willing to leave good, paying customers who bought 'Plays for Sure' music high-and-dry with a bleak future. And the killer is there is no practical reason for this other than to be sure they copy Apple identically and make people pay twice for the same music.
What's worse, what happens when the whole Zune thing (inevitably) fails? Then what? Customers should expect, based on current behavior, that MS will change the format again and make you re-buy your music. How could a logical, sane person assume otherwise?
(I know a guy, who despite my advice, bought about 2 grand of Plays for Sure music because "MIcrosoft is going to be around forever and they support their stuff." Needless to say, when he learned his music collection didn't work with his new Zune, he was at the Apple store a day later dropping 6 grand on a MBP, 30" display, nano and 5G iPod and tons of iPod accessories. Yes, one guy voting with his wallet--a fat one at that--but this guy is another data point on the tsunami that is building of CIO's, consumers, SMB customers, etc., who are sick of MS' lack of business ethics and their silly, silly games.)
That, for me, is the kiss of death for the Zune. And it should be for all people. For it demonstrated all the lipstick Steve "We need to act like Industry Leaders" Balmer is putting on the Microsoft pig hasn't changed it's DNA. Microsoft is, and always will be, a monopolist protecting its Windows and Office franchise. At any and all costs.
(Full disclosure: Never used Linux in my life. Nor Open Office. Use MS products daily. Don't "hate" Microsoft.
But I can tell a person/company lacking morals and character when I see one. And I know a doomed product when I see one.)
there should be plenty of these things going cheap soon when people realise just how borked they are with the default software...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Wow. It's been awhile since I laughed out loud when reading anything. The review is brilliant - it truly tears Microsoft a "new one". I know /. readers don't normally actually read the articles, but this one is worth the time.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Why in this day an age just not make it a USB-mass storage device and have the user drag and drop the files thay want to transfer to/from the device?
FRA: STFU GTFO
Or how about "The corners (meticulously selected down from hundreds of minutely different corners)"? Only marketroids write like that! What's so special about selecting the "best" radius for rounded corners? To write so emphatically on the corners right on the second paragraph seems to me like he had to strain to find anything positive to say.
How about the iRiver IHP series? The Cowon A2? The Apple iPod? Would you not comment on those first efforts? They're quite good. Seems like MS (and Creative?) is the only one getting it wrong...
It was obviously never intended to be an iPod killer
Then why close down MSNMusic and create a new Zune-only store, and shit on your PlaysForSure partners? If they were just throwing out a first effort, why go through all that trouble and pissing off of partners?
The MTP driver in Windows Media Player 11 does implement uploading files from device to PC. Plus, drag-and-drop through the shell extension is still there and MTP devices still don't require a 3rd-party driver install.
Have I missed any hard drive functions you would want to have in a "it-just-works" media player?
If you really want an MSC-based media player (and don't care much about DRM support), you can still find them. You might have to look online, though, but they're out there. I know that iriver still makes a few MSC media players. In fact, the only MTP-only device they make is the Clix, which is, by many accounts, one of the best, if not the best, MTP-based media player on the market right now.
"There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience."
Gone in six months? That must be snark and not a prediction. We own one Zune and are thinking of buying a second one by the end of the year. As an actual customer, I went through every one of the reviewer's negative points and showed the other side of the story here: http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20061126/3987/
I dont know about their new stuff, but my old Archos 20GB Jukebox was like that. Just mounted as another drive, let you organize stuff however you wanted with a standard directory structure, it was great.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Frankly, I don't think the column was aimed at consumers. It was a wholesale rant aimed at Microsoft.
The article is fine, if you understand the author. Andy Inhatko is a long-time Mac columnist, and not only that, he has a long history of starting an article with a premise and writing an article that progressively becomes more and more (intentionally) outrageous and hilarious. I love Andy's articles because of the way he whips them up into barely controlled rants of inspired free association with towering hyperbole with frequent references to pop culture and science fiction mixed in. I always look forward to the high entertainment value of his articles.
But once you know that, you also know that it is a mistake to compare an Inhatko review with, for example, a Walt Mossberg (WSJ).
This review was completely in character. By definition, it is also not an objective review.
It supports ogg, and some of the higher end models also support FLAC. Personally, I ended up getting a PDA for Ogg + Audible support. It of course does many other things, so I'm pretty happy.
here's another one.
They're trying to be quirky or something, like MTV station promos.
fast, quit & enter a new field before you are, well, probably fired or maybe demoted.
Ballmer gave you the reins to run or hang by. Too bad you gave in to every limitation, every division of MS & RIAA demand.
Oh well. Experience is the best teacher.
So, do you have links to the blind A/B tests that these "audiophiles" have done to indicate the Creative's sound is so much better?
And wouldn't an audio pro already have a pro recording unit that does 24 bit/96kHz recording, and has real inputs like XLR? Why would a pro record at 44.1kHz/16 bit?
I work with quite a few audio pros, and have never seen them using a Creative device.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I'm glad you agree that the article was not aimed at consumers. It was a hit piece by a well-known, biased mac promoter.
It's hard to deduce what causes resistence to a meme, but it's easier to measure that there is a high or low resistence.
y =zune_meme_rerun
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entr
Apple is well regarded by musicians because of their Logic and Garage Band tools. Imagine if Apple offered (as part of the song creation workflow) an iTunes "upload space" to anyone for $X per year and Y% of sales. If $X per year was low enough for weekend bands to participate, they'd be promoting iTunes purchases at their gigs in bars and bookstores rather than hauling suitcases of burned CD's to each gig! If the Y% of sales was signigicantly under the 90% that most record labels take from bands, then even serious bands would consider Apple to be financially attractive.
As cool or frightening as this sounds though, Apple doesn't have this option because of their relationship with Apple Records. The agreements aren't fully public, but its believed that Apple Records still holds non-compete contracts with Apple (the computer company) in aspects of the music industry that overlap with what a music label does. Have you noticed that Apple avoids use of the Apple trademark in word form on their iPods in favor of the bitten fruit icon? That was an issue in one of the latest Apple vs Apple lawsuits.
Microsoft has this "label competitor" option so they just need to throw out enough money to create a Microsoft music marketplace. In that case, no matter what deals they may have made with the major labels to get there, they can usurp the market itself by offering the "Microsoft" branded music label. That would be pretty nasty for Microsoft to partner with the market's powerhouses, then turn around, undercut, and steal their former partners' markets.
Hmmm, perhaps Paul, Yoko, Dhani and Ringo should be offered positions on Apple's board of directors instead.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!! Oh god, please. Someone please mod that up Funny. You are too sharp, man. Just saw that vid, then saw your comment. Too funny.
But I suspect that the Zune's project manager will not "get off" as easily as Bob's did. After all, he isn't blonde with big tits and a short skirt. The same cannot be said of Bob's project manager, one Melinda French, n/k/a Melinda Gates.
"I have years of files integrated into WMP"
The WMA format was designed with one goal, to lock you into WMP.
It was a very obvious trap but you fell for it.
Don't expect any sympathy...
No sig today...
Woman: Would you like to buy some Itchy and Scratchy Money?
Homer: What's that?
Woman: Well it's money that's made just for the park. It works just
like regular money, but it's, er..."fun".
Bart: Do it, Dad.
Homer: Well, OK, if it's fun...let's see, uh...I'll take $1100 worth.
[he walks in, sees all the signs: "No I&S Money", "We Don't Take
Itchy and Scratchy Money", etc.]
Aw!
-- So much for fun, "Itchy and Scratchy Land"
That's not just bad marketing, it's a marketing showstopper.I couldn't agree with you more. The Zune will be dead as soon as the cool kids start teasing the un-cool kids about their iSquirts. I doubt that even Microsoft's marketing team could make "iSquirt" sound cool.
You should have looked at the Creative Zen Vison M or the Creative Zen Vision W. Both support Audible and PlayForSure.
But the best thing about these two players is their Divx and Xvid support. No need to re-convert video, like the Zune or Ipod.
From your own spew; "why doesn't the iPod use standard headphone jacks?".
You claim to own an iPod, but yet you make a statement that is complete rubbish. To answer your question, the iPod "does" use a standard headphone jack. So are you lying about owning one?
People like you scare me. You're willing to wade in shit, just because it's not Apple. Being blind is one thing, recognizing a good product is another. Fortunately the iPod is the rare exception that quality beat out cheap mediocricy, something MS is trying to force back upon the market. MS's player is deserving of a quick death, nothing more, nothing less. The iPod already has good competion from other players, which are also a much better alternative to the Zune.
BTW, that cheap-bloated-FM tuner fits the Zune nicely.
Easy solution: do it but don't feel guilty about it. Just realize that you're copying bits, and copying bits doesn't hurt anyone. If you want to pay the authors, mail them a check for a dollar; they'll probably get more out of the deal that way anyway.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
"Frankly, I found the 1G iPod hard to use with my PC since Apple didn't support Windows at the time. Claiming that the 1G Pod was hard to use would be inaccurate, however."
.DLL to make it work on windows something that has nothing to do with ease of use? Seriously? That's really a pretty dumb thing to say.
So you're saying that a Microsoft product that doesn't install properly on Windows and requires a FAQ that includes instructions on how to reinstall a
As to your example of iTunes not working with Windows, this the equivalent of claiming Apple's OS X is hard to use because it didn't install on your PC. Never mind that Apple told you that it wouldn't, you're going to try to prove your point no matter how dumb it makes you sound.
Now, lets look at facts here:
Zune software Compatibility:
Windows 2000 - No
Windows XP - Yes, although apparently the installation fails on many PCs
Windows Vista - No
Macintosh (any version) - No
iTunes software compatibility
Windows 2000 - Yes
Windows XP - Yes
Windows Vista - Yes
Macintosh (OS X) - Yes
Take off your "I need to be right" blinders and look at the reality here. How can Apple code better software for Windows than Microsoft? That's a much better question.
A small registry hack so one can copy data off the Zune
http://www.zunehack.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7
"you could also argue that the Zune's sound quality and battery life are diminished if the software fails to install. "
.DLL incompatibility, you'll marvel at how quiet it is, and the battery life will be amazing.
Not really. If you don't load the Zune software, you don't have to deal with a
You know, this may be a new marketing angle for Microsoft..."Buy the Zune, don't load the software, maximize your pleasure!"
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Since you are such a big fan of Audible.com the iPod will do it with no problems. I can understand that you are tied WMP, out of choice, and I applaud trying to support the alternative media players, but given the issues you have had I wonder whether it would have been easier to go with the iPod.
I am an iPod owner, so I am biased, but the truth is in terms of formats supported and ease of use it still has a lot going for it. One example, the video support is MP4, which is an industry standard and therefore you aren't limited to the business decisions of Microsoft. The only time the iPod really limits you is if you start buying from the iTunes store, but that is the issue buying any DRM infested file.
I will say I get kinda fed up seeing everyone using iPods, since it is saying something about the sorry state of the media player market, which seems to be influenced by the bully boy antics of the music industry and their dependency of Microsoft's WMA and WMV, since WMP supports few other formats.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I think iTunes has one major problem... it makes it really difficult to add already ripped songs to your library. They made it so hard that one assumes it was on purpose. And it doesn't let you add songs to your iPod until the song is part of your library. That's really a killer.
That said...
iTunes is a superior way to organize and tag your music properly. And Apple is nice enough to give it away so that you can take advantage of it even if you don't want to give Apple a dime.
I overall like iTunes, but when I want to add things to my iPod in a hurry, I use the Anapod manager. It lets you treat an iPod like a hard drive and it takes care of changing the songs to the proper format and hides the complexity. It's a nice piece of software (I'll let you google for it yourself).
Which brings me to my last point... the iPod, love it or hate it, has so much 3rd party support that even if MS hadn't shot itself in the foot with the DRM nonsense and Microsoft Bux it would have a hard time gaining traction. As it is, the Zune will only be useful once 3rd parties figure it out and have software that lets you treat the Zune like a hard drive. I'm aware of some registry hacks right now, but they aren't terribly elegant. Without 3rd party support, I'd be surprised to see the Zune survive past next spring.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
When Microsoft does the postmortem after Zune I is officially pronounced dead, it will be painfully obvious that paying the Universal "ransom" was a gigantic screw-up. Here's what I want to know, Microsoft: How do you put that genie back in the bottle without having a bunch of highly pissed-off Universalites?
"I love the color brown. "
I think MS calls this particular shade "Soviet Brown".
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Too old? Nope, it's not an age thing. It's all about an advertising agency making shedloads of money out of Microsoft. I just wonder if Gates and Ballmer have actually seen it yet...:-)
If MS has one redeeming characteristic, it's persistance. Buying dot.zero is foolishness. This doesn't reflect much care for the customer but that's in intact reflection of the founder's narcisism. It's a kind of boomer disease. This cynicism has paid pretty well - but when I'm using Excel, I'm always remebering Multiplan (ouch). But, the only thing worse than a world WITH Microsoft would be a world WITHOUT. I love the idea of Linux and Open Office, etc - but waitaminute! Without Bill, there'd be nothing to react against, no standard GUI to imitate. Oh!, and no mass market. And don't get me started on Apple, the most proprietary-minded company on the planet... Zune won't be gone in six months, but next year's Zune may be unrecognizable.
Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people!
zune does not play VBR MP3 files...!!
aaargh!!!
j
I have a Memorex POS with this U3 crap on it, and which doesn't have an uninstall option at all. Worse, it insists on mounting a U3 virtual CD, which also needs to be dismounted to "correctly" removed the drive.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Silly question, but what does FDISK do (from the command line, and you may have to get creative) to these thumbdrives?
One more thing you might try if that fails - burn the new SuSE Linux Desktop 10.1 to DVD (get the boot DVD iso) and boot your machine off that, then pop in the thumbdrive - see if maybe something in YAST will let you remove the existing low-level partitions and then make it a single FAT32 partition.
I agree with you - that auto-run software is the first thing I avoid when looking at new flash drives.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I returned that and bought an iRiver Clix.
In addition to all the other good things you say about it, the iRiver Clix supports a bigger range of audio file formats, including ogg.
LOVFL?? My first guess is laugh out freakin loud. If that's correct, this has to be one of the stupidest acronyms I've encountered. I mean "lol" is already annoying because it makes you move a single finger to type both of the letters one after another (or adopt a non-standard fingering for your loling). But why would you add in a fv in there?? Is this like Internet twister or something?
LOFVOL!
If you go to U3 there's an uninstaller available.
Ditto. And as mentioned above, using "audiophile" and "portable music player" in the same sentence is a bit absurd. Too many of us listen to music on such devices on the street, in a car, on the subway, at the gym, or at any number of other places where the ambient noise levels are going to drown out any perceived "superiority" in sound quality anyway.
So unless you're going to record totally loseless and listen with $300 headphones in a quiet room... don't bother.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I would say the same to you. The reality is that an install failure has nothing to do with "ease of use" since "use" doesn't exist yet. It's like saying that a car is slow because the battery is dead.
When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Thank you, Mr. Jones.
You tagged a feature which I had half-forgotten to look for.
Ever since I first grabbed a cheap iPod some time ago, I decided I was no fan of synchronization software. I then embarked upon a massive investigation of cheaper players to see what uses SynchWare and what dispenses with it. My rule of thumb: I'll trade brute capacity any day for the flexibility to just toss stuff onto the player. If it can't figure out for itself what's on the drive, I don't want it.
I saw all the negative press... and somehow missed the that no mention was made of the transfer software. Therefore, Zune is now officially marked a *complete* disaster.
I'm starting to discovere I prefer a spread of smaller players rather than some monster 30+ gig monstrosity. If anyone else thinks as I do, I'll elaborate.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You have to understand that Zune is not really a product. It's an experiment in tight DRM. It's more than likely that MS's kickback is part of an underwriting quid pro quo from the music industry who may have helped fund and develop it. Six months? That will be enough for MS to collect the DRM data they need to take back to the music industry and to help themselves shape future DRM enhancements in Vista and Xbox. I'd write something more, but it's just that simple.
Microsoft's strategy is to make Apple complete underestimate them as competition by releasing the lamest product of the year to much fanfare. No, I don't really believe that. But about a year or so from now, I expect to hear about the Zune again. On a Friday broadcast of the 'Daily Gizwiz'.
[Insert pithy quote here]
But downloading illegal copies of music and sending the band $5 screws the recording engineers, the janitors who clean the studio, the cover artists, and so on.
...), build team, 2 testing teams, a couple people from our research division, and so on. If, at the end of the year, nobody bought any copies but they sent me lots of $5 bills, I'd be doing OK, but the company would go bust and you'd never see version N+1.
If your favorite small-time band really doesn't need these people, then why did they sign contracts with the RIAA? They could record in the garage and save MP3 files on their myspace account, right?
I'm a programmer. If you steal a copy of my program and send me $5, I'm better off in the short term, but the program wouldn't be where it is without the company's computing hardware (both on my desk and the servers in the racks), facilities (rent, HVAC, water,
The thing about the Zune not supporting podcasts reminds me of the newer versions of MSN Messenger. The program has a "Show what I'm listening to" feature. If you're to believe the Preferences box, it apparently only shows what you're playing in Windows Media Player. Obviously, a lot of kids these days are using iTunes and it has to support that too. I think in both instances, Microsoft tries to just deny Apple's success by removing any hard references to them. In the case of the podcast, Apple's very product name is present in the title, so by acknowledging this, Microsoft will also be acknowledging Apple's complete ownership of the digital music market. While I can understand their reasoning, I'd much sooner they gracefully admitted their inferiority (in the context of the battle for portable music players) and let me play my podcasts, than flat-out refuse to recognise their (and Apple's) contribution.
Indeed, the fact that some MP3 players try to even obscure the files (MY files) that I put on them made me return more than one... For example the Apple Ipod. Nice player but it drove me nuts. Although I could drag and drop files to it and use it as a nice 30GB external disk, these files would not be recognized by the player itself! I could not read text files, I could not play drm-free mp3's, I could not see jpg's, I could not play mp4 videos (MY VIDEOS, not drm'd ones). The only way for this silly device to see them was to import then into itunes, which would simply scramble the file names and put the files in a hidden folder, and then I could not transfer the files to another computer in an easy way. What a stupid device. These are MY FILES and I want to use the device MY WAY. So after 6 days I simply returned the Ipod to the place I bought it (I assume at a loss to apple...). Oh, well... sad devices, indeed!
Personally I bought a bog standard generic MP3 player from "Dick Smiths" (electronics store) for half the price of an IPod, twice the storage space, user changeable battery, no software lockin (standard USB drive), easy to use. can't understand people buying any device with these lockins, I assume it comes down to ignorance and buying into the marketing/fashion hype.
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
While Andy Ihnatko is a decent tech journalist, folks should keep in mind that Andy is extremely pro-Apple, pro-Mac. Given that, you may not be surprised to learn that Andy doesn't like the Zune. But then again, neither did the folks at ArsTechnica.
Look -
If you can't tell the difference between "it's" and "its", or if you have trouble with "lose" and "loose", you are immediately broadcasting to the entire world that you're too fucking stupid for your opinions to be of any use to anyone.
Stop what you're doing right now and either take the 30 seconds to learn how to tell "it's" from "its", or throw your keyboard away and find some way to live your life without writing anything in English. Or better yet, kill yourself.
I'm sick of your crappy spelling hurting my brain.
This is just like VHS vs Beta. Only when people tried to argue that Beta was technically better than VHS, they were actually right.
I don't therefore I'm not.
I've been watching the ranking of the black Zune on Amazon's Bestsellers list and it has been dropping like a stone since its introduction. I first saw it in the top 30, then in the top 40, top 50 and now it is down to #93. This doesn't bode well for a new product. If it was really good, it would be climbing up into the top 10. Right now there are 5 iPods in the top 10 list and iPods take up positions 1, 2 and 3. There are three other non-iPod mp3 players in the top 25. At this rate, the Zune will fall from the top 100 list soon.
As I stood in line at EB Games, waiting for my chance to buy a Wii (which I never got, they only had three), I saw a Zune on display with a little poster above it. The poster had some drunk-looking ugly bitch with the caption "Welcome to the social." Seriously, what? What does that mean? What message am I supposed to derive from that? Apple's marketing worked well because it stylishly bludgeoned you over the head with the device's purpose, but Microsoft isn't going to sell shit with a stupid, vague, pretentious phrase and a drunk bitch.
When we go to an antiwar protest, we always play "Spot The Fed" as we look for the inevitable FBI/Homeland Security plant in the crowd.
Well, I think we need to play this game here on Slashdot!
Who here is the RIAA plant?
Who here is the Microsoft plant?
You *know* they are here! Just like we knew, before we actually confirmed it, that there were Feds at the protests.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Um, if you wanted an HP ipac, why didn't you buy an HP ipac? You bought a music player and expected to read random files on it? Forget the hardware issues with letting people drag and drop music willie-nillie all over a music player and expect it to work perfectly, but expecting it to let you display random documents doesn't make any sense. We are on our second ipac. They cost $700 a piece (at least, might have been euros...) and they crash all of the time, but you can move any old files you want back and forth to it. You can even edit them.
People who think they should be able to drag and drop their music completely miss the point that player's desktop software is adding meta data that is making your life as a mobile music listener much more pleasant. Knowing that the files will always be just so on the player makes the hardware designerss lives much much easier so that they can concentrate on more important interface issues. Basic things like pre-adjusted volume, equalizer settings, favorite lists, bookmarking, album song order... forget album covers and silly stuff like that, I can't imagine what using a player that was forced to treat the music as a random pile would be like. Ick.
I think Andy is a little more than a Apple advocate but more important he's a tech journalist that's been on the scene for over twenty years, reviewing high tech products and more, he uses them. A savvy and experienced person like him had to go to a MS help page to look up a problem he was having with a brand new unit and the answer said to go off and write a .dll as the fix. Reminds me of antique auto manuals that give instructions for rebuilding engines. I guess if you had one of the few cars around you had to learn how to fix them, like in the '70s, computer manuals often had long lessons on digital logic and pages of ttl schematics. I thought those days of bare knuckle computer experiences were gone but with the Retro Zune MS has recreated the feeling of the past. I think I know what multimedia content will be popular on a Lune. Lost and Screwed.
"Squirt?" I cringe and think of the sticky blue dress every time I hear that awful name but actually using it would even be worse because the quoted speed is slow. You'll only be able to squirt to one unit at a time and it almost takes as long to squirt a song as it does to play the song. As much as you'd like to squirt a room full of people you can't. Looking at it this way you'd be better off letting your friend plug into you player to hear the song. At least they would be able to hear the song right away. I do this all the time and it's sociable as well. "You like? I'll email it to you."
MOST IMPORTANT- MS does not believe their customers create anything. They are consumers. All the creators that MS is concerned about already have lawyers and have already been asked their opinions. Yours don't count, now get your credit card out, bend over and get back into line. This it the point you put Balmer and squirt together.
If I created my own content (which I do) and I used the Lune I could not even get my songs on it much less use the squirt to distribute my content. The squirt function is fixed not to recognize free content. Three plays and gone is not my agreement, wonder what focus group thought that one up?
This device should die as an example to manufacturers that we are not the sheep they expect us to be.
This will make them incredibly cheap, thus making it a prime hacker target which in turn gives us with the desire a really cool item.
So it's a great *potential* hacker toy. Andy's review was spot-on for regular readers. Hopefully you'll be right about its suitability as a cool device for hackers to play with. So if I read your message correctly, you generally like it when products get panned, because that means they'll ultimately become fodder for hacking.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Foobar 2000 is alright, though the interface is an eyesore.
if you want to invest the time, you can fiddle with it and make it look good and there's a small community of people that do. I like it because I can hide the player in the background completely because I listen to music, not stare at it playing, I happen to not give a shit what the player looks like since I hardly look at it but clearly that's not the case for many. I've also made use of global hot keys so i can do most things i'd need to, start stop next etc. w/o bringing up the interface. With the low-grade graphics the program appears to use under 10,000 K of my system memory even with the interface being rendered while I change tracks (the most memory intensive action I could think of.) with normal playback and a hidden interface that usage drops by 75%. The utilities for editing tags and finals are also easily the best I've ever encountered, makes changing all that information much faster than in winamp or in windows or what have you.
Just wanted to recommend one of my favorite apps.
>"Since you are such a big fan of Audible.com" Did anyone else notice he has realized Audible.com sucks?
You have just received the Amish virus. Since we have no electricity or computers, you are on the honor system.
Andy Ihnatko also writes the backpage of Macworld (according to his website http://www.cwob.com/ footer) Myself, I love my Zune. (Disclaimer: I am a contributer to zunes.com)
Even the Xbox 360 is hyped out of control. It barely sold 7 million units in a year--it was actually outsold by the five year old PlayStation 2, which sold 11 million units in the same time period.
Microsoft is fooling itself; it's time for the company to get real and start competing, because its empire is declining. Remember that Apple was also making craploads of cash deep into the late Sculley Era, when it was obvious that the company was about to crash. Microsoft has shadowed Apple's brush with death, making the exact same set of moves exactly ten years after Apple.
10 Ways Microsoft can Salvage their iPod Killer
10 iPod vs Zune Myths
10 More Myths of Zune Why Microsoft Can't Compete With iTunes
Strike 3: Why Zune will Bomb this Winter
The Two Faced Monster Inside Zune
Both Apple *and* MS would love for you to believe that their codecs can sound twice as good as mp3 at half the bit rate, but unfortunately for them it just isn't true and that double-blind listening test proved it some time ago.
(Apple's AAC fares a bit better, but not a whole lot.)
FYI, for lots of people confused by this: First, the AAC is NOT by apple. It stands for Advanced Audio Coding. Not 'apple's audio codec.'
The AAC format was developed by the same people who created the mp3. It was engineered to be the 'next' mp3, and IS technically superior in all aspects. The designed it to be that way. (Duh.) Better quality at a lower bitrate = smaller files. Read the Fraunhofer's page about it (above link). Here are some highlights:
"What is MPEG-2 AAC?
MPEG-2 AAC is the consequent continuation of the truly successful coding method ISO/MPEG Audio Layer-3 developed in Erlangen."
"Even though the basic structure of this coding method hardly differs from the ones of its predecessors, a closer look into the details (see Fig. 2) does reveal some new aspects worth paying attention to. The crucial differences between MPEG-2 AAC and its predecessor ISO/MPEG Audio Layer-3 are shown as follows:
* Filter bank: in contrast to the hybrid filter bank of ISO/MPEG Audio Layer-3 - chosen for reasons of compatibility but displaying certain structural weaknesses - MPEG-2 AAC uses a plain Modified Discrete Cosine Transform (MDCT). Together with the increased window length (1024 instead of 576 spectral lines per transform) the MDCT outperforms the filter banks of previous coding methods.
* Temporal Noise Shaping (TNS): A true novelty in the area of time/frequency coding schemes. It shapes the distribution of quantization noise in time by prediction in the frequency domain. In particular voice signals experience considerable improvement through TNS.
* Prediction: A technique commonly established in the area of speech coding systems. It benefits from the fact that certain types of audio signals are easy to predict.
* Quantization: by allowing finer control of quantization resolution, the given bit rate can be used more efficiently.
* Bit-stream format: the information to be transmitted undergoes entropy coding in order to keep redundancy as low as possible. The optimization of these coding methods together with a flexible bit-stream structure has made further improvement of the coding efficiency possible."
"Funny, I've read this comment before"
When people you know and strangers are telling you the same thing, it's time to listen.
I recently accidentally deleted an entire hard drive with approximately 12,000 mp3s on it. After the crying, gnashing of teeth, and several small broken items near my desk, I began the laborious process of downloading the mp3s I had lost.
...hmmm.....
Now the bulk of my mp3 collection was from my actual CD collection (I have over 500 cds, and most have at least 12 tracks), but I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and rip every single one again.
I mean, if I was going to do that, I'd pick OGG or something more sensible....
Nah, I'll just finish these downloads and be golden again.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I want an mp3 player with wireless that doesn't suck! I'll get a PDA! You know....like a PocketPC
Firefox Power http://firefoxpower.blogspot.com/
Thanks for this story, honestly. When I first read about the Zune I was pretty hyped (nicer screen, WiFi, large storage, etc) and wanted one over an iPod. Thankfully my wife bought me an iPod before the Zune launched, and after reading the review I'm happier than ever about it.
It could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
At the moment I own four 2Gb MP3/MP4 players (MP4 features present, but crap and unused). I pick up whichever has what I feel like listenning to that day on it. Total cost for all 4 (and a few extra SD cards for them for when I'm going intercontinental)? Significantly under $100.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
I'm sure to a pro like yourself or an audiophile the older digital kit sounded bad (though perhaps "garbage" is a bit strong?) but to a casual music listener like myself they were perfectly satisfactory. Until 2 years ago I had a 1988 Sony CD player with bog standard 16 bit DAC (not oversampling) and to my ears I couldn't tell the difference between it and a 2003 almost top of the range Sony DVD/SACD/CD player which I also own.
Anyway , remember that before CD came along the consumer definition of "high quality" was an analogue tape deck with HX-Pro. Compared to that even a 14 bit straight-out-the-lab early 80s CD player sounded like perfection.
Nuff said!
My Cruzer Micro didn't have the uninstall option in the U3 Launchpad software. However, there is an excellent uninstaller on the SanDisk website:1 415
http://www.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=
The uninstaller is so good it almost makes up for that U3 crapware. Almost. If we now replaced the giant orange LCD light with a much smaller and less intrusive one, it would be perfect!
A) Create new device. Pay a media company royalties for rights to have music on it. Deal restricts functions of device severely.
B) Sales of device flop badly. Tell media company: See, it failed because of the restrictions you put on it. Media company(s) agree not to restrict future devices, ever.
C) New device has no DRM inflicted by media companies. Only DRM owned by MS and its licenses. Innovation protected for MS.
D) New device has features that others cannot match because they're afraid of the media companies. Everyone else gets sued.
Why I buy from HMV (on 333 Yonge in Toronto):
They both have their strengths and weaknesses, but I will note this: iTunes blows away your "run of the mill" music store based on sheer laziness factor. You need a music store that has lots of extras to beat out the experience of shopping from your living room. Kinda like movie theatres vs. home movies.
-Stu