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Zune Team Getting Amnesty for iPod Use
MsManhattan writes "The Zune development team at Microsoft is apparently offering amnesty to employees who give up their iPods in favor of using the Zune MP3 player. An MSNBC employee has posted a photo on Flickr of the company's 'iPod Amnesty Bin,' which sports an image of a bitten green apple and the words 'Bite me.' Whether it's to be taken seriously or is a joke to boost employee morale is anyone's guess, and naturally no one at Microsoft was available for comment. From what can be seen in the photo, only a few early-model iPods have been deposited."
Then, she might have liked it. The great unwashed masses just might buy it - not that I'm commenting on your wife's personal hygiene. :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I really do feel bad for the Devs working on the zune. It must be tough to have the skills, the money, and the facilities to create something really really truly cool....but be held back by the fact that you "cool new toy" won't be allowed by upper management for fear of lawsuit. I mean, imagine if the zune didn't have the DRM built into the wireless song swap feature....that is just really really damn cool! I mean, imagine sitting in your cube, and talking to that cute girl across the row about some song that she should just oh so totally have, and then being able to just go "HERE!" and give it to her!! I would imagine that if the zune caught on, some cool linux dev would probably make a "zune server" or something like that, similar to the mt-daapd projectf (to make iTunes think that your linux box is sharing a song library with it), but for the wireless functionality of the zune.
THAT would be freaking cool.
FYI..i don't work for microsoft...i know that sounded like an ad for the zune or something...I own an iPod in fact. I'm just saying, keep in mind that the engineers I'm sure are working on this device aren't evil RIAA lawyers, they're geeks. It must just really really really suck to not be able to put all the cool features i'm sure you would want into a project that you're working on...
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
What's interesting (let's see if this works!) is that the individual was likely just trying to work around a design flaw in the moderation system. The Funny mod doesn't increase karma, but modding you down will decrease it, meaning that typically getting modded funny very often results in loss of karma. In fact, if someone mods you funny, then someone else mods you overrated, then not only do you lose a karma point, but the overrated mod never appears in metamoderation, so the bad moderation is never corrected (as per the FAQ, you should concentrate on positive moderation.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That the few iPods in the bin were purchased on E-bay and planted in the box. After all, an empty box would be an embarrassment by itself, and MS has a track record of manufacturing its own fans.
A housemate of mine owns a Zune, and having used it once or twice on occasion (I wanted to get a look at the competition), I can safely say the iPod has nothing to fear. You're right that the Zune has a very nice UI, attractive and easy to use...but other than that, it has no outstanding factors that would make anyone prefer it to an iPod (or other DAP). It's not very attractive (brown?), somewhat bulkier than an iPod, and the software that's used to move music to the player is hit-or-miss. As was mentioned a couple of posts earlier, if the song-sharing function didn't have DRM, it'd certainly give the Zune the foothold it needs to stand out in the market. As it is, what's so special about it, exactly?
I may hate the iPod, but I'm not going to go from Redmond to Mountain View just to throw it out.
Just because someone says the word interesting, doesn't make them interesting.
Interesting...
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Further to this, Apple's FairPlay2 (the current implementation of it's iTunes DRM) really doesn't cause me any problems, there are multi-platform tools to remove the FairPlay2 DRM from your purchased tracks, it only gets tricky when your trying to break FairPlay DRM on tracks you don't own because you won't have access to the crypto key. I buy a fair bit from iTunes, all of it ends up on the PlayStation3 sans DRM.
After the Zune was released, I decided to go counting how many people would actually buy it. My target was where my internship was: New York. This would be a fairly easy time killer; many New York commuters have some sort of MP3 player, so it shouldn't be too hard to at least get a raw estimate and ballpark a real-world value from there.
Since it's release, I only counted TWO people who had a Zune. TWO. Out of the HUNDREDS of people that I have seen while commuting every weekday to work, and out of the HUNDREDS of iPods (various generations) I have seen on those commuters, I have only seen TWO people carry a Zune. Furthermore, I have yet to really see a Zune make Page 1 of your advertisements. It's usually pretty deeply hidden, unlike its competitor.
Another interesting place to confirm this is eBay. If I had to ballpark a value for the average price of a Zune there, I would have to say it was somewhere around the upper $210-lower $220 range. Check here. However, the average price of iPods is noticeably higher. Check here.
In short, I think that this iDumpster, while it might surface as a joke, is just to remind the Zune developers that they have quite a bit of work to do before they even expect to see people actually flocking to this device. This is just my honest opinion.
Sweet! so tell me wher eI can get a ZUNE adapter for my car stereo or my Houses whole house audio system
Both of those plug into my Ipod and control+charge it. (no a FM modulator or a headphone in does not cut it. I like the complete control as well as playlist control from the head-unit or the LCD touch panel in my wall.
NOTHING like that exists for the Zune and therefore makes it a complete turd for me.
Ipod integrates with all audio systems seamlessly because they opened it up (and added a RS232 control port on the plug for complete control.) The Zune is designed to NOT integrate.
Tell me again how great the zune is.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.