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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.
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.
At least with an Apple you can use it as a disk drive and use third party software to load it. People forget so fast that the first PC compatible iPods did not use iTunes but used Musicmatch. With the Zune you can't even mount it as a drive.
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
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
The software didn't install? Big deal!
Odds on you're a Windows user. Not flaming but that is a big deal to the average user.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
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.
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!
On the planet where I come from, this would be a big deal.
It's utterly amazing, amazing... how much Microsoft's shit has made people, often unknowingly, lower their standards.
And MS fanbois in this thread think it's unfair to beat up on Microsoft. What a bunch of bullshit. If the damn product won't install on your own computer, when the same manufacturer makes the opearting system on both machines, that's beyond bad.
It's a shame some of these youngsters weren't into computers back when they actually worked properly. When operating systems didn't need to be rebooted at random or every time you updated something, when products you bought actually lasted a little while or didn't cause you tremendous grief just to get them working. Thanks Microsoft!
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?
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.
iTunes is actually good software. Apple's music store is well-implemented. DRM is evil, but Apple does a pretty good job hiding it from you. So most people don't need or want alternatives to the Apple stuff.
In the reviewer's opinion, the MS software, music store, and DRM issues are so bad that the ability to use alternatives would be a real selling point. At the end of the day, why would anyone spend $300 on a Zune when they could spend the same $300 on a iPod and feel like they are getting a vastly superior experience on their Windows box?
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?
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!
I think the ad is saying that Microsoft are buying batteries from Sony...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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
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.
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
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.)
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.