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How Microsoft Can Make Zune a Success

Posted by Zonk on from the long-time-in-coming dept.

jcatcw writes "Zune had potential, but 5 months in it barely gets passing grades. According to the article, there are five things Microsoft must change: 1) The built-in Wi-Fi, aka 'the social,' was a bad idea. 2) Tell newbies what it can do. 3) Create a low-end, flash-based player. 4) Push subscriptions. 5) Make it sexy. A Microsoft representative said, about the wireless concept: 'We felt we were addressing the social aspect of music, and the research we've done has shown that people understand the concept that wireless enables sharing ... but the tagline, while provocative, hasn't meant a lot to consumers.'"

9 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Shitty Grammar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It's the usual shitty grammar in the story summary. "5 months in it barely get passing grades"? Who wrote that, a five year old or a dune coon who's just now learning English? Who edited it and failed to notice this? Probably the same douchebag who posted a story about "Micorsoft" the other day.

  2. Microsoft iPod video by a_ghostwheel · · Score: 2, Informative

    There is a video on Youtube about building "Microsoft iPod". It is pretty much sums up why MS should not even be in music player business.

  3. The "Microsoft iPod" brought to you by Microsoft. by Kadin2048 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The best part about that movie is that it was actually made by Microsoft. It was a sort of self-critique, prior to Zune, of "this is how we shouldn't do it."

    That's what really does it for me -- they know how mediocre an organization they are, but yet they can't seem to stop being lame.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  4. Re:Do like they do with everything else... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Nope, PowerPoint was an acquisition from Forethought and was originally released only for Mac.

  5. Re:Do like they do with everything else... by lpcustom · · Score: 4, Informative

    PowerPoint was developed by a company called Forethought. The company and the product were purchased by Microsoft in 1987 for 14 million bucks.

    --
    Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
  6. Re:Do like they do with everything else... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I dare you to name five.

    I'm just going to name ONE, but it's a doozy.

    XMLHttpRequest

    The next time you're jerking off to some fancy Ajax Google application I hope the realization that they did not invent it, and, in fact lifted it from microsoft doesn't cause you to go limp.

  7. Re:Do like they do with everything else... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Word? Based on WordPerfect. Excel? Lotus. The question was produce an example of a product that Microsoft didn't buy and re-brand, but instead developed in-house. Word took a lot of ideas from WordPerfect (although not some of the best ones, sadly), but was definitely developed in house based largely on Bravo from PARC. The same of Excel, which sadly copied Lotus 1-2-3 (which, itself, copied VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet I used), rather than the far superior Lotus Improv.

    Powerpoint I'll give you. Which is such a shame, because PowerPoint actually is one of the few things on the list that was bought by Mircosoft (and was a Mac-only application at the time) and re-branded.

    The NT Kernel couldn't have existed without UNIX having done all the work ahead of time. Hahahaha! Do you know even the slightest thing about kernel design (even at the broad-overview undergrad level)? NT and UNIX have almost nothing in common. If you'd said VMS, you might have had some credibility, since a lot of NT is 'inspired by' VMS (and no, it wasn't a copy, it was simply the same person, Dave Cutler, did a lot of the design for both). And no, VMS didn't copy UNIX either, they both date from the same era.

    If you actually want to learn something, instead of just spouting uninformed anti-Microsoft rhetoric, I suggest you read Andy Tanenbaum's excellent Modern Operating Systems, which covers UNIX/Linux and NT in some detail, highlighting their similarities and differences in both philosophy and implementation.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  8. Re:A success? by cmacb · · Score: 2, Informative

    Done:

    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2059039,00.as p

  9. Re:Do like they do with everything else... by douceur · · Score: 2, Informative

    Geez, ad hominem attacks really derogate your argument. Honestly, anything you might have said that had any credibility is lost to me now. I imagine you'll reply with some sort of "I don't care what you think" retort, but really... How hard is to debate with legitimate arguments?