How Microsoft Can Make Zune a Success

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.'"

Comments

Do like they do with everything else...

[Foofoobar]

Buy the leading competitor, slap a Microsoft sticker on it and call it 'innovation'?

Zune Frustrations, 1.3, et al

[aapold]

I have a zune, had it for some time now. I do like it, i really do. But it is very frustrating too.

First off, there has been a skipping issue on some units (mine included), a workaroudn for it meant leaving display on 100% of the time, which did wonders for the battery. Plus, at times navigating in its menus, while they were laid out, it would just lag behind your clicks and presses, then suddenly catch up and do everything you did in frustration.

Okay, they had a patch in the works for this, firmware 1.3. Rumor had it would be out yesterday.. it actually did make it out today. But even the execution of this shows carelessness...

For example. the www.zune.net website was down 24 hours tuesday for maintenance. Okay, I understand sometimes you gotta do that, but you're telling me they couldn't put up a mirror? All attempts to do stuff on that day produced an error, and when it did, it would direct you to www.zune.net/support. which didn't come up. You didnt' get the maintenance message even unless you went to www.zune.net (even zune.net failed to do this).

Okay, the patch came out next day, the site's back up. It tells me I have an update. Says downloading... then returns an error message of "unable to update sync settings at this time". calling zune support they have me update the zune software. Same. They have me install zune software on another machine. Same. I told them from the start that I've seen others posting about this on some zune boards. uh-huh. Since I'd redone zune software from their own website, the guy now wants me to instead reinstall it from the original CD, which is lying somewhere in a box in a garage. Most drivers and software should like be obselete by the time you get them, but this is apparently their standard procedure, never mind how that is going to fix what isn't coming through from their website.

I'm still trying to get 1.3 on my zune now, some 10 hours after first trying. Oh, and btw, the patch notes they have for the 1.3 are verbatim copied from the patch notes from 1.2, including the note about how this includes everything from 1.1 and earlier. (as if 1.2 is not included). Again, its like how much care and effort are they putting into this.

Oh, but Zune has exciting things on the way, they announced a pink zune. That will get their cool factor going, no doubt.

Given what microsoft did in the past to people who adopted their tech (playsforsure), I have a real uneasy feeling that they'll release some new hardware that abandon the current zune.

I want to like this thing, I really do. But they make it so hard. I *do* like the zune pass, it makes most of the frustrations worth it for me, given that I'd downloaded what would have been about $6000-$7000 worth of songs directly if I'd bought them. I like not caring which version of a song I get. I like the look and feel of the player. But they find a way to kill it. Its like Isaiah Thomas is running the Zune team. I know J Allard is supposed to be in charge of it now, but is it really his main focus? I haven't seen any drastic changes since they put him back in charge of it, and quite honestly in his shoes I'd be wanting to go on to other things by now anyway.

That's pretty much how I feel about it at this time...

the real way to instant zune 2.0 success?

[*weasel]

1. fix the wireless.

Seriously, that's it.
There are some details involved, so I'll be more specific:

add wireless shopping over wifi.
allow wireless transfer of any data file. (music/pics/vids/arbitrary data)
don't add DRM to media that didn't start with it. (seriously: how dumb was that?)
allow wireless syncing and reverse syncing. (moving tunes from the Zune to the PC)
allow the playback of wireless media that isn't done copying (just buffer it up and let it rip).
allow wireless transfers in the background. (while listening to something else, while doing something else, etc)

Do that, and you actually deliver an experience that the iPod doesn't.
The experience the Zune promised but failed at so horribly that it might as well not exist.

oh and it'd be nice if the Zune would mount as a generic USB volume, so it could be used to ferry about and wirelessly share arbitrary data files.