Slashdot Mirror
Next Generation Zune Coming for Holiday Season
thefickler writes "Microsoft has confirmed the existence and coming launch of the long rumored Zune 2.0 or 2nd generation Zune, and it appears that Microsoft will expand the Zune family with new styles, sizes, and price points. 'Future Zune products will feature podcasting support and expanded video support. The Zune will also move into other geographic markets when Microsoft feels it has an appealing product to offer those demographics. Perhaps most importantly of all, the representative mentioned that Microsoft will build on the wireless support. Maybe we'll finally have the freedom of synching our digital audio players via wi-fi. The rep didn't mention anything specific about Microsoft's rumored answer to the iPod Shuffle. But interesting rumors from sources considered "reliable" point to a very innovative product.'"
When in doubt, spend.
(also applies to politics)
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
They should use The Who's "We Won't Get Fooled Again" for their ad campaign in a form of irony.
I mean, is anyone really going to buy Zune 2.0? After all, it didn't work with the DRM scheme standard Microsoft was pushing, is inferior in every way compared to Apple's iPod, and was a flop in the marketplace, especially when compared to its competitors such as the iPod.
tagged "playsforsurenot"
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I did my own comparison of the Zune with the Ipod last Christmas, when those two items were pretty much what everyone was buying, and I decided the Zune was better. Bigger screen, less cost.... that about sums it up for me, although I have the Ipod video, I never use it. Seems the only advantage it has is styling, although that's a light point IMO.
a very innovative product.
As compared to what...? Vista?
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
I just purchased the Halo 3 Zune, and have an appointment next week to get my car set up with an AUX input solution (Porsche's stupid MOST bus Becker head units don't have AUX inputs available as standard or an option). So of course they have to announce Zune 2.0 coming "before holiday season", which most likely means "August".
Hopefully the Zune 2.0 firmware will be pushed to current Zunes.
"It's the second generation Zune, taking failure to a whole new level!"
It will probably be incompatible with music from the 1G Zune, and won't work with Vista. In other words, nothing new here.
blah blah blah
Now!! With twice the squirt!!!
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
How do you improve upon brown? WIll it be puke green? Or puke orange?
"Life is working jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need" -Tyler Durden I hope you're as enlightened as I am.
The game.
As long as the Zune's marketed by Microsoft and the iPod's marketed by Apple, the Zune is doomed because, let's face it, Apple's good at marketing, and Microsoft's good at forcing stuff down consumer's throats.
I always buy stuff right before the new product lines get announced.
*no, slashdot is not this market. I know.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
...support any of Vorbis, FLAC, or Speex. Is nobody else worried about that?
Think of a car application, where you have the Zune basically hardwired into your car audio. As such, it'd have power already, but you'd still have to remove it from the car in order to add new music. Being able to wirelessly sync would allow you to run the Zune app on a PC in your house and sync songs out to your car without having to take the Zune out of your car at all.
no.
The game.
I'm no fanboi. I'll give the Zune a chance when MS offers something that is better than the iPod. I'm not looking for something as good as the iPod or an iPod with BIGGER features. How about some real innovations like: -more HD space is always nice, how about beating Apple with a 100GB or 120GB Zune? :)
-intelligent shuffle that actually uses play counts, last-played, ratings & play-selection-order (and who knows what else) to intuitively determine what songs would fit together? Sort of a moodlogic for people instead of idiots & jerks?
-non-platform specific compatibility
-better firmware customization (that iPod linux thing is a worthy try but come on)
-something that doesn't look like a blatant ripoff of the iPod
-custom codec installation
-API for application construction & integration
I could go on & on...
Anyone else think it's funny that the Zune will support "Podcasting"?
At least that's what Roughly Drafted told me.
Sometimes, spending is just throwing good money after bad. They can't make Zune a winner because rented and dissapearing music just aren't cool. Even less cool is the idea that billboards will be able to "squirt" adverts onto your player or what your player might tell them in return. Minority Report was supposed to be a horror story, not a business model.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
it seems silly to not have that feature.
You must be new to Microsoft...
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
So I don't really need to charge it all that often. But it would be nice if I could sync it without having to plug it in.
"it has a larger screen" But it has the same resolution as the video iPod's screen.
Bigger is always better until you try to put it in your pocket. Is it also thicker and have square corners? A larger battery with less life? Woops, I think that would cover all the bases.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Believe it or not I won it at a charity auction. I was pretty excited to get it, my 2gb mobile player wasn't cutting it for long trips. Here's the truth - they did a good job with it. It's well made. The interface is solid, easy to use and intuitive. I didn't have to read the instructions to use it. The software works pretty well, but is a little confusing. When the Zune came out it'd have been pretty hard to F*** up. With all the money in the world and dozens of business cases to study it'd be pretty difficult to come out with an MP3 player that didn't do a passable job. The Zune did just that, and now true to Microsoft form 2.0 will come out, and then 3.0 and 4.0, and it'll continue to improve. If I were voting with my own money I'd have probably bought Creative's 30gb model, but in truth the Zune is pretty good at what it does. If you can live with people poking fun at you for owning it, go ahead and buy one. It only syncs with Windows, by the way.
I just RTFA, and it sais NOTHING, and that is truly NOTHING, about what is really in the pipeline. Only lines like "it's going to be better", and "we're expanding it blah blah" with a lot of marketingspeak - but really nothing on the actual product. The only concrete product mentioned, the "Zune Shuffle" or whatever, also falls short of an actual description, let alone giving me the idea that it is reliable.
Sorry folks, nothing to see here, move along. Really, there is absolutely nothing.
The only thing about this article is that it keeps the buzz going, it keeps the people talking about this device. And guessing. Just guessing. Because there is nothing really said there, everything is just a guess.
Editors, please do your job, and don't put this kind of nonsense on the front page. It doesn't belong there. I'm really interested in tech news, and also what Microsoft is doing - even though I don't buy their products, they are one of the major forces in the computer world - but this is the least informative article ever.
Ah well, let the Microsoft bashing continue.
If your Nano did wireless synching, you'd be charging it more often than every two weeks...
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
One embarrassing footnote to the "million Zunes sold" meme is that few of those sales have been to individuals. The majority of Zunes are still sitting on store shelves. We know this because Microsoft managed to shovel an excess inventory of at least 4 million Xbox 360s on retailers. That fact that Microsoft hasn't been able to fake similar levels of sales for the Zune indicates that sales of the Zune are REALLY low.
More Articles on Zune.
Meanwhile, Apple shipped several times as many iPhones in its first weekend, selling it only in its own retail stores and AT&T shops. That says something about Apple and Microsoft's ability to retail.
Apple has also been selling iPods at a profit; Microsoft's Zune + Xbox division has lost BILLIONS every year. Think about that for a moment.
-
Ten Fake Apple Scandals: 1 - Phony Rage About iPhone Price and Profits
Reality: The iPhone costs less than any smartphone, and will have a higher resale value after two years than any phone. Here's why.
The battery on my Archos 604 Wifi will survive transferring a few hundred meg of files from Not At My Computer(TM) without being plugged in.
Similarly, I can "stream" files over the wifi from any SMB share.
And since the 604 Wifi has Opera, I could browse to (almost) any online music shop and download tracks and play them.
Plus I can use the device as a wireless fileserver.
Unfortunately I haven't seen any reports of ShoutCAST working (although the new 605 Wifi has optional Youtube/Dailymotion support).
Oh, and touchscreen.
Goten Xiao
Personaly, (I hated the zune, I ridiculed people who got them) But when someone was going to sell me their brand new one for 70 bucks I couldnt say no. (my ipod was broken at the time)
And relucantly I am starting to admit it isnt that bad.
A quick breakdown of what I am impressed with.
-The audio quality is actualy quite good, much crisper and clearer than my 4th gen ipod.
-Clicky buttons are excellent! I keep it in a little felt sock, and I can turn the volume up, and change tracks all through a layer of clothing, without taking it out of the container.
-Being able to easily set shuffle between artists, albums, genras, etc works really well.
-If you are on the album view, pressing left or right will take you to that artist's other albums, its more convenient than I expected.
-And the locked down interface you have to sync it with... Errors and crashes aside, is very close to drag and drop, (disable auto sync) find your music folder, it finds album art, drag the albums or artists you want onto the zune, click sync, and watch it upload.
-Being able to turn off random with 3 clicks, instead of having to go back to the root menu and go to shuffle, and turn it off, then go back into songs.
The bad is the battery life is... not very good, and it doesnt seem to turn on when I want it, and there is no audible confirmation you turned the beast off. And the sync software, while not as bad as itunes, I wish it were open (or cracked) so I could use whatever I want... Oh and the obvious wifi doesnt really exist. Its worthless in every way.
Personaly I would take a creative any day of the week, but since those are never sold for good prices used, I would sadly and reluctantly take a zune over an ipod, Ipods just do so many annoying things.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
On paper the Zune looked okay. The problem for most people is that Microsoft was a little deceptive in advertising in what Microsoft failed to disclose. It had a bigger screen, but the resolution was the same as the iPod and the player was larger. It had wifi but it wasn't really wifi. You can buy music online only it's not compatible with anything you may have bought before, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Poor microsoft, they succeeded in their xbox ventures with xbox and then xbox 360. Their plan was to get their foot in the door with the original Xbox and then really grow with the xbox360. Now I won't say they succeeded 100% but they're doing pretty well at least compared to Sony. Can they repeat this with the Zune? Maybe.....Zune 1 was a complete flop but I think maybe Microsoft might be able to adapt and change it to be more competitive. I hope. I dislike Apple's monopoly on the mp3 player market as much as I disliked the stranglehold Microsoft has on the PC market. For MSFT to even have a chance, however, they really must eliminate the strong DRM of the Zune and make it more like the iPod. Remember the days before the iPod? Sony could have ruled the MP3 market but they created their lame lame magicGate DRM that made putting songs into the player more painful and slow than just burning an audio CD.
after a year still noone is running linux on it
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
I think Apple is vulnerable in the Mp3 player market right now. The iPod does not have great battery life, and it still scratches easily. If they don't release a new version this holiday season, I will think about getting a Zune 2.0. I read that Zune 1.0 had great battery life and was well made, the problem was the DRM. If they fix the DRM, then Zune 2.0 might well be the superior device.
"Future Zune products will feature podcasting support"
Are they saying that it will take a new hardware model to support podcasting?? Apple did it with just software.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad