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Zune HD Unveiled, Set For Fall Release
Several readers have written to mention that Microsoft has confirmed and unveiled the Zune HD. It has a "3.3-inch, 480 x 272 OLED capacitive touchscreen display, built-in HD Radio receiver, HD output," and it makes use of multi-touch input. More details will be forthcoming at E3, including how the device interacts with Xbox Live. Reader johnjaydk notes a PCWorld article that asks whether the Zune HD will be capable of competing with the iPod Touch. Quoting: "... the real competition between the Zune HD and the iPod Touch will come down to software. The new Zune will be based on a custom version of Windows CE, while the iPod Touch runs on the already popular iPhone platform, for which thousands of applications are available."
I first read that title as "Zune HD Unveiled, Set For Fail Release"
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Zunes are also finally coming to Europe as well, which marks the first time Microsoft has announced the US exclusivity on the Zune is being dropped. Understandably, the US press has perhaps overlooked this fact, but if you live here in Europe, it's possibly bigger news than the Zune HD being announced.
Will this be the first mass produced consumer product to use an OLED screen? I know I've been reading about them for some time, but other than one digital camera (i think) I don't know that I've heard of any products that will actually contain one. It will be interesting to see how it looks relative to other small media players.
If nothing else it's great that they're raising the bar.
With specs like that, I'm curious as to what their target demographic is? Apple already tied up the young, hip and ignorant. iRiver owns the cheap and techy. All that's left is the old and confused.
The Zune is like the Go-Bots of digital media players. It's what your grandmother will buy you for your birthday, knowing you like that "music thing"
The hardware is pretty good looking(though the screen resolution is a bit of a WTF? in this day and age). My primary concern would be browser related. Mobile IE is a worthless unforgivable pustule on the ass of mankind. Since it isn't on x86, it doesn't even have the "compatible with every last weirdo activeX control and embedded horror" angle going for it. Unless MS has made extraordinary enhancements, they might as well not bother.
Hopefully it will be compatible with Opera or other third party browsers.
From TFA: "Supported 720p HD video files play on the device, downscaled to fit the screen at 480 x 272 - not HD resolution. Zune HD and AV Dock, and an HDTV (all sold separately) are required to view video at HD resolution" Seems like every single product these times has to have "HD" at the end, just like "2000", "Professional", etc, etc..., even if its missinforming...
"The new Zune will be based on a custom version of Windows CE, while the iPod Touch runs on the already popular iPhone platform, for which thousands of applications are available."
This makes it sound like CE is just some new kid on the block. I mean I don't deny the popularity of the iPhone platform and the benefit of their app store, but common, CE is no flash in the pan for applications either. Not to mention Visual Studio makes it a BREEZE to develop for.
Play me online? Well you know that I'll beat you. If I ever meet you I'll "/sbin/shutdown -h now" you. -Weird Al, kinda.
Which means that anyone who can program for Win 2k/xp/vista/7 can program for the Zune. I've done WinMobile programming and it's easy in C#. Many apps can be easily ported from desktop to Mobile and back, with the main issue being the screen size.
The tuner (I assume it does regular FM if it does HD) is a big win here.
I wonder how hard it is to transcode video for it? If it's as easy as for iPhone (using Handbrake, for example)...
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http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=15876
The device is sturdy (judging from past Zunes), the screen (while not HD by any means) will still be a decent screen to work with, and the hardware will be solid enough to output 1280x720.
It's a winner in my book, even though I still wish the screen itself was 720p.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I bought an HD radio just to check out the technology. The cheapest one I could find was $80--quite a bit for a radio. But the quality is spectacular (HD AM sounds better than the best non-HD FM reception), and you get more stations and metadata.
I am surprised that his hasn't caught on more yet. I believe it is because the chips needed for HD radios are still expensive. I sure hope the Zune drives down implementation costs and helps bring HD radio to the masses. Listening to NPR as if I'm right in the station is a great experience.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Look at how the Xbox 360 unceremoniously unseated Playstation as the console of choice.
MS is playing for keeps -- if they keep at it, they will do well. I actually think their Zune Pass is one of the best things out there, even though I don't have a Zune. If they got a few 3rd parties to do a car integration kit (ala Dice) I'd be on board and buy one.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Many apps can be easily ported from desktop to Mobile and back, with the main issue being the screen size.
That's the whole reason Windows Mobile has such problems, because in development you are basically targeting a desktop but the user doesn't HAVE a desktop, they have a mobile device with constrained screen and constrained input. It makes the applications developed fundamentally more frustrating than they are on OS's built around a mobile platform - like the Android, iPhone OS or even WebOS from Palm.
Not to mention it can lead to apps that really chow down battery.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If it looks like an iPod Touch and acts like an iPod Touch but comes from Microsoft, it ain't an iPod Touch.
It must suck to be an engineer at Microsoft. Ignoring the phat paycheck, it must really suck to work for a company that has largely given up on any semblance of innovation and is simply following the lead of other companies. I would imagine that many of their best and brightest are begging to explore some very cool ideas but are being held back by Microsoft's corporate culture... I feel for them...
Actually, they get paid magnitudes more than I do so I don't feel too bad for them...
I have Mac at home. I want to buy some music.
I do *not* go to Amazon.com or Walmart to buy my music more cheaply. I buy from ITunes because the whole F'ing process is streamlined. I don't have to think.
I wish I could get my Zune to work in Ubuntu. Microsoft, please open up MTPZ!
meh ... bad analogy. I would say Sony really earns the props for the 360 coming in second place. The fact that MS is not in third place considering the fact it was cause of the largest consumer electronics fuckup in US history showed just how bad Sony screwed the pooch. Especially coming off the runaway success of the playstation 2. If Sony wasn't so incompetent, i would imagine that Microsoft would be probably be in a distant third right now with plans on escaping the market.
... as long as it's brown.
That is all.
Q: What do you call a bunch of Zunes?
A: Overstock
Smaller screen than an iPod Touch, Windows CE, Microsoft App Store - Lame.
They are NOT the cool company. Nobody wants the MS logo (what is it actually?) on their fashion accesory MP3 player. For me to pay the premium that both MS and Apple demand, there got to be something in it that makes the premium worth while. Else I can just buy a FAR more capable music player from say iRiver, that can actually play more then just MP3/WMV/AAC.
Furthermore, Apple has already won the war, the retake lost ground, MS would have to do something innovative. They haven't. HD video output can only be done via a docking station. They never heard of mini-hdmi (or whatever the exact name is)?
HD Radio is a nice gimmick, but if want a portable radio, why would I need to buy a 300+ dollar device? There are cheaper options. Is the MP3/FLAC/ETC part of it also better quality? Got my doubts. For that matter, I am actually willing to bet that the HD radio is raped by the internal circuits till it sounds no better. The Apple devices are the same, terrible audio quality especially if you consider the high price. Silly me for expecting a device that costs 3x as much to sound 3x better :P
It uses a customer version of CE. Why? I can't think of any other reason then to limit cross spread of software. That it will have all kinds of build in limits that make building for it hard and impossible to share music. Exactly like MS has done countless times before including the previous Zunes.
MS just doesn't get it, nobody will buy their device simply for the logo and it ain't going to win over anyone that just wants a good portable music player.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Mod me down for defending Microsoft, but the note
"The new Zune will be based on a custom version of Windows CE, while the iPod Touch runs on the already popular iPhone platform, for which thousands of applications are available."
fails to acknowledge that Windows CE has been around a bit longer than the iPhone OS and has tons of applications available. Just sayin'.
Part of the reason is that Ibiquity, the folks behind the HD radio standard, managed to get the FCC to approve a MANDATORY encryption key as a part of the standard. In other words, ALL HD radio traffic is encrypted with a key that you have to license from Ibiquity - full stop.
No matter if you can make your own decoder chip - you SHALL license the key from Ibiquity or you won't be able to decode ANY traffic.
And as a result, if you want to do something and Ibiquity doesn't want you to - you don't do it.
And Ibiquity doesn't want your spiffy new radio outputting any form of digital stream - no USB, no Firewire, no SPIDF, no Uncle Mikey.
So when Griffin wanted to have the RadioSharkHD stream the HD over USB to your computer - BZZZZT! Wrong answer.
www.eFax.com are spammers
And the pragmatic people going for MIN(price/GB)... All the wizz-bang wankery is pointless to me since I have to use it with linux, but it won out on the price, and it plays music.
Damn that was funny, cheers. If I had mod points I'd use them.
/legal threats campaign to destroy the competition. The only area they did actually offer a good product comparable with the competition was the XBOX & it's successor the XBOX 360.
While the XBOX and the XBOX 360 are decent, the Sony equivalents are much the same. The Wii spanked BOTH those in terms of sales and popularity. Is the Wii making or losing money for Nintendo? What about the XBOX 360 part of Microsoft, how is that affecting the bottom line? We still have potential lawsuits over faulty hardware to take into account.
Microsoft do have a habit of not seeing a potential money making sector as it grows, until it's big enough to catch their attention and by that time there are other entrenched players to unseat. Usually at that point Microsoft try to do their own thing, vendor locked and half baked, which tends to fail. The next point is to buy someone already successful in that sector, buying the market share they can't get on merit. If they can't buy market share it's the old smear
As the credit crunch continues and people still have to watch their spending Microsoft will continue to have a hard time. They relied on the usual hype with Windows to have Vista being sung from the rooftops as the savior to their IT woes, and it bombed. Perhaps some of the criticism was unjustified but plenty was very much on the mark, and the people rebelled. When you have a multi-billion-doller sure thing you can afford to count on the money rolling in, so when it doesn't you find you've spent a LOT in other areas that you're in even more shit. So you send out the PR drones / proxies / astorturfers to try and brainwash the people and eventually have to give up, give the pig a make over and a new name....and charge more for it to make up the losses.
The Zune is just another example of a boat they missed and have been desperately running alongside it trying to catch up, all the while being ignored by almost everyone except the die hard fanboys. How many projects to Microsoft keep pumping money into without making it back before they get canceled. Sure each part of Microsoft plays into the whole, some are losing money, some are making it while their two cash cows Windows and Office keep many afloat. The Windows cash cow went on a severe diet over the last couple of years, and shows no real signs of putting on the weight it's been accustomed to.
Microsoft's PR may give you the idea that they're playing for keeps but in a market like personal mp3/4 players the iPod is king. PR people ALWAYS talk up their products, it's their jobs. There are plenty of great mp3/4 players but the iPod is still king (as much as I wouldn't be seen dead with one personally). Personal gadgets are often used as street cred, where people use them as trophies to be accepted into a crowd. Microsoft will NEVER be trendy, unless you're attending a corporate Christmas office party where the average age of the party attendees is in their 50's and the common thread is "mid life crisis".
They tried with the Zune before and failed. Even if they have learned some lessons and redesigned the Zune into something reasonably cool, the name Zune has as much cool cred as Windows ME. Microsoft are often keen to rebrand a failed project, apply a new skin and launch it as a new product hoping it will work the second time. It's yet to work for them, this time they didn't waste the money on rebranding, which could be a sign of a budget cut.
Every other week Microsoft are laying people off, or cutting back on budgets for some projects or plans. The Zune will be a drain for Microsoft to pour some money down, while trying in vain to capture some market share and income from an entrenched leader. This time next year the Zune will be one of the growing list of failures that finally got the axe from the accounts department at Microsoft trying to cut away the dead weight.
I had this nightmare, in which we experienced a severe shortage of irrelevant proprietary boxes designed for trivial purposes. THANK MICROSOFT!!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Yeah, because Apple is known for its support of it's obsolete models of the iPod. I'd love to know of a single feature "turned on" by a firmware update for an ipod.... anyone?
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
Does the custom version of Windows CE allow users to run the apps of their choice? If so, this seems OBVIOUSLY better than any of Apple's products. The 'thousands' of programs in the Apple App Store will be surpassed in six months, if the new Zune is not locked down like an Apple product.
The Zune always had really good hardware. It had some silly restrictions (like on WiFi), and terrible marketing. Compare that to the iPod/iPhone, which is good hardware, silly restrictions, and great marketing...
I have a Zune120. Despite the given fact that it is proprietary as hell, it is a fairly stable device. The firmware is extremely intuitive and runs really smoothly. The audio quality is clear. And I really enjoy the social that is built around it. My only issue is with it being so damn proprietary that I have to either dual boot XP or have it inside my Ubuntu Studio on a VM to even use it. It is the only reason I still even use windows.
I think part of the reason why the Zune fails is that it's one of those devices that a lot of people don't give a chance to. Those of us that use them, really enjoy them. I also happen to think iPods are nice as well and I have really considered Archos devices (though I had enough trouble affording my 120); but the truth is I like my Zune too much. And for players with large storage capabilities the options are limited. If we could only get it working in Linux
sudo apt-get lost
It was relatively big in size but it was comfortable to wear in my pockets.
Plus it's a great set-up for tried-and-true office humor; "Yes, I am happy to see you, but that actually is a Nokia in my pocket."
The Apple devices are the same, terrible audio quality especially if you consider the high price.
Actually, the audio quality of the iPod is generally regarded very highly
http://www.whathifi.com/Review/Apple-iPod-Classic-120GB/
http://www.t3.com/ipod-and-mp3-players/all-mp3-players/apple-ipod-shuffle-third-generation-review
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1857401,00.asp>
It's the piss poor earphones that have always let the side down. Swap them out for something better, and the sound shines through.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Anyone else flabbergasted by the cropped "e" on the Marketplace menu item? This is their official promo imagery (captioned with the word "Perfection," no less) on all their press pages! Really? They couldn't have sized that to fit?
I'm about to go on an OT rant here, but the parent is absolutely right. The FCC must be either inept or completely corrupt to accept a proprietary technology as a standard, especially when such outrageous exclusivity rules are applied to it's use. In these cases an open standard will create a vibrant market around the technology, expedite it's adoption, and maximize its public utility. For these reasons I say (sadly), fuck you, HD Radio.
I can't remember the last time I forgot anything.
AAC (both protected and non) support for one. Enhanced battery life, notes, contacts, calendars, and games (minor, but it's something). It's been done. And this is only counting the updates for my first-gen 5GB iPod.
Option-Shift-K.
So the whole reason that Windows Mobile has problems is because application developers are porting their desktop applications?
Exactly right. They suck to use on mobile platforms and so fewer people buy and use them, except for a handful of productivity stuff like Goodmail. But you just don't see the kind of casual exploration of apps on the scale iPhone users engage in.
Some people do tailor the experience more to a mobile user but there's only so much you can do with the frameworks that are there... and the frameworks, they are old.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Zune hardware is actually pretty solid, and for a while they were really, really cheap. At one point the 30gb version was getting dumped on various internet sites for $80-$99. That's a terrific value, even now. So good, in fact, that I bought one myself. The hardware is solid; I've dropped mine more than once and it still keeps going. The battery life is good, and the interface, while not perfect, isn't bad.
The atrocious part about the Zune is the windows software. It was an abomination 2 years ago, and is still terrible. For a long period of time it wasn't available on Vista, Windows 64, or any version of Windows Media Center. Various hacks to the installer program proved it could be done- the limitation was an entirely unnecessary OS-check. The software is still a pig, but the hardware is good, and was cheap.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
but it's hard to get excited over this. I had a first gen Zune and I liked it more than any of the iPods available at that time. It had a larger screen, an FM radio and supported codecs that the iPod didn't. Two years later though I have an iPhone and I'm seriously asking myself what possible advantage does this have that would make me want to carry TWO devices around. Then when you tack on the app store and the many applications I use on a daily basis and the Zune seems hopeless to compete. Unless MS can offer the same level of application support and the ability to play XBox Live Arcade games I think the platform needs to be taken out back and shot.
I've never understood this business strategy. I don't see any intrinsic reason why Microsoft should seek to enter every possible technology market and leverage its enormous financial power and resources to do so.
They know Zune is a failed business venture. As a product, the Zune is unable to compete with the iPod on any meaningful level. And Microsoft management knows this. Yet they persist, not out of some altruistic desire to encourage competition, but because the executives (read: Ballmer) have too much hubris to concede that Apple has done something remarkable. They have succeeded in revolutionizing the portable media device. And with the iPhone, Apple has created nothing less than an integrated portable computing/communications/multimedia solution that is as stylish as it is easy to use. Is it perfect? Hardly. Was it the first to use each of its component technologies? No. But it is indisputable that it broke new ground by combining all these features into a single, easy-to-use device. And the only ones who still refuse to admit this are those who are aligned with Ballmer's distorted view of reality.
I have a healthy appreciation for the competition--Google (Android), RIM (Blackberry), Palm (Pre), Nokia (N9x), and yes, even Microsoft (Zune/Windows Mobile). It's important that these guys are around to keep Apple on its toes. But let's not fool ourselves into believing that these are the good guys for fostering that competition. If they were truly good, they would have recognized the importance of innovating beyond what they see in Apple's offerings, rather than simply trying to make a comparable product. Where was their vision before Apple dominated the field? No, they were too busy being complacent. We saw tiny, incremental changes in the mobile device market for years until the iPhone blew everyone away. The same was true of the pre-iPod MP3 market. Apple lit a fire under their collective asses and now hardware manufacturers are going nuts trying to make the next "iPod/iPhone/iWhatever" killer.
The Zune will never be successful as long as it is deprived of a true vision. It isn't enough to mimic another device or its success. That's what Microsoft does not understand. They never have understood what makes a product work. The ubiquity of their bread-and-butter Windows has brought them enormous financial success and market share, but with that it has brought laziness and sloppy management. They can afford to push out half-assed products. Windows will still be there to keep the money coming in. They don't have to be hungry, visionary, or risk-taking, like Apple has had to be for decades. They've made some real blunders (G4 cube, 20th Anniversary Mac, the Lisa, Mac OS licensing, Centris/Quadra/Performa bloated product line,... I could go on but I think you get the point). But they have had enormous successes as well. Microsoft could make Zune amazing. Any company could, given that much money and talent. But that's not what they really want. They don't want to make something better than an iPhone or an iPod. They want to make something just good enough superficially, with as little attention to detail as possible, just so they can say they have some market penetration.
Microsoft has not wanted to make a better 'something' for DECADES. When a company stops caring about providing the best possible user experience, I stop caring about that company's products.
Unless monkeys have learnt to wash their hands, keep dodging.