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Details of Next Gen Zune Surface
KMG writes "Zune Scene has got a scoop about the next generation Microsoft Zune. There will be two new models; a flash memory based and a hard drive based. Zune with HDD will be thinner and have larger storage capacity while the flash based will feature Wi-fi, video playback. So will we see another try from Microsoft to beat Apple's iPod or it will be another vain attempt from the Redmond guys."
Bring it on I say. MS has shown that they can learn from their mistakes. The difference between the Xbox and 360 being a prime example. MS has the money to burn to keep making mistakes and learning from them. If that means they *eventually* make an iPod killer, so be it. The market needs more competing products, not less.
Why is every new mp3 player hyped as the next "iPod killer" by every hack blog writer and fanboy? Why can't they coexist peacfully? Afterall, more choice is good for the consumer, right?
Sure my flash drive can stand 1000 Gs, but since I can't even stand 10, I doubt I'll be taking advantage of that feature.
With enough retries, Microsoft usually gets it about right and succeeds in the end. (Deep pockets are a huge advantage). But my crystal ball says portable music will increasingly just be an expected feature of other devices, mainly cell phones. I think Apple may have milked the standalone music player fad dry by the time Microsoft gets out a good product.
Microsoft Zune may not be quite up to the iPod standard but it's getting there. One of the good things about having microsoft join the mp3 player wars is that it will make iPod come out with better updates to their ipod (the 5.5gen ipod was a little weak in the upgrade features). That and with the music copyprotecting systems getting lifted off itunes there is going to be some big changes happening with mp3 players in the future. The competition will make both of their products better.
I don't really think Zune will stand up to the iPod for a few generations of the device, even if that. But lets pretend that they do come out with a competitive alternative...will it create a price war between MS and Apple? Judging from the pricing of PC's vs Macs I'd say no, it might be a $50-100 drop in prices but there is something about the iPod, call it social acceptance or prestige of owning one, its kind of a status symbol to own an iPod. Unless Zune can get to that level as whatever you want to call it they won't be much of a competitor. Just look at how many other MP3 players are out on the market, but the first one anyone will mention is always the iPod.
So will we see another try from Microsoft to beat Apple's iPod or it will be another vain attempt from the Redmond guys.
Just because you don't put a question mark at the end of your badly phrased attempt to stir up the flames doesn't mean it's any less of an annoying and pointless question.
PLEASE stop with the inane, pointless, content-free rhetorical questions at the end of submissions. They're annoying, biased, and make Slashdot look like amateur hour. The conversations would flow just as well, if not better, without the obvious "here's what you should think about this story" cues. Too bad the editors keep falling for them.
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You assume that he purchased all of his songs from the iTunes Music Store, rather than having just ripped them from CDs into iTunes (the software program). No Kool-Aid necessary.
My other post is +5, Interesting
Salesman: The Zune allows you to wirelessly share songs with friends...
Customer: That sounds cool.
Me: But you can only play the shared song 3 times and it deletes itself after 3 days.
Customer: Thats lame and pointless then.
Test your net with Netalyzr
In many ways I agree with you - my extensive collection built up over 35 years or so has ~25Gb of music but...
The lads I play poker with on a Monday night who are not technical are, in the main, the target audience and for them bigger is better. Their phones have to have the latest gadgets and they can tell you the number of pixels in their cameras without having to think about it, despite the fact that I pretty sure none of them would know a pixel if they met one in the street. I'm in a desparate battle to stop them all upgrading to Vista 'because it's new'
It all really dates back to the playground and a 'my mp3 player has more storage than your mp3 player' attitude. That's what the purchasing public wants.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
With music though, I think there is a point well below 64GB where "enough is enough". My entire music library on my computer *MIGHT* reach 12GB tops; it's probably closer to 8GB, and that's with 2000-3000 songs. Now I realize that many people have collections that dwarf that in size, but honestly, do you really need to tote around your ENTIRE collection in your pocket? Just seems like a 2GB flash card holding a couple hundred songs that you feel like listening to at the time would be just fine.
If I didn't want the spontaneity of being able to instantly pull up and play Cream's albums, followed by mid-career Madonna, then Korn, then Tangerine Dream, some Isaac Hayes, some classic Who, then Enya's latest, I wouldn't even buy music, I'd just listen to the radio.
I buy music to have convenient, rapid access to what I want to hear. I don't buy music to have it sit on some distant shelf; if that was the utility of it, there's a library just down the street with a fairly good collection.
Why shouldn't I want a copy of my whole collection in my pocket? At least I'm realistic enough to know that given the size of my collection, it's not going to happen soon, though.
360 is still has, by leaps and bounds, a far larger installed base than any of the other next-gen consoles. Discounting the Wii (which services a different market entirely), the 360 is selling like hotcakes in comparison to the other major competing next-gen console.
Smartphones are far from flops. Blackberry's market share is being eaten away ever so steadily by Win-Mobile devices. It's not an avalanche victory, but it is going well for MS nonetheless.
For MS's failures, they are getting quite a few things right. And this is coming from me, a die-hard Apple user.
way to notice. Blatant astroturfing.
I especially like how the article claims the Zune scene editor just happened to conveniently bump into a MS Zune employee on a business trip and then proceeded to pump him for information...
Yeah, right. And then monkeys flew out of his butt.
Download my free songs!
The reason is that with a larger collection, lets say 12,000 songs, who wants to spend the time to pick which 8,000 song to sync to the device?????
And when I want to hear something, I want to hear it!
So, I will not buy an MP3 player that doesn't hold my entire collection of music. I also want TV shows and movies. Eventually I plan to put every movie and TV show I own on DVD onto my computer and sync it to my iPod.
I like hard drives. I'm not a child - I can carry around an iPod without dropping it.
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Okay, I'm tired of this. 260,000 MB of mp3s at approximately 1MB/min of music means you have 180 days worth of music if you ran it constantly without ever repeating. Seriously folks, it would probably take at least 5-10 years for you to realistically listen to 260GB of music. I have a hard time believing that you have a) ever listened to all of the music you own and b) have any reasonable use for carrying it all with you on a portable device. 5 days worth of music on constant play with no repeats is a little over 7GB. If that's not enough space for you, then you need a life.
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My purchasing decisions are not subject to your value judgements. Fortunately, there are companies that want my money, and sell devices that suit my needs.
By happy coincidence, there are also companies that want your money, and sell devices that suit your needs. Your purchasing decisions are not subject to my value judgements.
See how this works?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Just so you know, putting a non-DRM file into iTunes does not, I will repeat for the special people out there, DOES NOT add DRM.
If you buy from iTMS, you have DRM on those files. If you just rip something with iTunes it will not have DRM.
How this FUD keeps getting modded up is beyond me.
I guess my dislike of the Zune wifi features were too early and/or poorly implemented. I'm not going to discuss the details of the shortcomings of the Zune's Wi-Fi feature. Some people may credit them with being the first to offer wi-fi of any sort but did anyone ever think about why no other manufacturer implemented it first? (Apple, Creative, Sandisk, etc) The reason being was that wireless would be (and still is) impratical.
Sure it would be cool to send songs wirelessly but that is only pratical for a few songs. You cannot transfer whole collections (measure in GBs) in a reasonable amount of time given the current state of wireless technology. 802.11g has a max rate of 54Mbps. 802.11n (540Mbps max) is the only version that can handle the rates required but wasn't in draft status until recently and won't be ratified until 2008. While USB2.0 has 480MBps and Fire400 has 400Mbps now. So if you were a manufacturer comtemplating wireless wouldn't you wait until 802.11n was more mature before implementing wireless?
Even if wireless had the transfer rates required today, there are issues with battery life and security. I have a large collection and it took over 20 minutes to put into my iPod using USB2.0. Transferring all that data wireless is going to drain the batteries quickly. And then there is security. I can see a lot of ramifications with using wireless transfers. Eventually these can be overcome but it will take time. I think MS was a bit too early. Just my 2cents.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I like having a choice from all my music, depending on my mood. It's not about trying to listen to all my music all at once. I also have a 1GB shuffle and it sucks when I want to listen to a song I didn't put on it. I suppose it's the same reason I have several thousand books in my house. Choice is cool!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Well, while your numerical analysis is interesting, the argument that no one would need that much space is fallacious. The parent poster never said they wanted to listen to their 200+ GB of music... sequentially. Some days I'm in the mood for blues. So, I want a good selection of my blues albums ready on my player. But I might not listen to any of it on any particular day. Wanting access to a large selection of music for personal use is not a sign that the individual lives plugged in to their player hour after hour. They might have a small amount of time they can actually enjoy their music and want to choose the exact selection they want to hear at the time they want to listen. Just like my Tivo, I want that thing loaded so if I want to watch TV, something good is available.
Still it is interesting to think that it would take that long to listen to that much music sequentially. I have a portable XM player that can record 5 hours of content. It seemed like a lot when I got it, but it is funny how quickly you start to feel like you wish you had more space.
"Contrarily the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea... "
I have some 800+ CDs that I've been buying over the last ~19 years. No, I don't listen to all of them all the time, but as things come and go I've heard everything there at least 5 times. My MP3 drive has around 200+ GB of files, and that's just the stuff I've kept after listening to everything at least twice. No iPod will ever hold my complete library and I don't expect it to, and since I mainly listen to music at work, not everything in my collection is condusive to working to in an office environment.
Take the long view: this stuff piles up after months and years, it's not like most people just suddenly had 80 GB of music out of nowhere!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
360 is still has, by leaps and bounds, a far larger installed base than any of the other next-gen consoles. Discounting the Wii (which services a different market entirely), the 360 is selling like hotcakes in comparison to the other major competing next-gen console.
As long as you don't include its toughest competition, the XBOX 360 is doing batshit-awesome !
In regards to the iPhone taking off, there is another thing holding in back in the smartphone market. It does not integrate with Exchange. If you look at who is carrying around Blackberry's and similar products, it's the people who need to stay connected to work on the go. As someone who works in consulting, a lot of the higher-ups are constantly bouncing around to different client sites all over the country/world. Even during normal business hours, they don't have an opportunity to check e-mail in the traditional way. Almost all of these types of people carry some kind of smart phone with Exchange integration. It is the only way for them to do their jobs. The iPhone is not for these people because it will not sync with Exchange. I don't know about other enterprise mail servers, though, so maybe the Lotus Notes folks are in the clear.
This feature may be in the works in the future, just like I'm pretty sure Cingular won't be the only provider in the long run. But I feel that this is the main thing holding it back.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Not to beat a dead horse, but that's sort of my point. You could pick 5 different genres and record 24 contiguous hours of music from each genre on an 8GB portable music device. Contrary to the belief of several posters below super high bit-rate or lossless audio is not really appropriate for portable audio. At 128kb/s it's impossible for anyone to tell the difference between that and CD quality in your car stereo with road noise and other background. The same is said for non-noise-canceling headphones in the office. I mean sure, it's your money and your drive space so do what you want with it. People are just kidding themselves though if they think it's magically superior.
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You then add this spin, whereby you somehow suggest that your "50 hours a week" of listening at/to/from work might only be around 2 weeks. You don't actually say it, though, because it looks far better for your so-called "point" to use the figure of two weeks, when even at your 50 hours a week, said collection would take 13 MONTHS to listen to.
Let's consider this 3100 hour album collection, too. Give or take, an hour an album is a good bet. Some electronica (and others, but less so) fills the 74 minute CD. Plenty of other albums are 45 minutes, or less, so I think this isn't bad. So, we're looking at 3,100 albums. Not a bad effort. Let's say $12 a CD. That's fair, I think. Many albums go for $14-20. Some are discounts, $5-10.
Not a bad little music collection there, all thirty-seven thousand dollars worth of it.
I have no doubt many people have a music collection of this size. I have little doubt that many people who do haven't acquired it all legitimately. Some certainly have.
3100 albums requires a lot of shelf space, too. 105 ft of it, in fact. No small task. And that's before we even consider records.
Speaking of assholes:
The fuck are you talking about? The guy you labeled as "ASSHOLE OF THE YEAR" was specifically responding to:
But hey, let's not minor details like that stop your rant proceeding full throttle, huh?
I'd venture to say that the astroturfing is about as blatant as that of the infamous Sony PSP Christmas site. Comparisons straight from a marketing handbook (break out one functionality into several bullet points, etc), professional quality product photos (complete with high quality photoshopping of screen quality), completely improbably insider stories (not a single product or marketing manager will divulge info on future products unless that's the plan).... the list goes on.
Really, really lame. If I want official info, I'd like it without the horrid writing.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.