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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."
Will it come in brown?
Someone actually bothered to put up a fan site for it?
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?
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.
This is a halfarsed attempt to get some hype going in the way Apple does. Hint, hint, hint, but no clear release schedule. Zune Scene editors are very hard to spot in the wild - you are more likely to meet them at Ms campus. What a joke.
Because umm... flash is OUTRAGEOUSLY EXPENSIVE? Hard drives let manufacturers sell these things for $3-400 with 30-80GB of storage, a 64GB flash drive is still in the $6-800 range in and of itself. Granted, prices will go down, but people want their storage now, and don't care so much about having to replace the thing every couple of years.
I hate sigs...
If they can get the Wi-fi to do something, you know, useful, then the Zune 2 might be a neat little device.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
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.
Come on guys, you can do better than that! Poor grammar, incorrect punctuation, and the two options don't contradict each other. It's not even a humorous or ironic "there is one option but we're pretending there are two" setup, it's just confusing.
</troll>
Xbox reviews.. We think they're funny.
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.
It's about time to replace my ancient (1st gen) iPod, which has given heroic service. What would it take for me to consider another brand, any other brand, beside Apple?
1. must play MP3 and M4A (AAC)
2. must play nice with my Power Mac
3. must sync with iTunes (practically my entire music collection is in iTunes)
4. must work with the iPod dock connector in my car
Zune should have no problem with 1, might possibly be okay with 2, but is locked out of 3 & 4 -- along with every other non-Apple player on the market, thus far, to the best of my knowledge. If anyone knows differently, please correct me!
(And before anyone says anything. . . . No, my 1st gen iPod doesn't have a dock connector. In fact, my car stereo has only an aux input, it doesn't yet have an iPod dock connector either. My next one will. I'm looking to the future here.)
They'll keep at it no matter how bad their device is and eventually, people will accept them. BUT, it'll cost Microsoft 10's of billions and 10's of billions in losses. Does anybody remember the first Microsoft WindowsCE based handhelds over 10 years ago? I think they were clamshell versions and after about 3 years on the market, most of those vendors quit selling the WinCE devices for lack of interest/sales. Microsoft then renamed the product to MS PocketPC after the courts said they could use PalmPC and also allowed vendors to build portrait based versions. Another 7+ years passed and billions in losses but today, people accept the product.
/. ) stopped giving them any air time. Atleast make em pay you for it. IMO.
So it really doesn't matter what they put out, they'll just keep doing it, paying billions in marketing, discounts, and other incentives to vendors to keep pushing the product. The ONLY way this would not happen is if the press( hello
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
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.
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
WOW! This is IT! Thinner and larger storage capacity both? This is the breakthrough! However did those Microsoft boys do it?
I'm buying one for my granddaughter. True, she already has two iPods (don't ask), but she won't want them once she hears about this! I sure hope Microsoft can meet the demand. I wonder if any of the stores are taking pre-orders now? I wouldn't want to pay $800 to get one on eBay, but, gosh, when all of her friends have them and are squirting songs to each other, I can't let her be the one to be left out.
Actually, if she has two iPods I'd better get her two Zunes.
And just the other day, my wife was saying to me "If Microsoft ever makes a Zune that is thinner and has a larger storage capacity I'd like you to get one for me."
It really sounds almost perfect, but I wonder... do you suppose... there will be new colors, too? Maybe a triple-shot!
This certainly puts the lie to all those rumor sites that were saying the next Zune would be thicker and have less storage.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They always get it right by version 3.0.
They scoffed at Microsoft Bob, but look what happened with Microsoft Bob 3.0.
They laughed at PlaysForSure, but where are all the skeptics now?
They winced at WinCE, but can you name a single cell phone that doesn't use it today?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You're confusing flash memory with flash memory cards (such as SD, MMC, CF, xD, someonepleasestopitwiththeformats). iPod nanos and shuffles as well as many other players have flash memory in them, not hard drives. the iPod video and Zune have hard drives, but it's not feasible because the flash *is* too expensive for these players for the capacity they need (movies take up a lot of space, and replacing a 80GB with an 8GB device isn't feasible, which is why they have different lines of players). Just because YOU only need 2-8GB of storage doesn't mean everyone is the same, and that is also why Apple's iPod nano is the top selling player.
I hate sigs...
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
My music library is 60gb. My wife's music library is upwards of 200gb.
There is still a place for high-capacity portable players. We may not be typical, but we definitely exist.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=935 48
I don't know if these players are any good, but they are compatible with iTunes and they aren't made by Apple.
I beg to differ. I have a 1G iPod bought around 5 years ago which still works fine, though it's been dropped innumerable times, the battery doesn't charge so well now as it only lasts an hour or so (after 5 years of use) but it works fine. I could replace the battery (doesn't look hard), but haven't bothered because I got a 4G a couple of years ago (to get more space) and use that mostly now instead. Battery life is as new. Same goes for all the other people I know who have iPods - none have stopped working, save one which took a dip in some water. So much for your 'everyone knows' lifespan of between 6 months and 2 years.
Though we'll have to wait till it comes out, the new Zune sounds very much like they've moved on to copying the Nano, which is great, but doesn't really address the fact they're 2 years behind all their competitors. They need to stop, take stock, and address the faults and short-comings of Zune - both software and player, instead of playing catch-up. Portable video doesn't really it to me, right now it's just another bullet point on the feature list (cost, storage, screen size all need to be addressed). By the time MS produce something worth buying with the Zune, Apple will be selling internet connected devices by the million instead, and even more people will be using iTunes to sync up everything on their computer with those devices, leaving the Zune as a copycat product in a shrinking market.
There are so many things they could have added - address book, camera support for image import, clock, calendar, data entry, internet, real content sharing via wifi (other than music), real ebook support etc etc. This hack for reading text on a Zune sums things up really :
http://lifehacker.com/software/zune/read-a-book-o
Given the platform they already had with Pocket PC, why they even bothered producing something entirely different for the Zune astounds me. The convergence with PocketPC devices is only a few years away, and yet they throw out all the ground-work they have in-house and start again with a device that's so limited it's painful. If Pocket PC (or whatever they call it now) needs improved to handle playing music, improve it! The whole thing stinks of a directive from on-high to combat the iPod, which resulted in a quick buy-in and rebranding of an existing player then a rushed launch. V2 is more of the same.
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.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
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.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
It's fun for us iPod people to make fun of the Zune *squirt* but after trying it out it's not really that bad. *squirt* Let there be competition *squirt* in the market! That's the whole point. That's why it's ok to have a bunch of linux distros and a couple of BSDs *squirt* and different desktop enviroments *squirt* like KDE and Gnome. Hopefully this will push Apple to innovate even more and release even better products *squirt* like bluetooth or wifi (I'd prefer bluetooth for neighbors but I know it's not the best protocol). Innovation doesn't hurt *squirt* anyone. Oh, you've got some, uhm, on your face.
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!
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... "
Yeah, right. And then monkeys flew out of his butt.
It would explain the color choice, though.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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 !
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.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
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'm sorry, but shouldn't you be working and interacting with coworkers rather than listening to music? I personally find it really annoying when I want to ask someone a question and I either have to tap their shoulder to get their attention or yell really loud because they always have their headphones in their ears. I'm not saying people shouldn't listen to extensive amounts of music, but the work place is probably one of the worst places to wear headphones, and behind the wheel probably ranks up there with it. Sam
I was curious exactly what you'd have to do to get 1,000 Gs, so here are some back-of-the-envelope numbers for comparison:
r ation/ referencing medical literature from helmeted motorcycle crashesc ess_of_Wales
It wouldn't survive being fired out of a handgun (zero to 800fps along a 5" barrel [1] implies an acceleration, assuming I did my math right, of ~468000 m/s^2 or about ~47,000 Gs).
Still, it's better than your brain inside your head, which can only take about 150-200 Gs before you start doing serious/irreparable damage [2] (the rest of your body is a lot lower, like 8-20 Gs depending on direction and body part, but your head alone can take a bit more since it doesn't have all those squishy bits).
I was curious how fast you'd need to be going in a typical car accident to get 1,000Gs: The fatal accident that killed Princess Di was supposedly somewhere around 70-100 G [3]; if we assume that was the result of crashing at 120 MPH or so, 190 km/h [4], we can extrapolate that to get 1,000G, you'd need to have a speed of around 1682 MPH. [5] (That doesn't say anything really about surviving a car crash at that speed, because obviously there are mechanical and thermal problems involved...)
So if you swallowed one of those things, I think it's pretty clear that you'd be mush long before it got bothered.
[1] Pulling these numbers out of my ass, but they're roughly typical for a 1911.
[2] http://hypertextbook.com/physics/mechanics/accele
[3] ibid.
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Diana,_Prin
[5] You use the acceleration value and speed to calculate a "time" for the collision, around 0.07s, and then use that to get the velocity for an acceleration of 1000G. I never said it was that reliable a figure...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."