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Heavily Discounted Zune Outpacing iPod Sales
firegate writes "Yahoo Tech is reporting that the Microsoft Zune, having been heavily discounted for the holiday season, 'is currently Amazon's top-selling music player, beating out the new iPod Nano and the 80GB iPod on the 'Bestsellers in Electronics' list.' An Associated Press report even indicates that the Zune's newfound popularity has left it in short supply, sold out in many locations. Is this a sign that a true competitor, from Microsoft no less, has finally broken into the Apple-dominated MP3 player market? And will this spell more success for Windows-media based music subscription services like Napster?"
The first iteration of the Zune hardware wasn't as bad as the press said it was. Nobody forced you to buy brown. Note: the computer press is worse than the game review press. They're ignorant and like to jump on bandwagons. See what Udolpho says about them on Windows Fucking Vista.
The old Zune software was bad. In my opinion, it was iTunes-for-Windows level bad. The new Zune software is much nicer than the old Zune software or iTunes. (iTunes is rotten software, too, smearing the desktop with its links every time it updates itself, and trying to get you to install other products like Safari and Quicktime with each security patch.)
The new Zune software is really wonderful. It's one of the best pieces of software I've seen in some time. Microsoft's Allchin has better magic than Steve Jobs, any day. Further the Zune's killer feature is its subscription service, which doesn't get nearly enough play. Do you hear about any of this from the computer press? No, because they suck. See above.
The Zune players themselves are very good and priced quite competitively compared to ipods. The video screens are very nice for watching videos. Unless you are a semi-serious computer user, however, you will have trouble converting your own videos to make them playable. (I recommend the free Encode360 software.) Also, the Zunes are not bright and shiny. They're the sort of device a straight male doesn't mind carrying around.
... incompatible Zune and Xbox mediaMicrosoft doesn't have any position to leverage. It can't make hardware that works, can't sell it at a profit, can't sell downloads, and still seems to think rental music will somehow take off after ten years of failure in the market. On top of that, it has lost its leadership position in desktop operating systems, lost its effort to monopolize server operating systems, and can't make money in any new markets, including search. Wow. You need some anger management counseling. I thought we were talking about Zunes in this thread, and you tuned it into an MS obit. Dude, from your site (roughlydrafted) and from your posts it's clear that you're a blind Apple/Steve Jobs devotee. That's great -- to each his own. But what's with the obsessive compulsive MS-bashing, and shameless twisting of facts to do so? Why don't you just suck Steve Job's dick and get it over with?
The Zune looks like a 1965 Artists concept of a 1985 portable radio - in Uzbekistan. Of course, looking like a festered, crusty, oozing zit wouldn't hurt it (might even be a fashion statement) if it were more functional and had more useful features than the competition. It isn't and doesn't. It may someday be the leading not-an-iPod. There's a distinction. Only doctored statistics with data editing after the fact will ever show Zune leading iPod in anything except possibly dust-collection on blister packs, and number and size of discounts.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.