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Microsoft To Exit the Zune Business?
thefickler writes "According to Microsoft's quarterly filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Zune platform experienced a revenue drop of 54 percent, or $100 million. This compares to relatively healthy sales of the iPod, which were up 3 percent in the same period (though revenue did drop by 16 percent). Obviously, with the recent job cuts at Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, pundits are wondering how soon until the Zune also gets the chop. As one pundit wrote: 'Microsoft, by now, should be realizing that it's never going to be as "cool" as Apple, so why waste its time with the Zune where it has no competitive advantage?'"
Steve Ballmer saying "squirt".
Heckuva marketing slogan, that one.
No sig today...
the "suddenoutbeakofcommonsense" tag
Just because not everybody wants to be "cool"? I don't want "cool" things. I hate the ipod (I got one as a gift a while back) and I hated it to death, so i kept using my Creative instead. I dislike OSX and macs and use mine only as a test machine. I don't own and don't plan to get a iPhone. So there is a marked for a not dumbed doen uncool things. Sure, they are not as profitable, but it's all about the choice. That said, I'm happy about my creative Stone, so I don't plan to get e Zune either.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
It's fairly easy to see why the Zune failed.
1. A mammoth uphill struggle to beat the popular and well-established iPod (as well as many other competitors)
2. The use of DRM.
3. The use of the word "squirt." Which is easily associated with bodily functions.
4. It came in brown. Which made "squirt" all the more obnoxious.
5. The lock-up issue.
No-one will miss it...
All of this (the article and our posts) are speculation, so as long as we are guessing/gossiping/conjecturing, etc.
Microsoft has indicated that they would prefer less manufacturers and models of Windows mobile based phones, so they can make the OS more tightly integrated with the hardware. There have also been rumors that Zune functionality would be folded into the phone, which tends to make sense. So my guess would be they gracefully lose, er...bow out to the iPod and say they are "providing a great combination to their customers by putting the Zune features into the phone."
no comment
Just rename it the iZune, eZune, or better yet, the ieZune...slap a Vista Capable sticker on it and it can't help selling like hotcakes!
*crickets chirping*
Well, then again, maybe not.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Nobody except this guy:
http://sydfish.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/zune-tattoo.jpg
Oh, now I see why it failed...
No sig today...
Yet the Harvard grad is following the standard Wall Street pattern of layoffs to bolster stock price. If the Wall Street methods aren't discredited by the crash - apparently Balmer missed it.
The Zune will never be a solid competitor - and innovation has been stifled by the idiots in charge.
Worms and trojans and botnets are the legacy of that kludge Windoze.
It would be awesome if the open source Rockbox media player firmware was ported to the Zune and could use the "squirt" hardware, but without that nasty DRM.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
especially when it was never sold outside of North America.
If it was such a world beating innovative 'must have' then it should have been available worldwide.
The writing was even on the wall from day 1. What marketing droid said 'sell it in Brown'? Duh?
Then came all the recent lockups.
Come on Microsoft, put the injured beast out of its misery.
And while you are doing that, have another long hard think about launching a DRM crippled Music Download service.
Many of us Elephants have long memories. Does 'Plays for Sure' ring any bells?
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
It's more about making products people want to buy. How many people really want to buy Microsoft products anymore? When was the last time we heard about people lining up to buy the latest version of Windows? The problem for Microsoft is that it has a hard time making products that excite the vast majority of the public, and they've had a few huge mistakes in public perception lately. The Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death was a just a debacle. They shipped a Zune that was less feature-filled than the then current iteration iPod. Don't get me started on Vista, "Vista Capable," and "Vista Ready," or whatever those stupid stickers said.
Sure, Apple products are cool, but they also work pretty well. Why Microsoft didn't look to Apple's or it's own playbook and more closely linked the Zune to the Windows environment is beyond me. This worked for years with Explorer.
Seriously, Xbox games are "cool." I have an original Xbox, and I have been giving Microsoft my $$$ for several years now for my Xbox Live membership. However, I'm just too stingy to give my money to Microsoft for an Xbox 360 after all the hoopla about failure rates. The race to beat Sony to the market was a failure of vision and an appreciation of paradigm shift. There was a huge market for casual gaming that just wasn't going to be satisfied by the first-person shooter, and Nintendo was able to capture it. We can chalk that up to a happy accident for Nintendo executives, but so what?
If a company tries to be all things to all people, it will be unable to do everything as well as companies that are smaller, more focused, or more nimble. Look at General Motors as example number one. Consumers have too much access to information and too many choices. The problem with Microsoft's executive leadership is that the strategic steps they take are, primarily, reactions to market forces. Then, they are placed in the position of having to respond. Why didn't anyone at Microsoft see that Netbooks might one day become popular and have a version of Vista which would run on them? No one? How long was Intel working on the Atom?
Microsoft stocks are, historically, looking pretty affordable right now, but I'm going to wait. I just don't see any game changing ideas coming out of Redmond. Until, as a company, it starts doing something much better than the competition, it will never rise to its former glory days, and its market share and/or profits will continue to decline.
Make love, not reality television.
In a bid to win back profits after huge layoffs worldwide, Microsoft UK has launched Zune MusicTurd(tm) for mobile phones.
The highly competitive music store offers tracks at twice the price, DRM-locked to a chosen individual ear of the purchaser. If they can get it to work with their phone. Microsoft were careful to point out to the financial press that charging your account, however, works perfectly and that the helpline number has been connected to a fax machine.
Microsoft is confident the MusicTurd(tm) service will attract millions of people who will buy tracks from them to play on one mobile ever, not transferable to any other device including the same phone's replacement, in preference to stores offering cheaper unlocked MP3s, and won't just drive people to filesharing networks, MP3 blogs or copying 500 gigabyte USB disks full of music from their friends in sheer disgust at these corporate tools.
"We understand that lots of people use telephones they carry around with them these days," said Hugh Griffiths, Microsoft UK head of Mobile, "and you can even play music on them. A bit like a transistor radio. Whatever will they think of next! So if we get the consumer interest, we'll offer an enhanced version, MusicTurd(tm) Polished(tm). Like we're doing with Windows 7. You can't expect it to be any good until the third version, of course. So buy the first two and it'll be fantastic. Trust us on this. We have hundreds of loyal suck, er, customers on the MSN website, I'm sure we can squeeze them until the pips rattle.
"What do you mean, I'm lacking enthusiasm for our product? You'd think I was trying to get redundancy in the next round of layoffs or something. Ha! Ha! What a ridiculous notion."
[Read the original interview. Least enthusiastic marketer in history. It was quite hard to outdo.]
[Oh, and have a Zune-Anus logo.]
http://rocknerd.co.uk
It doesn't really matter what the market share is compared to what the costs versus revenue the thing is bringing in. OK, with sales that low compared to the iPod it might not be all that great, but there are niche products with lousy market share that have good returns. So that's the real question and the one that the business decision makers at MS will be examining.
'Microsoft, by now, should be realizing that it's never going to be as "cool" as Apple, so why waste its time with the Zune where it has no competitive advantage?'"
What are you talking about? The Windows platform was never cooler than Apple's but did Microsoft quit the PC business just because Apple's product was way cooler? No! They should keep hammering on until the market goes their way.
We've seen the same trend when it comes to their IIS web server vs Apache and the rest, Windows Live vs Google/Yahoo.
The battle is on for Silverlight/Moonlight vs Flash, and XPS vs PDF.
Microsoft should not just give up. Wars are never won by giving up battles here and there. They are won when the smarter adversary opens up new fronts with better targeted resources.
A better question is, why waste time reading an article that has half the story. What sort of "pundit" makes predictions based on that sort of information? The entire thing hinges on PROFIT, which is skillfully avoided throughout that piece. Assumably, this isn't an xbox situation, surely these devices are not being sold at a loss.
I record my sleeptalking
...if they'd actually sold the damn things outside of North America. Serves you fucking right Microsoft!
Why not compare revenue to revenue, or sales to sales?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
They killed the brand with a massive fault and the bad publicity surrounding it. Nothing else in Zune's history needed to happen to justify scrapping the brand, just like nothing else needed to happen for IBM's Deskstar brand to be sold off after it became known as Deathstar.
The entire Entertainment and Devices Division is going to get a massive house cleaning.
Zune hardware is the first step. It's the easiest to kill off. How much of stand alone portable music player market there will be in five years when so many people are starting to use their cellphones makes just throwing in the towel on the Zune hardware an obvious choice.
Killing off the eight year long Xbox fiasco is next. Microsoft has been consistently killing off or letting go first party developers for the past couple of years. The first party developers are now done to only Rare, Lionhead, and Turn 10. Not the actions of company looking long term to still be in the console market. Other none developer Xbox staff at Microsoft got axed in the recent layoffs and there is supposed to be even more dramatic changes and cuts coming soon.
So far the two Xbox products have racked up over 8 billion in losses over 8 years. Even with the poorly designed and manufactured Xbox 360 hardware Microsoft is still losing money three years into the consoles life. The Entertainment and Devices Division only barely made a tiny profit for 2008 due to absurd accounting games like having the profitable Microsoft Mac software unit placed in the Xbox's division to help hide the hardware losses.
The days of Microsoft being willing to just keep throwing money at the Xbox fiasco are coming to an end. The remaining first party studios should be gone by this year going by the rate they've been closing down or letting go their other studios. The 2 to 3 billion minimum it would take to create another Xbox isn't going to happen. Instead Microsoft will just let the Xbox die out in the market over the next couple years and milk as much money as they can out of the suckers willing to keep paying 50 dollars a year for online gaming.
I read this story. Then it occurred to me that I have never ever seen a "Zune" in the wild. I didn't even know what it's catchy logo was. I mean I had a complete blank on this brand.
So I head over to the Zune.net site. I'm having a hard time believing that pathetic site is the suppose to be a hip trendy site. I'm also stunned at how UGLY that device is.
I'm no graphic/industrial artist but I'm 100% positive I could come up with a better logo and device form factor than this.
Did I mention that it's F-UGLY.
MS what were you thinking when you green lighted this thing?
Yah can it. Just admit it you stuffed this up and move on.
It was doomed from the start and here is why. Most MS products do not stand on their own. They are either riding on someone's coattails initially or shoved down people's throats (e.g. DOS and office and explorer). This is usually through corporate sales which a bribeable. Zune had to stand on it's own but had no legs.
I don't see what anyone could possibly think was wrong with the Zune logo.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Aside from Windows on consumer PCs (which includes gaming PCs), Microsoft's consumer-facing businesses have either lost tons of money or have broken even.
What keeps Microsoft as a going concern is its enterprise customers. Businesses are generally slow to adopt new technology (there are exceptions, of course), and Microsoft has benefited from that fact. With Windows, Office, Exchange, SQLServer, ActiveDirectory, Sharepoint, IE-only intranet applications, not to mention the large number of Windows-only speciality applications, etc, they are firmly entrenched in the enterprise.
However, once somebody offers an affordable, standards-compliance, and possible open-source Exchange + ActiveDirectory alternative to small and medium sized businesses, then Microsoft's enterprise business will start to get chizelled away.
This space left intentionally blank.
It's the very nature of Microsoft to sink tons of money into hopeless ventures and to compensate for the losses by axing some of their coolest projects and some of their best-motivated workforce. Remember the closure of Bungie Studios (Halo series) and the ACES tream (Flight Simulator series).
So they're effectively shooting themselves into both feet.
I like it!
And as cherry topping to the Zune's EOB they need to shutdown their DRM servers along with it...
What would again prove that they do not get how to deal with customers directly.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I presume you missed this.
The idea of the original posting that since MS "only" sold $100M of the devices last year they'll leave the market? Or is it that they'll leave the market because the successful iPod line is eating their lunch? Or is is because we all agree the Zune isn't "cool"?
MS has many lines of business that are under $100M in annual revenue, yet they continue on in those markets, despite not being #1 - I'm thinking keyboards, mice, MS Home Server, etc.
The Zune is a fine piece of hardware, despite the recent bru-ha-ha over the particular model that couldn't handle leap year, and I suspect that MS will lower their investment in Zune hardware development, focus on differentiation on the software side, and (likely) focus on the "self-ripped" MP3 market (as opposed to the $0.99 per-song download market.
A $100M revenue company selling MP3 devices that are tailored to the Windows platform should be a no-brainer, and I believe MS will turn it around. Having said that, my family has all iPods, despite most of our computers running windows...
Ken
If MS really wants to go for it, they have enough cash to ride out any downturn. They can re-tweak the Zune design till it clicks with the public.
This happened before with Windows CE and Palm. Palm had a solid lock on the handheld market, but MS kept dogging them, and Palm kept screwing up, till MS overtook them in the market.
This discussion sounds like pure pundit BS. I still find it hard to believe that MS chose to lay off staff, with all the money they have laying around. 'Tis the season, I guess.
I have had both a Zune 80 and an iPod (also 80gb), and i have to say that hands down i prefer the zune. The Zune has everything that the ipod does, plus a bigger screen, wifi (with all it's benefits like sending songs and syncing wirelessly)better battery life, and FM radio support. Seeing as the zune and ipod are the same price, why WOULDN'T you pick the zune?
To argue both sides here, there are some drawbacks... i am not the biggest fan of the Zune software, although i have successfully gotten mine to sync with Songird, so that eliminates the software aspect of it. However, because this has only worked on windows for me (and the zune software only works on windows) it can only sync with windows, which puts a damper on me because i am a mac/linux kinda guy...
All in all, i think the zune is great and while microsoft has not done a lot to press it, it could become a massive competitor to the ipod... provided microsoft is willing to spend some of it's billions of dollars on marketing the damn thing...
Everybody is all excited about Windows7 and how it's going to be so much better than Vista. So maybe they could try slapping a Windows7 capable sticker on the Zune, or rename it Zune7.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
I can't imagine what it must be like to work in the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft knowing that all your efforts are going to nothing more than playing accounting games to hide the Xbox disaster.
It is staggering to grasp the magnitude of the Xbox diaster when you look at it:
* Over 4 billion dollars in losses on the first Xbox hardware
* Mac Business Unit moved into the Xbox division to cover up the losses
* Absolute worst and cheapest console hardware ever created with the Xbox 360
* Online fees for everyone playing online games effectively adding 50-150 dollars in extra revenue per console
* Three years on the market
And the E&D division still was only able to post a relatively tiny profit for 2008. Take away the profitable Mac Business Unit, the Xbox online fees, and other profitable parts of the E&D division and the Xbox 360 hardware is obviously still generating huge losses.
I will admit, I own a Zune. I got an 8GB model for Christmas this year (and yes, that is what I asked for). I have used iTunes (my Mother in law has an iPod) and the Zune software. I found the Zune software much more user friendly than iTunes and less bloated. The hardware seems solid, it has fast response, is easy to navigate, and good sound quality. I would be sad to see Microsoft drop the Zune line.
Too many people in the world are oblivious to the fact that there are other options except for an iPod. My wife has a 5 year old Creative Zen 8GB (HD based) that still works fine, and for Christmas she got a 16GB xFi model. We are happy with them. I just with more people would give them a chance.
I think the thing Apple really got right with the iPod is the marketing, and ease of buying songs (though the Zune market place is easy also, and you can buy songs from the Zune if you have WiFi setup on it). I do not think the controls are anything revolutionary, as Creative had a similar control theme before Apple. However, I think that iPod is as synonymous with MP3/portable media players as the name Xerox is with copiers (or at least used to be). I think over time it will change to where the iPod is no longer the dominant player, but it will take time.
Seriously, I've been amazed at watching the ipod over the years. They came up at 40 gig and it was quite remarkable. I bought an 80 gig model about 2 years ago when they had introduced those. But now you go to the stores and it's hard to buy a classic. They are pushing the nano.
That's usually the first sign of a product hitting it's peak in the business cycle. When they stop caring about the consumer, and start pushing the models which have the highest profit.
If I were MS, I'd stay in this market. Apple hasn't changed the ipod fundamentally since they introduced the color screen and videos.
Why can I buy 8 gig of microSD card for £30 but no manufacturer will sell me an mp3 player with 8 gig more capacity for £30 more? Is there a reason for this? Or are they just fixing prices.
Hey, MS - try this out for size!
The next time you want to release a product in a market already saturated by a single large a and very popular competitor, try competing not on the coolness factor but on price/performance. You know, make the product "cheaper" with the same or better "features". If you can't do that, perhaps you don't have a value proposition to offer your potential customers. And if so, you shouldn't be surprised when they buy your competitor's product.
I know, sucks when you have to compete in a fair and free market - don't it?
"Gee, gone so zune?"
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
It sounds like the entire E&D division is going to have a massive shakeup.
Zune hardware will get killed off and the software will move into Windows Mobile.
Xbox hardware won't get killed off right away but all investment in the platform is at an end. Microsoft will finish shutting down the remaining internal dev studios and continue to reduce Xbox staff while trying to keep up the illusion they are sticking around in the console market so they keep as many people paying online fees as possible over the next couple years as the 360 dies out in the market.
Windows Mobile is now the main focus with massive pressure to come up with something to publicly show after falling so terribly behind the past couple years. Mobile phone makers are rapidly standardizing on Android if you look at the release plans for 2009 and the massive number of Android based phone coming out.
Robbie Bach will most likely be gone sometime in 2009 with most of E&D shut down leaving pretty much just the WinMo stuff merged with Zune and as much of the Xbox mess migrated over to Microsoft's PC gaming efforts with a focus on Vista/Win7 exclusives.
They have always said that the Zune was a "long term Strategy". The biggest reason their sales are down is because of last years 30GB zune Price chopping. Even CNet said that they met their internal numbers. Fact is that Microsoft isn't trying to replace the ipod, and even if they are, so what? at least Apple has a competent competitor for their products instead of just a bunch of $29.99 Coby MP3 crappers from walgreens.
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
That means Microsoft have not only managed to damage to MP3 market to the extent that Apple "won", but now they're dropping out too. If I weren't convinced they were just short-term reactionary fools I would believe they had it planned all along.
What am I going on about? Well, you see, back in the days just after iPod, Microsoft introduced this thing called PlaysForSure. It was a system to provide a variety of DRM options - single track purchase, promotion with timeout, monthly fee all-you-can-eat, limited play count, and so on. This in itself would have provided a superset of the functionality iTunes provided.
(For the record, where I stand: DRM must die. Three times. Horribly. Preferably acid bath.)
Sounds great, at least from a technical and business standpoint, right? Unfortunately, just to remind us that they're Microsoft, in order to get a PlaysForSure badge on your product, and to be allowed to use the system whatsoever, you have to pass certain certification processes. That includes making sure you have a good startup time, good inter-track delay time, fast database indexing, and so on.
Still sounds great? Aha, but just to remind us they're Microsoft, they're the people that design the protocol, and they make damn sure it's near-impossible to actually implement a good player from it. The database updates and queries are so horribly defined you'd struggle to get good performance out of a proper SQL-like database running on a PC, let alone a tiny little device with 1MB RAM. The requirement to support PlaysForSure means you must use MTP protocol, which is another botched abortion of a protocol. It also requires that if you use MTP you cannot use Mass Storage, further annoying your customers and very neatly if "accidentally" meaning they don't work on Macs. And then there's the encryption itself which is so horribly over-the-top and poorly implemented (you MUST use Microsoft's libraries) that it badly impacts player performance and its battery life.
So Microsoft screw the entire non-Apple MP3 market for a couple of years. Then they bring out their own PlaysForSure player. Except it's not PlaysForSure. You can imagine the language used where I worked (and presumably other companies). They decided that it was too hard to implement their own spec, so they make a player which doesn't comply to it. It's not even in the set at all - it's totally incompatible.
After an electronics-generation of fucking up the non-Apple MP3 market, then screwing up their own solution, and now after (very likely) ditching Zune, they've basically done almost exactly the right set of steps to put Apple into a lead that will be hard to make a dent into.
I stick with my decade old opinion that you don't partner with Microsoft - you watch your back.
So, MS only drivers, no Playforsure support and no Apple protected ACC support. Of course of this would have been a non issue if MS supported universal standards(a media player does not need customer drivers if it is just treated as removable drive) and if MS focused on DRM free music. In fact the primary driver that kept Apple in the forefront for so long is the music industry insistence on DRM and the computer industries support of that position. We will see how apple fares now that Amazon has cheaper drm free music, but I think Apple will be ok now that people are used to used going to iTunes.
But I don't think that MS has to exit the market, just remember that the pupose of MS is to provide the low cost option. The Xbox is successful because it is the cheaper than a PS3, as the xbox has no HD media capability. The Zune is not cheaper than any iPod, except for the touch, so why buy it. If a PC were as expensive than the mac, how many people would buy it? Sell a zune for $100, and it will be on the top of the charts, just like the xbox. Or they could do something innovative and include wireless cell phone access, like the Kindle, and inlcude one year of subscription service. But that would innovative, not what MS does.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Just because "there were plenty of people suggesting Microsoft should just exit the Zune hardware business entirely," just because the Zune has nothing in particular to offer and is doing poorly, does not mean that they will exit the Zune business.
One of the things I really admire about Microsoft is their tenacity and stick-to-it-iveness. If they think something is important, they'll stick with it and improve it with each release.
I worked at a former Fortune 500 company that just didn't have this tenacity. They had no real strategy, no sense of what was important and what wasn't beyond short-term industry buzz. Their basic strategy seemed to be "do whatever IBM was doing a year ago." And, whereever they drilled, if they didn't strike oil ten feet down they'd give up.
It was very frustrating to those of us who saw serious but fixable flaws in their hastily-released products and could never convince them to settle on what was important and hang in there.
Whether this will be the case with Zune is open to doubt. I have little respect for the Zune, I don't think Microsoft has any idea what they're doing, and I think it will go down as an ignominious failure like Microsoft Bob. But if they think it's important, I believe they'll stick with it and try to improve it, and when they do they have an impressive track record of getting something good enough to be counted a success.
They could uncripple the Zune, give it the ability to record FM broadcasts, provide unlimited wireless filesharing, and they'd have an overnight success... if they had the guts.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I don't get it - while the Zune device might not have the "cool" factor of an iPod, IMO it's a very competitive product and the service is much better than Apple's. It would be a shame to see it go.
For less than $15/month you can download 10 songs w/o DRM for free and you own them. Paying less than $5/month for access to millions of other songs w/DRM for as long as you maintain the subscription seems like a good deal to me. They've supported firmware for older devices, which is compelling considering your device likely will be supported for generations to come.
Even if they can't beat Apple in market share, it seems like their should be enough of a market to support being #2.
I don't see what anyone could possibly think was wrong with the Zune logo
Neither did Walmart*.
Maria Bartaromo once pressed Jobs in a post-rollout interview on some of the iPods about the looming threat from Microsoft Zune, apparently forgetting who she was talking to (or possibly just knowing his celebrity without realizing it had nothing to do with fashion). His response was instantaneous as he responded "I don't know what you are talking about? Do you even KNOW anybody who has a Zune?" Maria, a fast talking New Yorker, was flabbergasted and after stumbling for words (rare) acknowledged that no she didn't. As they closed the segment, the anchors continued repeating to each other like bobble-heads "no, I don't know anyone ha, ha hahhh who has a Zune". It was classic.
Zune had to stand on it's own but had no legs.
Standing on your own without legs is no problem for Weebles. So how should Zune have wobbled without falling down?
For all of you iTunes-haters out there... Stop managing files by hand, learn what a meta-data is, and stop living like you're still using MS-DOS.
I bought a 30gb model for far less than a comparable iPod a couple of years ago and (other than it locking up on Dec 31) it has performed quite well. I'd like to upgrade to a 120gb model, but they are priced exactly the same as iPods right now.
If Microsoft wants to win in this space it has to compete both on features AND on price, and right now Zunes are physically bigger than iPods and less supported by 3rd party add-ons. Price seems to be the only path to success in the short to medium term. Microsoft has to take it to Apple in the pocketbook, but I'm not sure it has the Ballsimer to do it.
I've used both the Zune and iTunes desktop software and the Zune product is superior to iTunes in Windows. The Zune has this 'Social' feature where you can wirelessly sync with other Zuners, but there is not a critical mass of owners, so this is a wasted feature.
So, since Microsoft doesn't seem as daring as it once was to compete to win, the Zune will likely be orphaned in 2009...which should provide a good supply of clearance 120gb models for jut $99. I'll pick up a few and be happy, cuz it works at a price that I like.
I for one will be sad to see it go. I got a couple of Zune 30s on super-discount, right before the intro of the Zune 80s. The original software and firmware was crap, but every subsequent software update has had welcome improvements, and now I can say that the Zune UI is as good if not better than the iPod classic interface. I can't wait to snap up a few 80s or 120s on closeout.
After spending millions getting to the level of the iPod classic - and replicating a lot of the infrastructure and ecosystem that made iPod a success, Apple introduced the iPhone and iPod Touch and completely changed the game on them. MS has no credible competitor to these devices yet.
Who wants to bet that the Zune authorization servers are going to get their plugs pulled?
Aww, now I don't want to read /. anymore because of what some person said in a comment. I'm so sad, clearly I've wasted my life reading it in the first place.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
The Zune problem was that they started with a great idea, and then removed its testicles in committee. PMP + Wifi? Yes. Music is something humans are hard-wired to share.
Then it hits committee. Share music? That's illegal! Oh wait, it depends? Well, even if it's not illegal, we need to monetize this feature. Just like "Vista-Capable" was a good idea, until they decided to change the standards to suit their suppliers. Xbox 360? You're on the money. Committees don't see shifts. People do. And when you give a committee lots of money and say "make version II", you see something very expensive. Netbooks? Microsoft saw them coming. That's why they came up with the UMPC specification. Oh wait, you mean something cheap? Again, committee think. It's why GM cars have all the cupholders.
Keyword graphs show the story...
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entry=zune_meme_rerun
Microsoft entered a market nearing its growth inflection point with a marginal product. They thought they could win through hype and Microsoft branding.
Microsoft Vista is failing for similar reasons.
I have a brown Zune too. When I first got it, I absolutely loved it. 30 GB of storage, ability to play photos, videos and music either in headphones or on my TV. Then a strange thing happened... Last September I wanted to get a mobile device that allowed me to surf the web. I saw my friends' iPhones and thought it was a good experience. "No problem" I thought. I'll just check out this Windows Mobile 6 stuff. I started on a hunt to find a non-iPhone that browsed the web as well as an iPhone. I went to AT&T stores (since I had their service already though my contract had expired), Verizon stores and Sprint stores. At the time, every other phone's web surfing was a J-O-K-E compared to the iPhone. A joke. I can't tell you how much it pains me to say that, since I am in reality a Microsoft fan and have used their development products professionally for over a decade and a half.
So I got the iPhone 3G. My Zune was then in the glove compartment of my car for a few months. I pulled it out a few weeks ago to try out the Zune games that seemed to be taking off. What I used to think was a sleek, intuitive interface on the Zune now looked clunky. The entire device actually felt cheap. The Zune hadn't changed though - I did. I got used to the iPhone. But anyway, I upgraded my Zune firmware, installed the Zune Games and actually tried the default ones out. Texas Hold'em was actually fun. But man, the experience is nothing - NOTHING - like the iPhone.
I guess I'll try selling my brown Zune on eBay before they become totally worthless.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Microsoft needs to just get out of the hardware market. The Xbox 360 is cool, but I'm on my second one and that one is dying too. And my Zune is cool, but randomly buggy. Either that, or they need a better QA department.
That sounds almost as good as Shitass Perfuckers (at 1.11).
And to be honest, Microsoft really CAN afford it :oD
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This is stupid. If it were _only_ "cool," it would not survive. The fact is that the "coolness" factor attracts people, but the ease of use and product performance keeps them. That's the way it works in quite a few industries, so this hate spread toward Apple is just anti-fanboiism, aka "jealousy."
I avoided the iPod for years - stuck with my MD as long as I could - simply because everyone else thought it was "cool." Yeah, pot calling kettle black. But then I got a Shuffle - the cheapest iPod - and it's the best player I could imagine. Simple to use and does exactly what I want. The thing I like best is that it's tiny and clips to my pocket so I always know where it is.
Like all of Apple's products, it's not for everyone - I think water and air are the only things that fill that bill - but it satisfies a large portion of the market; if people weren't happy, they wouldn't keep buying them. The stylishness is just a simple marketing trick. All companies try to do that - seen MS's ads for their programming tools in the trade rags? - but some end up being more successful at it.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
wow, someone needs a blow job real bad
Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. While I'm not normally a customer or purchaser of Microsoft software, I have noticed that your Zune product (ridiculous marketing aside) is actually a nice product in it's third generation.
The interface is solid, the features good and the music store is DRM free. All of that makes the product actually pretty compelling. I want one.
Here's the thing, I am not a Windows user, yeah I know you think I should be but I'm not and won't be for the foreseeable future. So as a guy that uses a non MS platform I know that there are always things I have to give up for my freedom. Right now I'm giving up a Zune. It won't work on my platform. Now I'm not saying that I want Microsoft to support my platform, but I am saying that, you know, if it would give me whatever functionality I need to create a playlist or two, and sync my (incidentally paid for) music collection I'd buy one. Arguably I'd buy more than one. But I can't.
I might be stubborn or you might be, I'm not sure which one it is. I don't even think it matters. You can't make a better iPod than iPod. What you need to do is make a very compelling product. You almost did. I had to buy a Zen over your product because your product just doesn't support basic music syncing outside of using your own software. Sorry to tell you this but I'm not going to change my computing world just to listen to Boston on a Zune. You have to be the one to change if you want to count me as a paying customer. So what do you say? How about it? Just use industry standard interfaces to the hardware. I can't promise you'll be successful but I can promise you that you'd sell at least another Zune or two on top of what you're selling today. Think about it.
load "$",8,1
Just to add my .02, I own both, and prefer the Zune. When will I realize that Apple stuff is just cooler?
you and all the children posters forgot
Profit! or umm... unable to compete..... because we forgot how... because we're a monopoly and so .... um.... unable to.....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Zune? What's that?
This is that critical mass thing again. PlaysForSure was still early enough in the general maturity of the net that it's been kinda washed over.
But to pull that stunt *twice* makes an event that will show up at the more dangerous business-analysis-article level, and that's far harder to get away from. Also, it coincides with a strange emergence of audience maturity awareness not even present 8 years ago.
You used to form opinions about stuff from 3 newspapers and *the local retail store*. Products created their own gestalts. Something shows up new, "it was cool" ... because it showed up on the shelf.
Now we're asking each other about stuff, and *leveraging our own experts* so that the classical media begins to sound lame if they throw too much eggnog into their spinpuff.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Let's make a bet... I think S. Ballmer is out of the Microsoft #1 spot before the end of this year. By then the Street, investors will finally realize what users knew for years: Mr. Ballmer has failed to bring any good product for MSFT for years.
Can I buy some of your crickets? Will people have an exit path for the money they locked into zune points?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Bleh spelling.
Davey says hi.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You have come to a sad realization.
Cancel or allow?
Consider yourself spoken to.
it's never going to be as "cool" as Apple
theres your problem for ya.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
Wow, no wonder the gaming world despises Microsoft and its fucked in the head Xbox fanboys.
They don't need one.
All they have to do is outlast everyone else and manipulate the market to slowly gain share. Its one of the advantages of having so much cash in the bank.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You can be "cool" simply by buying a shiny toy with an Apple logo? I guess "cool" isn't what it used to be.
It also requires that if you use MTP you cannot use Mass Storage, further annoying your customers and very neatly if "accidentally" meaning they don't work on Macs
Blaming Microsoft for the fact that Apple doesn't support MTP is ridiculous. Apple locked down iTunes so that you can't really use it with other players, and they tried to lock down the iPod so that you can't use it with other music management applications.
As for "screwing the entire non-Apple MP3 market", I think you give Microsoft too much credit; Microsoft has had virtually no impact either way. If you want an MP3 player, there are plenty of choices that cost almost nothing.
MP3 players are dead anyway; like PDAs, they are just becoming part of phones.
The zune was never going to be a the ipod killer that MS hoped it would be and it is difficult to see why MS entered the market.
Basically if you are going up against the gorilla that is Apple in the ipod market, you have to have something that differentiates markedly. The only thing the zune had was the wireless sharing. However two problems with that. Firstly it was hopelessly crippled by MS usually DRM fan boys. Secondly it relied on enough mass usage of the zune so that there was a chance someday you might meet another zune user. If you took that away you were left with a nice MP3 player competing with all the other nice non apple MP3 players in a sea made by Apple. And remember an ipod is not just a music player but is the focal point of a whole industry providing ipod addons. Zune never had a chance.
The question is what could compete with ipod? History has shown that it would either take a whole new technology shift(wireless music ???) or Apple to make a mis-step. So far Apple has shown they are not likely to do the latter, in fact you have to be impressed how they do not sit back and wait for the competition to catch up, but are constantly pushing the envelope. This makes it very hard to compete against. You only have to look how a few months after the zune was produced apple produced the itouch so totally changing the market before the zune ever got going.
So what about MS. Probably what they should of done instead of spending millions on Zune was got into phones. Here they have a slight advantage in that their software runs the corporate world so if they made a phone that seamlessly connected then corporate world would probably buy a few.
However even here they have a few problems. Firstly it would eat away at their mobile OS market, since they would be competing against the same people who buy there software from them at the moment. This would almost certainly push these same manufacturers to android and the like.
Secondly MS hardware sucks. They just do not have the ability to integrate the software and hardware into one unit, in the same way apple do. This must be partly to do with their reliance on 3rd party hardware suppliers to do the hardware design, then having to fit their software to it.
In the end of the day, MS should really concentrate on doing what it knows best, making operating systems for gray boxes
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
The Zune has only one objective and this is why Microsoft won't abandon it - no matter what the cost.
The Zune's objective is to buy Microsoft a place at the table when music distribution and DRM are discussed. The real product is the DRM. The Zune is just a way of getting Microsoft into the "club".
So it doesn't matter if the Zune doesn't sell. It doesn't even have to be a good player. It just has to be there.
It would be a first for them to cut failing business which was created to keep a competitor in check. Microsoft has many money losing businesses, ones which lose billions annually but their purpose is not necessarily all about being profitable, it's about limiting the growth of the market leader. Windows CE was created to slow or stop Palm's growth beyond the PDA and Microsoft has lost over $15 billion on that. The Xbox was created to slow or stop Sony from growing the PlayStation market beyond the console and Microsoft has lost many billions on that. The Zune was created to slow the Apple iPod market and they've lost a billion or two on that.
So with Steve Balmer still in charge and the Windows OS making up over 80% of Microsoft's profits and with huge profit margins, there is no history to show a willingness at Microsoft to cut any of these market protection based projects. Cutting the Zune would probably be the first one to be cut and not succeeded at its goal. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
What I don't understand is, why Microsoft hasn't (That I have seen) tried to compete on the Zune's price with the iPod. Every time I've ever looked at a Zune, it has always been more expensive than an iPod. As stated, Microsoft won't be able to compete on the 'cool' factor. But essentially, what is a Zune or an iPod? It is the size and capacity of these devices that has always been a winner.
In New Zealand (Where Zunes aren't available), you can't really get a high capacity (Over say 8/16 GB) portable media player at a reasonable price, other than an iPod. So if you're after a large capacity, small portable media device, you'll look at your options:
1) Does it play MP3s? (And this would now be, Does it play video. h.264 MPEG-4 has won that battle, so don't try to fight a format war).
2) Which is the cheapest one that supports the features I want?
Microsoft needed to under cut Apple on the price. They have deep enough pockets.
I was an early adopter and had bought one of the first RIo's. It was expensive, poorly built, had a cruddy UI, and could hold at most 15 songs at 128 K. But it was small and allowed me to have music while mountain biking. My cousin, a sales manager for a domestic high end audio company back then told me that the MP3 player to wait for would be from SONY. After all, Sony was a world leader in audio and personal electronics. They had invented the walkman. They had years of acclaimed industrial design, a mature sales and distribution network, high customer awareness, efficient marketing, and even owned a record label that would certainly facilitate a media sales conduit. So what happened? When we talk about the Zune's inability to gain market traction, I believe there are lessons to be learned from Sony. If a world leader in portable audio electronics can't make a dent, then there might be more to this than some "cool" factor or "apple sucks" reasoning.
There is no security when liberty is sacrificed.
Any Windows 7 beta user will tell you that Microsoft are definitely capable of "cool". I fully predict Win7 to be a resounding success, both in sales and in actual performance and usability terms. This is personal, but I find it to be superior to OS X even in its current beta state.
Success aside, the "coolness" of this OS could lead to a rise in the number of MS fanbois (yes they do exist). This, combined with MS's newfound "coolness" (assuming it persists), could just breath new life into their Joe Sixpack consumer products like the Zune.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
Saw this in an article on Plan 9 and it pretty much applies to the Zune.
There is a lesson here for ambitious system architects: the most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough.
Except the iPod and iTunes are more than 'just good enough' they're really good for most people
Always wondered why MS doesn't just come to slashdot for help. We could save them a lot of wasted time and money :)
-- taking over the world, we are.
Recently I decided to update my old 30GB 5G iPOD as the battery wasn't holding a charge after 3 years of use. Although the iPOD is a great product it had allot of short comings for me with the major one being a lack of an equaliser. Well after a few months (Im patient) of getting specs of different media players and putting them in a spread sheet with points added for features I ended up purchasing a Cowon O2 pmp. I was slightly skeptical about the device when I selected it but now I have it there are zero regrets. The interface is just great and it has that missing 10 channel equaliser and a great high res display that put even the iPhone to shame. What really sets the O2 aside for me is the ability to play "any video or audio file format", yep FLAC mkv you name it and the O2 will play it. So my advice to Microsoft is go buy Cowon as they make the best pmp out there right now.
'Microsoft, by now, should be realizing that it's never going to be as "cool" as Apple,
The iPod is not only cool (don't care), but it is good as well. The Zune is neither.
(A)bort, please
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
While I do agree with the thrust of your argument; MS just cut Flight Sim. They have also killed things like Plays for Sure, MSN (ISP) for Mac, Windows Media for Mac, a various other apps, which certainly served the same purpose of keeping others "in check".
I never do this, but "Mod Parent Up", +4 Insightful/Informative
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Personally I like my v2 Zune, and I like the Zune desktop software a lot better than iTunes, which frankly sucks on Windows. Maybe the Mac version is good.
"Why Microsoft didn't look to Apple's or it's own playbook and more closely linked the Zune to the Windows environment is beyond me."
Yeah, that would have gone over well with the anti-monopoly crowd.
WHy do you want to make ma laugh ....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
they cut Pen for Windows too but that was after they pretty much killed the one company at the time who was really building momentum, Go Inc. As far as Mac based apps go, Microsoft has very little strength or leverage on that platform. There is only Apple distributing and they have their own stores. Is Flight Sim really in a market which has or had the ability to threaten Microsoft's market position?
There is one app, Microsoft Money, which was threatened by Intuit's Quicken. Microsoft tried to tie MS Money to other products to beat Quicken but for some reason that failed. But then again, Quicken has not done anything to threaten Windows, they pretty much only support Windows and have a half effort still doing a Mac app. If they came out with a Linux version, MS would pull MS Money out or back one of the others and spend a couple of billion trying to knock Quicken down.
So while the iPod market still gets into many many Windows users hands, brings in Apple iTunes, and puts that pretty Apple logo in their mind for the next time they want a new PC. Well I just don't see them dropping the Zune. The iPod market is too big of a market threat to Windows to just leave it all alone. I don't think they'd ever drop the Xbox or MSN and their search. I'd me very surprised if they did drop it while the iPod still dominated the market.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Yeah I wasn't very clear about Flight Sim, I thought they would hang onto it just to keep people away from OSS like X-Plane. While the realistic flight sim is a small category, they owned it, and kept it tied to Windows. Many OS's can use X-Plane- though again it is certainly a niche. I do expect that MS will make sure Flight Sim works on any new Windows version for a long time.
from what I read, they are not terminating the product, just the development. It is a very mature product and probably quite stable by now and they figure they can continue selling it without requiring much of any software dev work to keep it going.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm just angry that Microsoft axed the entire Flight Simulator team.
I bought an original 30Gb refurbished Zune last year. I don't use it a lot, but when I do I enjoy the experience, I have put videos on it for my daughter (3 years old), pod casts, pictures, and any music that I want.
Two months ago Microsoft changed the details of their Zune Marketplace subscription offereing unlimited downloads for $15 per month. Not too different from Rapsody and the such, however there is a silver lining, you also get to download and keep 10 songs per month which they remove their DRM from. Some music is also in mp3 format. That 10 songs sold me on that subscription and I signed up, and have taken advantage of the service as much as I can. (BTW you can use the service on three PCs and two Zunes) Maybe it is just a ply to increase their numbers, but it worked for me.
Personally I hope they don't can the line. They have some work to do, but it is a solid product, just not as "cool" as an iPod.
I agree with your interpretation, but I think they are dead wrong. A highly graphical flight sim isn't the same a solid word processor, it needs frequent update to satisfy the graphics junkies. Maybe they will figure that out, or maybe its just not worth it to them anymore. Who knows.
or maybe they have something showing up on their console... yup, who knows.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Actually, PlaysForSure was rather different in the grand scheme of things. Plays For Sure was a device and vendor agnostic certified compatibility layer. Which meant that a user could buy a DRM'ed track from Rhapsody or Napster or MSN and have it work in a player from any number of hardware makers. Essentially, it was the open DRM scheme that people have been hoping for, except it all filters through MS's coffers.
I feel like Microsoft has been suffering from shortsighted business practices. Plays for Sure is exactly the sort of platform play that MS is good at, and which might take years of concerted effort to catch on. Instead, they threw it out for the Zune, which they could control end-to-end but which wasn't worth bothering about.
Let me posit a parallel explanaiton for what happened to the Zune. It is a regular off-the-shelf greybox MP3 player, and just isn't anything special. It allows you to buy music from MSN (which they proved nobody should do anyway), and wirelessly share music (in a way that is functionally useless). Sony tried, and failed, with exactly the same play for exactly the same reason: So what? The iPod was lighter, smaller, and had a pleasing UI. Now it is entrenched in every aspect. The Zune, on the other hand, might as well be another Samsung or Archos or Qbe or any other greybox MP3 maker. Add in that the Zune management software is even worse than iTunes, and you have an ok player in a market where it needs to be an amazing one.
The ______ Agenda
Somehow I just don't think the 360 fanbase is well matched to Flight Sim, nor the input device. But hey it's MS so anything could happen.
The UI on the device was great. I liked it much more than iPod UI. Too bad the hardware sucked ass. They should port the software to run on iPod, as a parting shot, and provide a single click installer that would flash Zune software into reasonably recent iPod models. I, for one, would do it.
as old as this troll post may be, it's sad how true it still is.
Now that I've finally bough all the accessories they cut my feet off.
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Could timothy be an more pro apple with regards to the zune. I personally don't have any fellings with regards to the zune. I do not like the ipod or any version therein. First it has always been overpriced especially with regards to storage size compared to other pmps. Second all apple did was take the idea of a pmp even though there were many other pmp's out there. Third all very large group of people buy the ipod simply because it is an apple brand product. A big reason why the ipod is more popular is because the advertise all the time on TV, radio, magazines, online, etc. Most other pmp manufactures do little to nothing to advertise across any decent amount of media. Creative has had much better products and much greater storage space and a much more reasonable price of the years. Even currently they have a product called Zen X-FI that has wireless and 30 GB as well as video/pictures, etc. all of which is the size of a standard credit card with the thickness about 1/5 of an inch if that. It also has the ability to act as a media server wireless with your computer. People should try other products and check out the reveiws for other companies products. If people did this then we would see innovations, and don't say Apple does this because it isn't true Apple historically has used other companies ideas and marketed them as there own. This would be ok if they didn't act like they came up with this idea. Until innovation happens we are stuck with the same old stuff and we have people buy things based on what is in style at the moment. People should not just go along with the crowd. That is why I hope Microsoft doesn't drop the zune but instead redo the product, especially the software side of it, into something new and better.
When did MS ever get anything right the first time? They have always put out crap and spoon fed it to their loyal zealots (usually running an IT department) and slowly made improvements to the point that it became passable and, subsequently, locked into the other things they sell that were already passable. Anyone remember running NT before service pack 2? Anyone try rolling a Vista image? How about early versions of IE? Frankly, I thought Windows 95 was just four years of beta testing Windows 98.
This has been the MS way. If they quit the Zune, that will be a major shift that says if it doesn't work right after the first couple of tries, we're not going to keep on. That line of reasoning would almost force and attitude of: We had better make it right (or pretty close to right) the first time.
While I and many others would welcome this new attitude, I'll believe it when I see it.
I hear a call for a death match. Tie FlightSim to the Xbox network let there be war. ;-) I can see it now, a Piper Cub with a lazer weapon strapped to its wing.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
A good FM receiver in a good video playing MP3 player with WiFi would have been great.
Lock ups, DRM, no USBdrive option... It's like they sabotaged their own product.
I bought it originally because I had a PC and I thought it might work well with MediaPlayer. I was right and I was wrong. Under the first version (I think 9) it worked ok, but once I upgraded to the suggested MP10, it was a huge pain. I think the video was originally a nice feature, but again, DRM made things a pain. I had music I legally owned that it wouldn't play.
Then, of course, accessories were next to impossible to find. Want a rugged rubber case (like my zCover for the iPhone)? Not going to find one (at least not in your first 5 stores you visit). I walked into Fry's, which is a geek supermarket on steroids, and they have one shelf (back then). Now there's maybe a little more, but you'll find two AISLES of stuff for the iPod.
When the iPhone came out, there was finally an iPod killer. Zune made a great try, but it's M$ after all. They had to keep corporate interests. Now my iPod Video sits on the shelf, while I go everywhere with the iPhone. I'm listening to it right now at work.
One last thing killed the Zune for me. "Lock" doesn't. Yeah, I can't change songs, but the unit powers up to show you the lock symbol, which the iPod doesn't do. May not sound like much, but I make a 4 hour ride monthly on my motorcycle. With the Zune in my motorcycle jacket pocket, set to "Locked", the unit would die far before the end of my ride. The unit would get touched, power up, show the "locked" for awhile and then power down. I can make the 8 hour round trip with my iPod and iPhone set with the lock on.
Maybe physically, I recall the Zune defenders exclaiming the virtues of its "wide screen", but it had the exact same resolution as the iPods of the time. More FUD for people who don't read spec sheets.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The vast majority of the music on the Zune store is 320kbps MP3's. I believe 80% was the last number I saw.
Hell yeah, I mean they do have the the code for the combat version of Flight Sim, I just can't remember the name. Seriously though, I really miss flight/space sims. That is one of the best genres if you ask me. Freespace, xWing, Tie Fighter, F16, F18 oh hell yeah!
that, and "story" are my favorite tags.
music lover since 1969
I used to fly on the old Falcon F16 over modem and one of they guys build peddles to lay down bombs better. it was fun.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
We, Microsoft, being number 1 software company for Apple Macintosh OS X don't have any kind of support for that device on OS X. Why? It is not they are incapable, I can't imagine how complex application their Office/OS X must be.
That is the question Windows Mobile team ask themselves too. I recently plugged a iPhone (I reject to buy) to a Windows XP box and very impressed with its compatibility down to photo import. Try to connect a Windows Mobile to OS X and see what happens. (address book and net connect doesn't count, even Nokia S40 can do it).
give me iPod or give me death