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Why Microsoft's Zune is Still Failing
DECS writes "Last winter, RDM detailed why Microsoft's iPod Killer would fail miserably. This year, the site argues, Microsoft will fail again, but for a new set of reasons. It is not obvious that the company has figured this out itself. 'Microsoft doesn't seem to learn from its mistakes in consumer electronics very well. When it does however, it frequently gets the timing wrong. This year, Microsoft appears set to compete against the Apple of 2006. It now offers two flash models, last year's leftover 30 GB unit, and new 80 GB version. The problem is that Apple moved the goalpost dramatically. Apple's new 3G Nano is ultra thin and small, but delivers the same video resolution as Microsoft's boxy flash Zunes at the same price. It also plays games.'"
Lets see, they are selling lots of them, and slowly gaining market penetration. I don't see that as a 'failure'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In the Black Friday sales papers, first-gen Zunes are going for $80-100.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/172630/ Zune has occupied the top spot for quite some time. Is this a failure?
Uhh, the 30 and 80gb Zunes are hdd-based, not flash and compete with the "classic" ipods not the nano. But yeah, that IS Apple 2006, so the article is sort of right. sort of.
It's a flaky piece of shit with no style from a company with a horrid reputation that is up against the biggest phenomenon in the music industry since CDs?
We need to have a law or something, that declares everything made by apple as THE only way of doing things, and also forbid other companies from making similar products. I mean, why do they even try? Apple is by far the best and when someone else tries, they're actually wasting valuable resources (plastic, electricity, and even silicon!).
So, Microsoft, and everyone else: please, stop trying. Apple has the only music player worth anything. You have no chance.
(If you don't see the sarcasm tags, then you're probably on a Mac)
Exhibit A: Cute, functional, the industry standard. Everyone knows what it is. Comes in gift-friendly colors. A status symbol.
Exhibit B: Volvo-esque, crippled, and ignored by accessory manufacturers. No one outside Slashdot and the Black Friday Loss Leader Bin has heard of it. Comes in brown. Also a status symbol (but of an undesirable status).
Don't try to overthink it.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Zune (and any like product) will succeed when judged on its own merits, rather being competitor of brand A. But it will never be like that, since Zune *was* positioned as iPod killer from the start.
And yet another thing: I think, psychologically, just like myself, every time you hear of xyz-killer from Microsoft, somehow you end up visualizing Balmer throwing the chair, and then somehow you end up *not* purchasing Zune.
The part of Zune's failer, might have something to do whit it is only sold in the US.
;-)
The rest of the world can't buy it. So it is hard to get in to the MP3 palyer marked, when you cut of the most of the world.
But okey. Asian and Europa thats not places where you can sell new eletronic thing. They only buy old stuff, if any.
Moved them and made them smaller. Try getting a chair between them now.
Zune shortcomings aside, just look at RoughlyDrafted's other articles. All pro-Apple. Is it a surprise that this guy claims that the Zune is a failure? Personally, the fact that Microsoft don't even try to compete outside the USA speaks volumes about their confidence at this point.
I was adapter hunting in a Radio Shack last week, and couldn't help but overhear the clerks talking to each other behind the counter...
Clerk 1 "I like the zune, I mean, at least it's not an iPod!"
Clerk 2 "And you can so buy one without having to go near an Apple Store!"
Clerk 3 "Hey, did the new stock come in?"
Clerk 1 "Yeah, I put them out this morning - we even have brown ones now..."
Clerk 3 "Really? What do they look like?"
Clerk 1 "Kidding, right? They're brown, man...that's it?"
Clerk 3 "Oh, riiiight - let me see...how do they look?"
Clerks 1, 2, 4 & 5 "????"
Maybe they released it too zune... :P
You sure got the status symbol thing right. Here are some thoughts these two products evoke:
:)
Exhibit A: Natalie Portman has one. Kristen Bell has one. The ex-college-buddy, now a $ucce$$ful investment banker has one.
Exhibit B: A bald, monkey-like beast sighted in public screaming like a pig, with sweat stains on the chest and under the armpits has one.
Need I say more?
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
I noticed the graph half way down the page which says that most people would buy the iPhone a gift. Great gift.
... and here's the contract"
"Happy Christmas, here's an iPhone
-1 not first post
I think it is axiomatic that if your buyer/user and customer are not the same person, then you are in trouble. In Microsoft's case, without hardware sales there will be no advertisements or add sales either, and since they're selling the zunes at a loss, they lose on all counts.
It worked for web browsers and maybe mouses - but their efforts to penetrate the consumer electronics market in any meaningful way have so far failed to gain any traction.
They've got lots of cash, so they can "compete" while they're losing money and do it for years. Who knows, Xbox might take over the game console market someday. Maybe Zune will amount to more than a poor copy of last year's product. On the Xbox front, they can buy up game developers and convert their products to Xbox-only products. I don't see that kind of business plan working with music players, though. Even if they negotiate exclusive distribution rights for many important acts - the market will ignore those restrictions as it has already shown itself capable of doing. Which act wants to be the first to release "Zune only" tunes? Let's keep in mind the percentage of the portable music player market that Zune represents.
And they've already burned a lot of bridges - remember "Plays For Sure"? They signed up player manufacturers right and left - then left them high and dry. Their potential customers are more than a little aware of this too - who wants to buy a player that you might not be able to purchase any music for in a year or two?
It is a culture thing that causes Microsoft to fail over and over again in the consumer media/entertainment markets.
Although the Zune failure looks time compared to the Xbox fiasco in some ways the Xbox marketplace disaster has moderated the Zune marketplace failure. The Xbox project is now some six years into its life and the console has wasted some seven billion dollars and is dead in the water. The new Xbox 360 after two years on the market is still dead in both Japan and Europe and selling to a fairly niche hardcore US fps/pc gamer demographic. After all those billions the 360 is on track to just making the same 24 million or so worldwide installed base numbers as the first Xbox mess.
The Zune was supposed to be subsidized by the 360 'profits' LOL
Instead of sitting down and hiring really good industrial and UI experts and coming up with something comparable to the iPod line Microsoft has been unable to get out of their same old product strategies:
* Using other products to subsidize new ones to force their products out into the marketplace
* Stupid viral marketing tactics
* Buying off media
* Hiring people to sit around on messageboards hyping their products and slamming their competitors
* Inane attempts at coming up with 'fastest ever' or other silly PR claims
It's a culture thing. People from Microsoft would rather slash your tires or tie your shoe laces together than legitimately win a race and then sit around high fiving each other afterwards over drinks at the local Rendmond wateringhole. Someone up in Redmond needs to wake up and realize that culture is getting them nowhere in the console and digital media markets.
"We need to have a law or something"
:)
We do - that is why Microsoft is the 'convicted monopolist'. Convicted of doing everything you joke about...now THAT's funny
With M$ in the game, the category is officially written in stone. Here to stay. A slightly successful Zune will simply sell more iPods. That's how it works. M$ should massage Zune's marketing and designing for the alternative class. They could own that market. Brown was almost a good idea. It was anti-iPod. But Zune will never over-take iPod. It's immediately seen as an also ran. Had they positioned it as anti-iPod they would have done better.
obviously those who bash zune have never used it. time for bed little timmy!
I think the problem is that there just aren't enough people getting Zune tattoos:
http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/17/what-kind-of-man-gets-three-zune-tattoos/
(As an aside: he's also changing his name to "Microsoft Zune"
http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/05/zune-guy-changing-name-to-microsoft-zune/)
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
I've been seeing commercials for some voice-activated radio product "powered by microsoft" being offered on Ford vehicles. The commercial says it works with your MP3 player, and I assume that means works exclusively with Zune. Does anyone know if this is the case, and if so, is that MS' strategy to create market penetration?
Here in London we are all forced to take public transport to work everyday. This might be an alien concept in the US but here it is quite simply the most practical method of getting to work until you are rich enough that you can pay someone to drive you there and then find somewhere to park after you are in the office. I work in the City of London (EC1, Moorgate). That is that I work in the London equivalent of Wall Street.
When I travel around on the tube I see an awful lot of the trademark white Ipod earphones. I see the occasional pair of Sony Ericsson earphones that go with their Walkman brand of phones. I see no Zunes. Almost everyone listens to music while traveling into work on the Tube but almost nobody seems to own a Zune.
This is not a sign that the Zune is selling well in a culture where owning a personal music player is a prerequisite for maintaining your sanity.
I have seen more Linux based Archos players or PSP's.
I dont read
I'm no Apple Fanboy, I have never even owned an iPod. But the Zune is a joke product. See we make a music player too. See, See.
So does every other chinese factory. I know cuz I own several of those. With three kids, I really appreciate a music player that cost less than a carton of smokes.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I don't care much either way about the Zune or the iPod, but if you look around the Roughly Drafted site, you'll see that it is very biased towards Apple, and doesn't mind playing a little fast and loose with the truth.
Take two people, give one the latest iPod, the other the latest Zune (whatever a "Zune" is....)
Who's the coolest?
No sig today...
So, no mp3 players were for people who liked music until two months ago?
You are exactly what he was talking about. Thanks for being such a stereotype.
Joel spotted the real difference between iPod and Zune:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/10/05.html
No sig today...
...Are you aware Zunes are only sold in the US?
All "golden ear" discussions aside... In case you've been living under a rock, Apple has an 160GB player. The only PMPs with more storage use 2.5" notebook drives and are about four times as large as an iPod. iPods have supported lossless audio for years, which is uncommon among popular media players.
If you happen to like another player that's fine - but don't spout BS. As a wise man once said, it is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool that to open it and remove all doubt.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Zunes are only now being sold outside the US, maybe that is the reason for not seeing them?
Jonathanjk.com
"It Suck-didly-ucks, Flanders"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
MS is about as nimble as a beached whale carcass. I'm impressed that they're only a year behind.
MS has a long record of not caring what users want, instead assuming that the public will gleefully accept whatever MS produces. They think they can win at consumer electronics by playing like the monopoly in a market they just entered and have no chance to control, even if they played smart by carving a niche for themselves instead of assuming the market will shift according to their will simply because they enter it.
I'm looking at the link, and here is some of what I see:
4 of the top 5 spots belong to the iPod family
1 of the top 5 spots belong to the Zune family
13 of the top 25 spots belong to the iPod family
8 of the top 25 spots belong to Sandisk
4 of the top 25 spots belong to the Zune family
See, I can play games with numbers! This is fairly pointless with out more detailed numbers. What is the difference in numbers between number 1 and number 2? How many of those players represent 90% of the sales? Cherry picking numbers here if we say that up to the number 21 spot represents 90% sales then the numbers look like
13 of 21 iPod
6 of 21 Sandisk
2 of 21 Zune
Of course, I picked those numbers to favor the iPod, selecting the bottom most iPod to represent 90%. Still, one curious thing to note is how the top iPods are the current generation of iPods while the top Zunes are the previous generation. I think it is too early to decree how well the Zune has done.
Microsoft's product isn't the Zune, it's their DRM.
That makes a lot of sense since most of the songs on the Zune Marketplace are DRM free....
There's only one way to beat the iPod, or any dominant figure in a specific market. You have to be twice as good and half as expensive. The Zune looks like it's making real strides. From what I'm reading, it might be a little bit better than the iPod. But it also costs about the same price. That is why the Zune will fail. It just doesn't have the major advantage on BOTH features and price that it takes to overcome the iPod's entrenchment.
From the article: Microsoft was rumored to deliver a product that, true to its roots, ignored usability and instead tacked on impractical features such as wireless sharing.
Wireless sharing is a great idea, but Microsoft's implementation was so neutered and locked-down it ended up being a non-factor.
That particular model is selling well because they totally slashed the price to move them out. No other Zune is selling well, and this one was a bomb until then.
Heck, Apple puts 'Designed by Apple in California' on their cables.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
I thought it was because the logo, when viewed in a mirror, looks like 'anus'
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
It's not cheaper than SanDisk players. It doesn't have more features than Apple. It's not physically distinct; e.g. is waterproof or shockproof. It's a mundane me-too product in a sea of mundane me-too products. It is a failure? I don't know, are any of them?
That would be 14 months ago, look at the year. 2 months ago would be the nice large 160gb Classic (very nice for those of us with large collections), the new Nano (or iPod hobbit as my wife referred to it until she saw one in person), and the Touch (which was christened "16gigs? wtf is that shit" by aformentioned outspoken iPod loving wife, who ended up with the first 80 gig classic to show up at our local apple shop to replace her old 20gig 3rd gen)
I was checking what was left in the Encinitas CompUSA store a couple of days before it closed for good. About the only thing left in quantity were UPS's and Zune's. Bear in mind that CompUSA had cut prices by at least 40% to clear out the store (they were even selling the racks that held the merchandise).
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
Microsoft started out as a software company. They produced a desktop operating system, office productivity software and Server applications to make office life a bit easier. Apple did the same with less success. Now, every time I hear about Microsoft cutting into new markets where they have no business, I can't help but be embarrassed for them.
Microsoft really has no business making things like the Zune and Sync. It's not their core competency to make personal, consumer products. They're just not as good as Apple (in relation to the Zune) or car stereo companies (in relation to the Sync).
Unfortunately, Microsoft's pockets are too deep to take a lesson from failed products. Now I understand why they didn't cut their losses with the Zune months ago and stop pushing it as an iPod killer.
The game.
I think you need to RTFA! The author of the article has done a good job of dissecting microsoft's marketing claims and the number of NDP and pointing to the creative marketing that Microsoft uses to look like it's been more successful than it is. Outside of that, the question of whether the Zune is a failure or not is stupid IMHO. If you sell products at a loss for several years it is by definition a failure. Companies are in business to make money. The fact that Microsoft makes tons of money in its other divisions is fine, but they'd be more profitable if the dumped the Zune and the Xbox divisions and focused on the software that actually makes money. I understand that with any product there is a period of spending more money than you make but I think that both have lost more money than any other company would be able to loose without the management being lynched by the stockholders. Personally I own an Xbox (not a 360) and I enjoy playing games on it, but they never made more money on it than they spent because they didn't make enough $ from the development licenses to cover their losses. They were the 1st of the "Next Gen" game consoles to market and they're still loosing money there. Long term plans are fine and all, but you need to make money at some point and if you look closely at the data instead of blindly believing Microsoft's marketing literature you'll see that they probably won't turn a profit any time in the next decade in these divisions.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Clearly, consumers know that "Microsoft" is a name they can trust.
Unrelated English quip: It's not obvious that they have figured this out themselves? That means that they know this but that someone told them. Was it supposed to mean something else? That statement doesn't really match the rest of the summary.
Bad puns gave me bad karma. =(
Yep.
And when you've figured out why they do something so silly you'll have cracked the problem.
No sig today...
Cool people don't buy mp3 players on Amazon, only grannies do.
No sig today...
I've lived in both places--and I proffered the weather in Washington! That state is much more beautiful than California. Maybe not the cities, but the cities in CA aren't anything to boast about either. Neither of those slogans really matter, in fact I've never noticed until I just checked my iPod video (sure enough, there it is). Now, if I saw "Manufactured in Washington/California" that could actually sway my decision on what to buy.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Microsoft does NOT have their long-term strategies well planned out.
Ever since they missed (entirely) the importance and early growth rates of the internet they have been in a purely reactive mode. Apple can and has made mistakes, and will make more. But because they're proactive, creative, risk takers the buying public will allow them their mistakes, knowing the end product will bowl them over.
Microsoft can't take risks; their shareholders would skin them alive if they missed bloated earnings estimates. Zune will pick up a lot of low hanging fruit. Cash, which is what Microsoft wants first, comes first. For Apple (love 'em or hate 'em), ideas come first and the money (lots of it) naturally follows. That's how REAL innovation happens, not by circling the wagons around your office suite.
Apple is Big the way Google is Big.
Microsoft is Big the way General Motors is Big.
yeah I'll bash it because I CANNOT use it because MS is too lazy to make enough to sell in all english nations.
Give me the source to the firmware, Ide make it better to sell 2x in sales.
Screw DRM & control, make it like a PC in the 80s, 100% open arch.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Does anyone doubt that Apple doesn't have hundreds of marketing drones checking their Slashdot accounts for moderation points whenever their products are mentioned?
I dared to point out what the "no battery" design means - that always gets me modded down.
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
Without adding to the "which is better" argument, I will contribute the following: a good close friend of mine works as a warehouse manager for a major electronics chain here in the States and he says that MSFT has definitely stuffed the channel with product. According to him, it isn't unusual for companies to bulk up on supply prior to the xmas shopping season, but he doesn't see a connection between what MSFT ships and what the demand really is at store level. By contrast, he says the Apple gear moves quickly and he rarely has to sit on product beyond one week. Some Zune supply is at over 3 months in the channel.
There is no security when liberty is sacrificed.
Contrary to popular /. opinion M$ is not dumb. Their long term strategic goal is penetration into consumer market electronics and they doing it quite successfully I would say. Xbox was not a money maker for M$ either, yet on the 2nd version 360 emerged as winner in last generation of consoles. I would say that is pretty impressive . m$ can break into markets and monopolize them (desktop os, desktop office suite, software development suit , sql server, server os - you name it ).
Zune might not be successful today but it gets them market penetration and on their next version they might start to turn things around in that market as well. Jobs is right not to compete with M$ in software market, and I think M$ knows that -they are now after new markets, no point to fight battles already won.
I have a new PC with Vista on it and the Microsoft Media Player that came with it "skips" when playing MP3's. If they can't get their bread-and-butter products working correctly how is anyone to trust their competence at getting a stand-alone product right.
Just look at the graph, and that was with the xbox 360 pretty much having the market to itself. I know the perceived wisdom is that the PS3 is a failure, but it doesn't seem that way if you look at the numbers...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Microsoft's marketing campaign:
You can "squirt" your music at your friends and they'll be able to listen to it a maximum of three times before deciding to pay for a legal copy.
Yeah, dude! Can't wait to get me one of those!
No sig today...
At Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, USA, about 70% of headphones are iPod earbuds, and most of the rest are replacements connected to a iPod. I don't think I've seen any other mp3 players, and it sort of makes me scared to get anything else. Although, I think I'll be getting an LG Chocolate and using it as an mp3 player.
And as for public transit, Rutgers has free bus service and everyone complains at the start of the fall semester because of the people who think they can drive to class. They don't realize that there are just too many cars on the road if they do that.
It's absolutely true. Most commercial competitors haven't even survived against those dirty tactics. Ask Jean-Louis Gassée whether he thinks it achievement to be growing an OS in the face of one of the most aggressive monopolists the world has ever seen.
Slashdot needs to fix the moderation system. It's being gamed by astroturfers.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
... working at Apple, I can say I seriously doubt that (as in: never in a million years) Apple would care what /. or any other online forum says about any of its products. This place just isn't important in the grand scheme of things. The ipod / iphone are consumer-level devices, and Munster reckons we'll sell some 25 million of them this quarter, that's about 2 million per week - people on /. don't even make wobbles in the noise-floor of those kind of sales.
Now, if the WSJ panned a product you might have a case, but slashdot ? Give me a break.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...
Windows Media Player will work with ANY device (except an iPod, of course, because Apple decided to cripple it in order to maintain their monopoly).
Umm, what? An iPod will take any MP3 you throw at it. Yeah, they can have their own DRM, but they work with DRM-free recordings just fine. Who is crippling whom?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
My point, which has been modded "troll" every time it's been mentioned, is that not having replaceable batteries, in even one of their many models, is the most egregious example of planned obsolescence in history.
They're denying you the possibility of having a machine that keeps working, just because they're absolutely relying on the stream cash coming from overpaid yuppies who buy a new machine every time a battery wears out. If you can't justify buying a new machine every year, then you're not someone apple wants as a customer.
That said, I just looked it up, and Microsoft is playing the same game.
It's as if the idea of taking a battery out of a case is technology that hasn't been invented yet.
iTunes doesn't work with anything other than an iPod...
The downloads from the iTunes STORE don't work on other mp3 players. iTunes itself will support loading music on 3rd party mp3 players. I used to connect my 1st Gen Rio mp3 player and manage its meager 32mb of music with iTunes.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Audio quality for the headphones jack in any generation of Zune beat the audio quality out of ANY Ipod. This is the only reason I would personally still buy a Zune over an Ipod. The same is true for Creative and I-audio products as well.
Hopefully Apple will decide this to be an important issue with gen 7.
Dude. Why is it that Locutus of Redmond always behaves like that jealous bully at school that beats up the other kids and takes their lunch money, not because he needs it, but just because he can't stand the thought of others having it? Look at this music player thing for example. Locutus saw that Apple is making money selling a music player, so he became jealous and decided to do what his company Microborg, always does: Make cheap imitations of good products, use marketing and sheer power to put the technically superior company out of business, and leave consumers stuck with expensive but defective products as their only choice. The next thing you know, Locutus will realize that there's money to be made in selling refrigerators, and he'll start doing that too, putting all the established companies out of business and giving consumers no choice but to buy refrigerators that heat up every so often for no explicable reason, spoiling the food inside, and then Microborg's marketing power will be used to convince the world that this is okay. Oh and did I mention that Microborg, in the past, sent recruiters to the campuses of its competitors, to recruit their best people in an effort to put more nails in the competitors' coffins?
In other words: "We are Microborg. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Lower your shields and stand by to be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
"I think you need to RTFA! The author of the article has done a good job of dissecting microsoft's marketing claims and the number of NDP and pointing to the creative marketing that Microsoft uses to look like it's been more successful than it is."
I'd better back up here. I'm in the industry. I'm not just pulling things out of my nose. I'm an NPD subscriber (it's invaluable in my profession) and I happen to be friends with the folks who do the marketing for the Creative, Apple and Sandisk players. All of my PCs and audio players are made by Apple. Given that, you might expect me to be anti-Microsoft. It's very tempting to underplay Microsoft's success here, but the facts speak for themselves.
The "channel stuffing" argument was first brought up when Microsoft first reported NPD numbers. Two problems here: NPD is sell-through, not sell-in; and secondly, the Zunes have managed to stay in the top ten. NPD's reporting has its weaknesses (and folks in the industries covered by NPD know how to adjust for these weaknesses), but even making these adjustments, Microsoft has been putting in some solid sell-through numbers.
The Roughly Drafted fellow has taken the approach of picking a thesis ("The Zune is a failure!") and trying to make the facts work with the theory. It's lots of conjecture, and his bias is obvious. Bias is fine (he's not trying to make his pro-Apple stance a secret), but the bottom line is that there are lots of inaccuracies. He's managed to convince a lot of people, but people like me aren't his intended audience.
"If you sell products at a loss for several years it is by definition a failure. Companies are in business to make money."
Eek! Countless products in the CE and PC peripherals industry have been launched with plans that included profitability beyond the first year of sales. I'ts very much par for the course. You can bet that the iPod was sold at a loss for the first six months, and if it managed to make a profit after 12 months, it was pretty lean. It's a good thing that your statement isn't true, or there'd be a lot more "failures" out there than there are now.
"Long term plans are fine and all, but you need to make money at some point and if you look closely at the data instead of blindly believing Microsoft's marketing literature you'll see that they probably won't turn a profit any time in the next decade in these divisions."
Oh, it's no secret that Microsoft isn't expecting to turn a profit on Zune sales for a while. Your "next decade" statement is actually surprisingly close to what some people at Microsoft have told me.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
I think that MS itself might see the Zune as a failure. Apple and MS have very different definitions of success. Apple's definition of success is entering a market and making a profit. Microsoft's definition is entering a market and completely obliterating the competition, being the last man standing. Anything less is utter failure.
Found the link: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2007-11-22-zune_N.htm
With the 30GB Version on sale for $99, I picked it up. I wasn't really shopping for something of the sort, but $99 bucks is just to good of deal, also I saw the 80GB version @ $250 which I believe is a lot cheaper then then Ipod. My biggest annoyance is the inability to just plug the god damn thing in and copy files, but once again at 99 bucks I'll overlook a lot of shortcomings.. and I read a review that said you can't use the zune as a portable hard drive. If anyone has a workaround for this lemme know!
Queue the comments about how the first gen xbox was an utter failure and how Sony owned the market and would never be dethroned. Seems to me MS is doing a bang-up job of selling a lot of product into a near-monopolistic market. In all reality, we're one government intervention away from MS being on-par with apple.
The sad part is that people still view apple as the *underdog*. In all reality, their position in the MP3 player market is no different than MS's in the OS market, except they're far more abusive, proprietary, and monopolistic. Why anyone would champion that is beyond me. Let me know when they've opened up itunes to download music from any vendor I choose, and their car jacks etc to be opened and licensed to other players. I don't want an "ipod" jack in my car, I want a universal mp3 player jack.
<p>If only a third party would sell kits made to replace iPod battery, and price them reasonably... I mean I can't believe no one would want to jump in on this market. Besides that, this is the consumer electronics business, and in the case of the iPod, size is more important than "upgradability". In reality, how many people even replace their cell phone batteries (assuming they just get a new one every two years). Some people have extras because they use their phone so much that one battery won't last a full day, but those people aren't all that common. The same is true for cameras, where one battery may last a few hours of taking pictures, so some people prefer having a spare. However media players are a different story. How long does your iPods battery have to last? They already last about a day. Are you telling me people need to swap them out in the middle of usage? I doubt that. As for batteries dieing. It is possible, and those people can replace them relatively cheaply. However I doubt many iPod batteries are dead within the first year and a half of ownership. I'd imagine the majority last more than 3 years before they only have half their original capacity. While 3 years may seem short, consider consumer electronics history. How many consumer electronics last 3 years? Commonly used products can and will break, it's the unfortunate truth. And making the products using 3rd world children and the cheapest parts imaginable doesn't help. But the majority of consumers would rather replace their consumer electronics (for newer faster shinier ones) every 3 years than pay a 25% premium on the cost to have a well-built product. Those are the economic realities, deal with it!
<br><br>
Phil
So, um, have any of you even used the Zune?
There are plugins for WMP to use with the iPod, and the OS X version of iTunes works with a lot of devices other than iPods.
However, neither of their DRM systems work on the others players, and really if you're buying DRMd music you have little to complain about anyway because device compatibility isn't your real problem.
You shouldn't need a F**king kit and a F**king soldering iron to change a battery.
And no, it's not in any sense a win to save 1/3 of centimeter to make changing batteries take an hour, and require elecronics experience, over popping batteries in and out easily like every other battery operated appliance.
I have NEVER said to myself, "If only my cell phone was 1/3 of a centimeter thinner" or "If only I had 1/3 of a centimeter more pocket space!" And neither has anyone else. Consumer elecronics are already smaller than they have to be.
There's no better reason for the IPod and IPhone to have batteries that are hard to replace than for cameras to have batteries that are hard to replace. It's not a F**king heart pacemaker!
Did anyone take it?
You don't have to be the best seller to be a success. The market isn't a case of "You are either the very best or a total failure." If we operated on that assumption AMD would be a failure, Apple computers would be a failure. Neither have near the top spot in the market.
The Zune can be a success without dominating or unseating the iPod. It is a success if a lot of people buy it, use it and use and associated services with it. A solid number two would be a fine success.
I actually wrote a similar piece, if not a bit more casually. If anyone wants to read it, it's here:http://www.ferretarmy.com/2007/10/03/new-zunes-are-announced-somewhat-underwhelming/. I like the Zune, to tell the truth. Given that I picked the thing up at $85 shipped, it's not that hard to do so. The software is still pretty buggy and frustrating, but the players themselves aren't bad at all. The upgradeable firmware is a great feature, too, and one of the reasons I'm not so hard on it. I think that if they priced themselves significantly below the iPods, then they have a decent shot at taking some market share while they work on getting something out to go up against the iPod Touch. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the will of M$, but whatever. I'll keep picking them up out of the bargain bin.
Well, OK, maybe apple sort of dominates the ipod market .. big deal.
.. it DOES NOT affect things like access to government documents and services, access to internet content, access to electronic lodgement of tax returns.
.. but we do cast serious ire on the MS monopoly, not because we are fanbois of the alternatives, but because the abusive MS monopoly is a dangerous thing that drags down on so many aspects of our modern society.
MP3 players are NOT a critical component of the infrastructure of modern society. No matter how successful Apple is in dominating the ipod market
Your tax dollars are not voraciously consumed by Apple license fees because politicians promise "An MP3 player for every school child !!".
Apple does NOT receive licensing income from the sale of competing non-apple-ipod MP3 players, just in case those non-apple units are used to 'pirate' ipod toons.
Job adverts do not require submissions in "Apple iPod format", nor do the majority of jobs available today "require" experience with stated versions of licensed Apple ipod releases.
Worst of all - the world is NOT full of semi incompetent "professionals" working towards building critical multi-million dollar infrastructures for the future, who are incompetant because their only exposure to how things fit together is from what they learned on their ipod.
Its really not the same thing. There are plenty of benign and inneffectual monopolies around
Monopolies on - food, water, electricity, oil, computers, transport, comunications, weapons, healthcare, legal services, education, etc can be potentially disastrous.
Monopolies on portable music players though ? Thats about as bad as a monopoly on ice cream. Lucrative maybe, but its not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination. You are not exactly cut off from society if you refuse to buy into Apple's iPod dominance.
Consumer product battles between companies with deep pockets don't get resolved in the first few product cycles. Newcomers need to build volume, expertise, and adjust. As they do, prices drop, quality improves, and weakness in the competition get exposed.
Remember when the X-Box was going to fail and when Windows (insert any version) was going to kill MSFT? Up till a few weeks ago, VISTA was a failure, then MSFT reported record sales and profits.
Additionaly, MSFT is gotta hope that Apple is thinking about Zunes like this author is, in a silo. As MSFT increases it market share in additional consumer areas the Zune will gain more room to manuever in as a product. More tie-ins to additional products and software could generate a suprising demand at some point. The more businesses that MSFT is into, the more chances Zune gets to find a niche or more.
Now, this is not to say that MSFT will eventually win a battle in this space - they may not - but counting them out is just being near sighted. This is no where near the end.
Touche, sir. FF's spell checker obviously can't fix carelessness and haste.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
If "the bottom line is that there are lots of inaccuracies," why don't you point any out? It's easy to dismissively ignore the facts and stuff words into TFA that don't exist, but if you are an expert, why can't you present anything substantial that was not correct in the article?
Channel stuffing was never brought up about NPD's retail sales because "channel stuffing" is stuffing the channel, not selling through retailers. Stuffing the channel was obvious because Microsoft was "meeting its goals" just in time with huge shipments, but retail sales (such as reported by NPD) weren't reflecting those same shipment volumes. The chart in TFA makes it very clear that Xbox 360s were stuffed dramatically in time to meet goals, not demand.
Stores have been sitting on piles of 360s over the last year. That's why Microsoft dropped its June 2007 cumulative shipment goal from 15 million to 12 M and then only shipped 11.5 M. Since June, new shipments have been very small--the channel is stuffed to the gills! Additionally, Xbox Live subscriptions (which come with new units as a free trial) are only around half the units shipped. Are there that many people who buy a 360 and then don't use the free Live membership? Or are those unused subscriptions just sitting in unopened boxes at retailers?
The number and popularity of games available for the 360 and PS3 also don't reflect the idea that there are only 1/2 the number of PS3 players, despite the year head start Microsoft had. Microsoft also has anemic sales outside of the US with the 360, and isn't even attempting to sell the Zune overseas.
Microsoft can plan on ten year profits, but that didn't work out with WinCE, which has been a flightless bird since 1998 and has been left behind by the rapid ascent of the iPhone in its first few months.
Would all the theorists who think Microsoft should be granted a quiet, uncritical ten year waiting period to see whether their products can survive in the market please take a look at the iPhone? It went from announcement to available product in 6 months, and instantly became the hottest selling mobile. It now has 27% of a contentious market, despite being a luxury, premium priced product competing against simpler and apparently cheaper (when subsidized with more expensive contracts) Windows Mobile phones. It sounds a bit like pundits insisting that President Bush's actions should not be criticized until ten years out, at which time he will somehow look like a competent statesman.
There is no reason to believe that ten years will help the Zune, and no examples of any dinosaur needing ten years to take over a market. Microsoft took the graphical desktop market from Apple between 1990-1995, not by slowly taking Mac sales, but by expanding a larger market outside of Apple in the DOS PC market. It isn't doing anything similar here. Microsoft rapidly took the browser market from Netscape within a couple years 1996-1997.
Microsoft also talked about how PlaysForSure would rapidly take the iPod. It didn't. It started over with an incompatible version of the same technology, starting the clock back at zero while also competing against existing PlaysForSure devices.
How is it that "3% doesn't even matter" Apple rapidly earned a significant share in smartphones (27% in the US in its first quarter) on its first try, while monopolist Microsoft can't be expected to take more than a shred of a very specific market for "MP3 players using a hard drive"? Also note that if you reserve the right to define your own market, Apple has 100% worldwide market share for "mobile phones with more than 2GB of RAM."
iPhone Grabs 27% of US Smartphone Market
Again, I'm not sure where you're coming from, as your statement is at odds with the actual situation that's occurring. As of this writing, Zune models occupy the #1 (yeah, #1), #9, #16 and #20 slots in the Amazon top 100. This matches up with the NPD industry data (available via subscription only), which consistently shows that Microsoft has no problem keeping Zune models in the top ten.
This makes it sound as if there is data which puts the Zune in the current overall #1 position over the iPod by equivocating between the authoritative industry data (which non-subscribers conveniently cannot check, and presumably you can't give the actual position due to the terms of use) and the Amazon.com sales rank. Zune is #1 on Amazon in part because it is a cheap 30GB mp3 player, but chiefly because a lot of people buy them at the Apple Store.
Successful, yes, but not first place.
Thanks for being such a stereotype.
Thanks for being such a tool. Microsoft has lobbyists, the BSA, thousands of programmers, a bushel of Ph.D's, an Office monopoly, and an OS monopoly. Just why, exactly, should a rag tag band of volunteer programmers be judged by the same standards as a company with more money than god?
I don't get it. If your "friend"'s store doesn't see any demand, why did they order so many? Manufacturers can't stuff a channel on their own, a retailer has to place orders.
And we already know that iPod moves way more units than any other player, and indeed, all other players combined. You're not exactly stating something we don't already know.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Replace Apple with Sony and now youre talking about the original xbox.
No, you're not. Apple typically releases an updated version of one of it's products once a year, with a refresh about six months later. So even if they produce a shit sandwich or a competitor comes out with a killer new feature, they can recover within six months to a year. We've seen this with Nvidia and ATI - each company occasionally releases a lackluster product or gets leapfrogged by the other, but since the product cycles are so short they recover.
Whereas if you put out a console, you're singing on for at least five years. If you make a shit sandwich, you can't just change course midstream because no one will want to buy your next offering. There are also vastly higher development costs to pay off - Microsoft lost billions on the first Xbox, and Sony might loose billions on the PS3. With incremental updates, mp3 players don't run that kind of risk.
iTunes doesn't work with anything other than an iPod... but Windows Media Player will work with ANY device (except an iPod, of course, because Apple decided to cripple it in order to maintain their monopoly). Or I can use WinAmp. Or some other player, so long as it's not from the Apple monopoly.
Microsoft: because it's all about choice. Freedom, and choice. Ahhhh, you're blind. Microsoft is just as much after lock-in as Apple. Forget the past and present anti-trust problems that plague Microsoft... They support a multitude of devices not "because [Microsoft]s all about choice" (to quote you), but rather, they do it because their business model is just different than Apple's. Microsoft decided early on that it'd be better to let dozens of manufacturers fight over the music hardware market, and dozens of online retailers/labels fight over the music sales pie while controlling both markets from behind the scene. It was a good plan, but Apple destroyed it by sucking up nearly all of the market with a non-Microsoft system.
Instead of competing with retailers and manufacturers, Microsoft morphed Windows Media into a framework for them to license and use. You see, all the retailers would need a DRM scheme to effectively sell their music. This would then force all the device makers to choose some DRMs to support and effectively segment the market (market = money). DRM systems are complex to implement and require trust by both consumers and labels. With Windows being ubiquitous on Desktops worldwide, MS was positioned from the start to CONTROL the music/video market through Windows [Media Framework]. WMP supports WMA/V DRM, and since its present on 95% of computers in the world, device makers and retailers almost have to use it to hope to compete with the iTunes lock in.
Microsoft charges device manufacturers and retailers a licensing fee for each and every unit of WMA/V enabled product they ship. The rates are negotiated for each company of course, but are likely higher than the "suggested" sample rates on the Microsoft website. Using the sample rate, a company that offered 2 WMA enabled portable music players could pay $1,600,000 to Microsoft in fee's each year. On top of that, your device has to be "approved" by MS. This means it can't use open source software (even open source decoders or operating systems) and basically makes you pay to be Microsoft's bitch.
Now, after reading the preceding, do you still believe Microsoft is all about choice?? Perhaps you've drank too much corporate cool-aid? Microsoft designed their model around lock in too... it's just more subtle than Apple's model... and it's not even close to as profitable, hence the Zune! MS has now gone into the hardware space itself (a strange move for them considering how they've handled cell phones/Windows Mobile) in an attempt to get closer to an Apple-style lock-in model.
References:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/licensing/agreements.aspx
http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/0/1/d01ec2b5-a42f-4cef-ae27-123c02515fc7/WMDRM10_FinalProduct_v3-20-2006_Sample.pdf
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/zune-on-linux-done-kinda-219657.php
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
I'll never, ever, ever get an iPod. I'll be damned if I support the Apple monopoly.
Is that so? Does that mean you refuse to buy an Accord/Camry/Mustang/Buick/Charger/S-Class/Elantra/M3 because you refuse to support the Honda/Toyota/Ford/GM/Dodge/Mercedes/Hyundai/BMW monopoly? Or that you refuse to buy a PS3/360/Wii because you refuse to support the Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo monopoly? Every company has a "monopoly" on the brands they make.
Give it a shot, I wasn't expecting much, but if I was in the market for an ipod-type device, it'd probably get my bucks, simply because it has FM radio and I like the naviation.
All of the above relates to Zune 80. Flash Zunes look like crap and simply can't compete with cutesy flash iPods.
My point, which has been modded "troll" every time it's been mentioned, is that not having replaceable batteries, in even one of their many models, is the most egregious example of planned obsolescence in history.
And your post is the most egregious example of hyperbole in history. Is a GT Mustang a piece of shit because it doesn't seat eight passengers? Is a Dodge minivan a piece of shit because it only has 2,000 lbs towing capacity? Is a F-150 a piece of shit because it doesn't get 50 mpg? Is a Prius a piece of shit because it wont do zero to sixty in less than six seconds? Or should you just STFU and get the product that has the features you want?
The moral of the story: Apple made a design decision to go with a more solid, smaller device with a non(easily) replaceable battery. This is not a secret. If this doesn't work for you, then. don't. fucking. buy. one. you. whiny. bitch.
Roughly Drafted or "RDM" is just an anti-microsoft FUD/hate site- and not a very good one. Maybe while we are treating this like a legitimate news source on market share and consumer product succes, we should also get our racial demographic data from the Ku Klux Klan.
I don't care where you stand on Microsoft, legitimate news sources or experts only please.
I wouldn't be surprised if this article was written by someone at Apple. "Oh my god, the new Christian Evangelist Monthly is in and gay people are STILL going to Hell! Who would've thought??!"
Because that so-called 'rag tag band of volunteer programmers' is largely paid by Novell, Sun, Oracle, RedHat etc.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Citation, please?
how to invest, a novice's guide
Except that the Zune Marketplace is moving away from WMA in favor of MP3 (most songs are now DRM free MP3's). So yes the GP is correct: Zune is about choice.
I don't like iTunes either. I use Anapod Explorer (commercial). Some people like Rockbox (opensource, dual-boots to original firmware). I use Windows Explorer (Vista's Explorer has star ratings columns!) to manage my collection.
Nice article.
Too bad there isn't some betting pool where we can settle these disagreements about how well the Zune will do against the iPod this next year like gentleman. Oh wait, there is, the stock market. Let's see, Apple up 740% in the last few years, Microsoft up 13%? Hmm, what will this next year bring?
Really, Apple has a great platform with the Mac. If I was Apple, I would take a bit of the sizable amount of money now sitting in the bank and make small investments in Mac software firms. With the tremendous power of the modern PC, there must be a lot of applications possible now that haven't been created yet, and many which exist but could be improved in usability and performance.
And why stop there? Apple should establish a VC fund for developers who'd like to create innovative Mac software.
first, you're an idiot. If you google for "ipod battery replacement" you'll quickly find a site offering them for sale. On the site they show a video of someone using the tools they provide to open up an ipod, disconnect the battery, put in a new one and close it up. All in under 5 minutes. As for the size issue, I have an older 60GB ipod, and I DO wish it was a third of a cm thinner, or smaller. Plus having a sleek design is nice, not to mention that battery covers are just one more thing to loser or break.
Of course, the fact that this can be done is probably beyond your comprehension.
Phil
And even that's not true. I have a couple iTunes files that I play on WinAMP.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Sure worked out when you called the failure last time.
sigh... Microsoft is smarter than we think. If you've noticed they have a pretty attractive suite to go with the Zune which eliminates DRM problems at a relatively cheap price. With a Zune and $15/month you have easy unlimited music that practically never expires and re-attains licenses easily. Although I would have never bought a Zune, I have a Zune because they gave me one for free when they tried to get me to accept their job offer.
- Ryan
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux
http://www.novell.com/company/affiliations/
The earlier poster was in London. You can get pretty much any electronic device you want in Tottenham Court Rd.
I'm not sure whether you're trolling, or whether you're serious, but either way it's the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time.
http://image.blog.livedoor.jp/orcinus_/imgs/8/d/8d1bb555.png
That's not accurate. Apple changed the license on Leopard Server to allow it to run on an Apple Branded machine, in a virtual environment.
They have not changed the license for Leopard Client.
No thanks to Apple - the iPod is really unfriendly to third-party syncing solutions, apparently deliberately so.
Quick question Shark:
Is the NPD data US-specific?
I'm quite prepared to accept that the Zune may have on-target sales in the US (which goes to show not least that there's a real difference between PR Spin for the consumer market "It's an iPod killer!" and actual business objectives, which may only be to make a reasonable amount of cash, not be the world dominant device), but wonder whether that's the case for the much larger non-US market. Particularly the BRICs, who don't have so much of the incumbency factor and are expanding their consumer market like all crazy.
Caveat - anecdotal evidence coming up:
I'm in the UK, and have never seen a Zune on the street, or promoted in a general consumer magazine (either on its own, or in the peripherals market, where it's *all* "Radios with iPod Docks") as more than a one-off or on TV, or spotlighted in-store except as part of the "Oh, yes, we do have non-iPod MP3 players I suppose" range. I'm currently working in a very high profile media company, very style conscious. A fair number of colleagues have gone out (actually, rushed out) and bought iPod Touches/iPhones, some going as far as a special US trip to do so. Ain't *nobody* even talking about Zune.
And in 7 years, I think I've only talked to 2 people who bought a Creative device, both of whom went simple features comparison shopping, and now have both replaced it with an iPod of various sorts.
So, anyone with any solid UK sell-through data?
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
And your point is?
If you were to spend 10 years or so devoting your spare time to building a piece of software that was really good, and that people really wanted to use, a big corporation might find it worth their while to employ you as well. That way you'd be able to work on your hobby full time, and your software would evolve faster.
I don't see how that changes the nature of the undertaking in any significant way. And if you're trying to suggest that the resources spent on developing Linux are in any comparable to the those MS sunk into developing Vista, or even the 8 billion TFA tells us they burnt on their consumer electronics division ... well, you're
going to need a few more citations to establish your point, if that's the case.
I'm still not convinced about your use of the word "largely", either.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
I think your numbers are misleading. The Zune quickly got 9% of its market segment, which gave it second place after the iPod. A week later, it dropped to #5 or so again.
I think the Zune currently holds 10% of the HD based MP3 players ; unfortunately, most MP3 players sold are not HD based, so the number is pretty much meaningless.
I almost bought a mini, but two of the guys in the store *and* 3 other customers in the store all counseled against it because the specs on the machine were 'so weak'. "You can't do anything with it", "it's slow", were the types of comments we got from those people. And these were Apple loyalists.
My wife got a stock emac in nov 2003. 6 months later, when it was beach-balling every 5 minutes, I complained about it to some friends with Apple machines. "OMG, you can't run anything on that. *EVERYONE KNOWS* those low end emacs are horrible and slow as crap" and similar comments were what I received. This was with a machine that was less than a year old running up to date software.
If Apple cared about the user experience that much, they wouldn't sell any machines without the maximum amount of RAM possible. Buying a machine then being told you need to buy more stuff to make it 'run better' is the epitome of a 'bad user experience'. You can chalk it up to 'user choice' and all that, but not everyone buying a mac is an already-uber-tech-hipper-than-thou-mac-genius. Selling low end machines gives people a bad user experience regardless of the manufacturer.
creation science book
So?
What's the difference between getting a choice because it's forced due to market pressures, and getting a choice because the company decided to? To the consumer, it's completely moot - lots of companies support Microsoft technology, and only one supports Apple's. Now, after reading the preceding, do you still believe Microsoft is all about choice?? Well, you seem to have proved quite handily that if you pick a Microsoft format, you have buckets more choice than if you pick Apple - so yes. Whether it was their decision or not is irrelevant.
Good work on defeating that straw man, though.
Actually that is not quite correct. You can purchase a large quantity of DRM free mp3 songs from the Itunes store last I read it was over 2 million song (maybe up to approximatly half of the available music now) on itunes.
They used to be 30 cents more than a DRMed song, but now they are the same price (as of last month I believe)
And your point is?
That in itself just proves how Microsoft are failing, you can't compete with the competition unless you sell to all the markets they do.
Because that so-called 'rag tag band of volunteer programmers' is largely paid by Novell, Sun, Oracle, RedHat etc.
No, it isn't "largely paid by Novell, Sun, Oracle, or RedHat". Each of those companies contributes some work to key projects.
The enormous imbalance in resources for development and marketing between Microsoft and Linux remains, and hence, when two products by each group grow a the same rate, it's a failure for Microsoft and a success for Linux.
Over a year ago I had two friends at college who both owned Zunes and I'm from the UK, they also bought it from a normal high street store in a fairly small town
which product/company?
Just curious.
Bart
The Optimist: "This glass is half full."
;-)
The Pessimist: "This glass is half empty."
The Linguistics Student: "Damn, it's water."
I'm on the third side of the fence myself
and IS free if you already have a radio transmitter for BT or WiFi in there.
The N800 had a software update to add FM transmission. All the hardware needed was to be able to be tuned to ~100MHz.
But everyone know, the Ipod Nano is only for girls.
every fucking word this loon writes is insanely pro-apple fud or anti-microsoft crap dressed up as commentary. hes like the fucking fox news of it punditss. Heres one i found earlier:
Never even try to argue with roughlydrafted, he will crush you with his Apple Zeal. When you meet crazy people on the street carrying signs and placards explaining in great detail how the Clintons are in fact Lizard people from Venus here to suck our souls through the UN, don't even start reading the pamphlets. They will make a crazy kind of sense and suck you in because, let's face it, the Zealots have a lot of time to work on this garbage while you are out enjoying life. Same thing with roughlydrafted, just ignore it and eventually it will go away and bother someone else.
You post exemplifies why Microsoft is being lambasted. The product isn't THAT bad, but the corporation is totally screwing everything up about it. I take offense to the fact that they are merely clones of the last generation of iPods (with a pretty bad interface and font selection), but other than that, they are decent players. Only Microsoft could screw these things up this badly.
Like everything on RoughlyDrafted. Yes, it's a site I enjoy reading, and he's often had some insightful or amusing articles... but don't be confused it's a personal blog and as such is full of just opinions.
Now, before I continue; I would like to point out that I'm a happy 5G iPod owner (now renamed the "Classic"), and happy Mac owner... so I'm as Apple-centric as they come these days. I do like their products, and use them every day and am extremely happy with them.
However, I have to say that I disagree with the article. I think it's still too early to call the Zune a failure. The Zune's been out for a year. Look at the iPod sales figures for the first 3 years; they were miserable. They were an also-ran in a market that was eaten up by Diamond and Creative. Now, a part of this can be attributed to the Mac-only state of the 1G iPod for the first year... sales definitely accelerated after they went to Windows also... and the change to USB instead of Firewire opened it up a little more. However, the Zune's sales today are far outstripping the iPod even in its third year. Yes, the market's a lot larger, prices are a lot more reasonable and our lives as tech people have changed to include an MP3 player as an optional extra.
Now, I don't own a Zune, but I have used them. I play with a lot of tech stuff through friends and just because I want to, and I have to say that I didn't like the 1G Zune very much. However, their second attempt is MUCH better. The form factor's nicer, the interface is completely revamped and I am really quite impressed with the device now. That doesn't mean I'm going to run out and buy one though; I'm quite happy with my iPod, and it does everything I need it to do with aplomb. However, I used a new Zune recently when a friend loaned me his to check out at the gym. I have to say I was really impressed. The display was nice and clear, and much more readable than the rather pokey font used on the iPod. When selecting music, it worked fantastically well. Now, I've grown extremely accustomed to the click wheel so the Zune's control method seems a little clunky... but I have to say I thought the control method on the iPod was annoying at first and I still occasionally have issues with it's sensitivity.
Plus, during my workout I really appreciated the FM receiver. I have the FM receiver for the iPod as well, but it's rather annoying to have an extra length of cable hanging off the back of my iPod which I tend to leave wrapped up in the headphone loop on my case. I use the FM of my iPod often while working out when I get bored of the music or I just want to listen to NPR or the news or something. Having it integrated in such a small form factor is nice, though not a deal breaker for me since most of the time I listen to music or audio books.
Don't discount the Zune. I think it's really good competition for the iPod and will catch up quickly. In the US at least it's selling well, and the 2G is a huge improvement on the 1G. It's also fantastic to see that the 2G software is actually available for those who bought the 1G... for some reason that's something Apple has refused to do with their older iPods. For example, when exactly do you think Apple is going to release the iPod Classic software for my iPod Video? Despite the fact that the hardware's identical they're unlikely to release that since in some instances people are refusing to upgrade. I know I won't upgrade until I kill the hard drive in my iPod because I have no compelling need to... and though in my opinion the Classic software gives me nothing I need (coverflow is a nice idea, but impractical when you're running on a treadmill and trying to select a song or playlist) it's simply the prinicple of the thing.
they buy something [remember QDOS?] or rip it off [remember QuarterDeck?] and the product disappears [remember FrameMaker?] and that's how the big fish eats the little fish.
At no point in their entire history have Microsoft originated anything.
Original thought costs in dollars and costs in risk.
And Microsoft is the most risk-averse corporation in existence. That's why they buy politicians.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Because, as everyone knows, neither iTunes nor the iPod can play MP3s, so obviously Zune wins.
penetration. (dirty jokes aside)
I can see them working with OEMs on a promotion to GIVE away huge numbers of Zunes and even get buy in from their media partners (sort of "You tie one of her legs to your car's bumper, I'll get the other, then we'll step on the accelerators and make a wish.")
They are stuck on the desktop and now that their vision (of "A computer on every desktop") has been realized, by hook and by crook, (not 'or' but 'and') they are done. There is very little growth space left for Microsoft and they don't feel ready for the diminished activity of becoming a commodity.
Since they have always done things one way (buy and kill or buy and rebrand products) they are going to do that in the consumer/retail space, however they are going to come up short because the people who are BUYING the products are actually going to USE them, (unlike what originally happened with the PC.)
You have an entirely different mentality when its YOUR money that might be going up in smoke.
Business has lost trillions in lost productivity in IT alone since the early 80s, but its an acceptable loss because they are still showing an overall profit, mostly because of IT.
Consumers don't have profits.
Consumers have JOBS. That limits their income.
You can't afford to buy crap ONCE, never mind the usual three tries at a market that a perennial "also runner" like Microsoft takes. Since the market leaders keep moving the target, Microsoft CAN'T be a winner.
Being an "also runner" means you occupy "also runner" place and that certainly is not a big industrial campus in Redmond.
Its happened before and it will happen again. Its just that this time there are a couple more zeroes before the decimal place.
Microsoft will not be able to reform itself until someone like a Steve Jobs takes the helm of the much diminished corporation and gets hailed as a "turn-around king."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I detailed why Microsoft's iPod Killer would fail miserably
Zune 1 nor Zune 2 was ever positioned to be an "iPod killer".
Why Microsoft Failed Last Year.
It didn't. It beat Microsoft's projected sales estimates.
The wrong business strategy
This isn't even conjecture as you don't provide one piece of information for your guess.
Microsoft was rumored to deliver a product that, true to its roots, ignored usability...
How did the 2nd gen Zune team ignore usability?
The wrong service: despite the repeated failure of subscription-based rental music services...
Zune Markeplace is NOT a rental service, rather, it has the option of a rental service. Actually, there are more tracks available if you opt for the buy route.
Today's Zunes claim to uniquely provide wireless sync, but they require being plugged in order to do this!
False. You only have to plug it in for initial setup.
After that last one, I see my efforts are probably futile. As the GP alluded to, you have no journalistic integrity.
Holy cow... Just yesterday I read a post by some guy ranting about how everyone keeps yelling "straw man" at every damn argument, and I ignored it because that argument was legitimately about whether or not the post was a straw man. This, however, has nothing to do with straw men... it's not about any of MS's claims. That guy was right!
The idea that MS is about "choice, Freedom, and choice" is just ridiculous. (I do not mean to defend Apple by that statement.) Freedom? They created an interoperable DRM system so that you could choose which vendor you could pay to defeat your fair use rights. Selecting your slavery is not "Freedom". Strike one. Furthermore, when MS introduced their own player, they brought with it an incompatible DRM system so that Zune customers could no longer choose to play songs from other vendors. MS customers are not free to buy songs from other vendors. Strike two against "Freedom" and choice.
Pretend I'm functionally illiterate and couldn't find a single statistic on either page that supported your assertion that most F/OSS hackers are in the employ or under contract to IBM, Novell, Sun, Red Hat, or other large businesses. No one disputes that those companies contribute to development of F/OSS. What leads you to believe that those companies contribute more to F/OSS than individuals do on their own, and how do you measure that?
how to invest, a novice's guide
It seems to me that the HDMI interconnected xbox and the bundled deals couldn't have possibly been 'sitting in the channel' for the last year because they're newer than that. There seems to be a bit of disconnect between what you seem like your saying and what you're actually saying. You don't seem to be making any specific claim against NPD, only against Microsoft's numbers. I'm not sure what xbox 360 channel stuffing has to do with Microsoft stumbling in the DAP market.
I'm not even sure what conclusion is to be drawn from the implication they've done the same thing with their DAP. Aside from 'Micro$oft is evil', which is something you don't need to do a whole lot of research to discover as truth. The fact you've such deep seated emnity towards Microsoft seems more than a little neurotic. I mean "Zoon" award? Just... wow.
Other things about your piece seem suspect. For example, you dismiss the flash Zune as 'non-competing' against the nano without any real argument one way or the other. Seems pretty critical to the whole piece as you conjecture that Apple's warpath consists of shoving 'cheap' players down everyone's throat for christmas. The iPod certainly is thinner, but I think player dimensions are beyond academics when both will fit into a child's pocket with ease. I don't think there is any way to give either player ground in terms of aesthetics, outside appealing to one's superior sense of taste. The software ecosystem for the zune is flat out better than iTunes on Windows.
I really think this time around the Zune's market failure can be primarily attributed to Apple's marketing genius and inertia. As a device, they're near equals. Outside the touch, of course. And it strikes me as a bit pear shaped. A whole lot of interface, not so much storage. I think it is safe to say coverflow is a bit gimmicky too. Not sure how useful browsing the web on your DAP is, anyway.
I read the tech rags pretty religiously and I never saw any article claiming Microsoft 'rigged' a WSJ poll. If that's independent research on your part, it doesn't look so good. It seems like a bizzare, irrational and futile act. If microsoft wanted positive press, they'd simply stuff the right pockets.
I really think you claiming the iPhone is cheaper than mobiles based on the anemic base plan it comes with is a bit disingenious. I don't talk on the phone much and I burn through ~350 minutes in a month. I imagine the 60 USD base plan with 450 minutes doesn't hold water with a lot of folks. T-mobile, for example, gives you 1000 minutes with their 60 USD blackberry plan.
You're the reason companies keep doing it.
The enormous imbalance in resources for development and marketing between Microsoft and Linux remains, and hence, when two products by each group grow a the same rate, it's a failure for Microsoft and a success for Linux.
... and further validation for Fred Brooks. Small pools of talented, passionate individuals working in loose coupling will always prevail over a top- and bottom-heavy development structure without room for unchecked innovation. An excellent singular vision is almost always preferable to the designed-by-committee approach that Microsoft has perfected.
BTW, iTunes works fine with any Mass-Storage based music player. You don't get all the same features, but you can just drag your playlist right onto your music player's folder :)
Was that wry humor that I'm not getting? Or just a very dumb comment?
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV...
Grab the latest changelog from a kernel - say 2.6.24-rc3: http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/ChangeLog-2.6.24-rc3
Count the "Author:" lines in that file. Out of 204 unique entries, 17 is from IBM, 7 is from RedHat, 5 is from Suse and 5 is from Oracle.
You state that the kernel developers are largely from these corporations. I make that only 16.6%. Not only are you sorely wrong - why you post gained +5 insightful is beyond me.
OMG! SAY IT AIN'T SO!
As much as I dislike Microsoft, I have had a Zune for 8 months or so. It is big, clunky, and problematic. It has some good sides, like being able to read subtitles on movies, and decent memory, file compression, and the radio. However, it has problems that far outweigh the benefits. Things like software crashes when the headphone jack becomes unplugged halfway. Granted, if it happens all the way, it pauses for you, but the likelihood of that is slim. (The best MP3 player I have ever used was a Sansa e280. Did all the same things as the zune (minus wireless) and was the size of a Ipod nano) Microsoft is (in my opinion) overreaching itself. Stick to one or two things that they are good at, and do them exclusively. Apple does Ipods and computers, not too much with the hardware. I have never heard of it doing servers, mice, or otherwise. Microsoft has done OSs, Multimedia players (zune), mice, keyboards, entire systems with nothing but the CPU not Microsoft. They should do like Harley-Davidson and try to do one thing well, instead of twenty acceptably.
Maybe the device itself support open(ish) formats, but the sync features on the device are specific to itunes and 3rd party software which has reverse engineered itunes sync methods. It'll be a wonderful day when all PMPs appear as vanilla USB attached storage formated in an OS agnostic filesystem.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
2 Million drm free of 50 million total tracks does not one half make... Zune market place also has drm free mp3 tracks, I'm not sure what percentage of their tracks are available like that, but a quick browse seems to indicate a large percentage.
-*The above statement is printed entirely on recycled electrons*-
Umm, what? An iPod will take any MP3 you throw at it. Yeah, they can have their own DRM, but they work with DRM-free recordings just fine. Who is crippling whom?
He's correct though, the iPod is pretty much the only music player out there that doesn't support Windows Media files. Of course, you probably don't care, as I don't either, as Microsoft's DRM is as useless to me as Apple's DRM.
I asked - his reply: Many times retailers will take large allotments of some slow selling product if they can get preferential delivery on hot-selling product. In addition large retailers can get "promotional funds" in exchange for carrying said product. The Zune shipments do not match Zune demand. There are daily reports on how much product sits on store shelves and how much sits in warehouses. If a product is hot, then the in-transit numbers tend to be high, while carryover numbers being low or zero. Zune carryover is much higher than ipod carryover. And flames in 3-2-1-
There is no security when liberty is sacrificed.
When the Beatles released their split single of Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane in 1967, they both went on the charts as "A" sides. So, the sales of this one 45 single were split between the two songs. As a result Engelbert Humperdink beat them at the top and they missed haveing a number one for the first time in years.
In this analogy, Apple might be the Beatles (of cource) and Microsoft is Engelbert Humperdink (no offence).
Isn't that interesting?
(Sorry, my six-year olds won't stop playing the Beatles lately.)
Being one of the two moderators who deemed the GP worthy of a +1 insightful, allow me to elaborate:
No, the GP never made such claims. The GP however rejected the widespread myth that Linux is created by a rag tag band of volunteer programmers.
Figuring out who's behind the contributions is no easy task and requires a lot of digging, a quick scan of the changelog won't provide you with any trustworthy numbers.
Actual numbers are few and far between, but back in February LWN.net conducted a study "Who wrote 2.6.20?" and dared - after some hesitation - to conclude that:
--Taagehornet
Oh, the moderation got stripped anyway, so there's no point in hiding behind Mr Anonymous Coward, so allow me to repost unmasked:
Being one of the two moderators who deemed the GP worthy of a +1 insightful, allow me to elaborate:
No, the GP never made such claims. The GP however rejected the widespread myth that Linux is created by a rag tag band of volunteer programmers.
Figuring out who's behind the contributions is no easy task and requires a lot of digging, a quick scan of the changelog won't provide you with any trustworthy numbers.
Actual numbers are few and far between, but back in February LWN.net conducted a study "Who wrote 2.6.20?" and dared - after some hesitation - to conclude that:
"Microsoft has always had ace hardware. They should really concentrate on what they do well, ie. hardware."
Like keyboards which fail after six months or mouses which won't last a year?
I've got enough those, how many do you want? Broken, of course.
Even cheap Keytronic-clones are working many years longer. Logitech is the way to go if you want a decent mouse. Has been that way at least from late 1980's.
...and hates it. She complains about the interface to the unit itself, hates playlists, as well as the interface to the computer - the Zune software. She despises the fact that the Zune software indexes and imports whatever it finds and that she can't delete media from the Zune outside of the PC-ased Zune software. In her opinion the no-name, cheap-ass, 1g flash-based MP3 player she won in a company raffle vastly outperforms her Zune in every way that matters to her, namely; she can manage it on a filesystem level when she plugs it into her PC, there is no DRM so she can listen to her e-books, and she does't have to learn a new software interface just to use it. As far as she's concerned, it's a drive letter when she plugs it in and everything she puts there, she can listen to when she unplugs it. When the Zune behaves like that, it'll be viable. Until then, it's junk.
Future events such as these may affect you in the future!
This article is a bit more relevant to what you're looking for I think. Their figures point to only between about one fifth to one third of Linux kernel development (just one piece of the OSS pie of course) being done by actual unpaid volunteers.
I don't know, are you in the habit of missing the blatantly obvious?
And your point is largely a red herring because that support is a drop in the bucket next to the money and resources Microsoft spends on Windows. And Linux is still a volunteer movement - support from IBM is just gravy on top, not necessary for it's existence. Unless you have evidence that most kernel code comes from IBM, you're just making a lame attempt at misdirection.
well, lets get one thing clear. its just that /.er just want to target anything out from MS. zune is not a ipod killer, but its not a failure either. Its not bulky, it has a larger screen. Now how do you get it smaller, you just dont want ipod shuffle. Dont compare apples with oranges. Big size is a + from MS and not a -. Now if you want a smaller player, you can go for shuffle.. and not a 80gig ipod. Also lets not compare ipod touch. Its only 8 or 16gigs... leave out nano's as MS just entered into flash player market.. so lets stick to 30/80 gigs ipod classics vs zunes...
Zune allows more customizations to your player than the ipod. The new software on the PC end is much more better than itunes IMPO. Ipod has an edge as it has a bigger 160gb model, but zune has integrated radio. Now I donot understand why apple cannot integrate radio into ipod. Well it would increase the size maybe.. and why apple doesnt offer bigger screens.. again increase in size.. you need to look for market needs. yes zune is not a overnight hit as most teenagers do not want bulky player, but some people like me who like bigger screens and a radio go for zune. I did buy zune over ipod, not because it was cheaper, but it offered a bigger screen (I know that the resolution is the same) and a radio with rds.
Apple is a hardware company and MS is software.. again apples and oranges.. ;)... I love oranges. !!...
I beg to differ. If you read the above sentence again, you see that the GP clearly states that these programmers are largely paid by a set of large corporations.
An interesting read, but his conclusion assumes that the developers in the "Unknown" category are all paid contributers. The editor also makes no distinction between actual kernel code and driver code, where companies have a natural interest (hp, broadcom etc.). The editor also makes no (nor can he) distinction between which lines of code are actually "work time" code and which code is "this is cool - let me work more on this on my spare time" code. Trying to determine a persons motive from an email-address is at best hard.
The assumption you and the GP also makes is that this ratio has been there since 1.0 in 1993. This is clearly false. The 2.6.20 patch did not make the kernel what it is today. A lot of voluntary work did that.
well, lets get one thing clear. its just that /.er just want to target anything out from MS. zune is not a ipod killer, but its not a failure either. Its not bulky, it has a larger screen. Now how do you get it smaller, you just dont want ipod shuffle. Dont compare apples with oranges. Big size is a + from MS and not a -. Now if you want a smaller player, you can go for shuffle.. and not a 80gig ipod. Also lets not compare ipod touch. Its only 8 or 16gigs... leave out nano's as MS just entered into flash player market.. so lets stick to 30/80 gigs ipod classics vs zunes... Zune allows more customizations to your player than the ipod. The new software on the PC end is much more better than itunes IMPO. Ipod has an edge as it has a bigger 160gb model, but zune has integrated radio. Now I donot understand why apple cannot integrate radio into ipod. Well it would increase the size maybe.. and why apple doesnt offer bigger screens.. again increase in size.. you need to look for market needs. yes zune is not a overnight hit as most teenagers do not want bulky player, but some people like me who like bigger screens and a radio go for zune. I did buy zune over ipod, not because it was cheaper, but it offered a bigger screen (I know that the resolution is the same) and a radio with rds. Apple is a hardware company and MS is software.. again apples and oranges.. ;)... I love oranges. !!...
As long as they don't start putting "Designed by Apple in Steve Jobs' heart chakra"...
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Hello from Seattle. My name is Fax Headroom, and I'm being held captive on this hard drive. . .Written in California, awaiting the Big Juan, when everything east of the Colorado River slides into the Atlantic Ocean...Lorenzo
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
Two months ago my local Office Despot (So Cal) was closing out all Zune accessories at 75% off. Heading for the exit? If OD doesn't know the trend, who does? Hello from Seattle, Goodbye Kitty in So Cal. . .Lorenzo
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.