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Microsoft Reportedly Ends Zune Hardware Development
ideaz tips this Bloomberg report:
"Microsoft Corp. will cease introducing new versions of the Zune music and video-player amid tepid demand, helping the company shift its focus to mobile phones, according to a person familiar with the decision. The company will concentrate on putting Zune software onto mobile phones such as those running Microsoft’s Windows operating system, said the person, who declined to be identified because the decision hasn’t been announced. Zune software lets customers buy songs and movies, as well as pay a monthly fee to stream unlimited music."
And in other news, Poison Beer Incorporated has announced the end of the production of their Cyanide Cider line of toxic methyl alcohol coolers. A company insider, speaking on condition of anonymity has revealed due to the tepid reception of the drink that causes blindness, neurological damage and in many cases death, has lead to the decision. Poison Beer Incorporated will now be concentrating on Thalidomide Cola, where it sees the future of its toxic drink product sales.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Microsoft Corp. will cease introducing new versions of the Zune music and video-player amid tepid demand, helping the company shift its focus to mobile phones
Presumably in the hopes that they can eventually rise all the way up to a tepid level of demand for their phone products too.
Zune wasn't actually a bad product and had some nice features that the ipad still hasn't got right. They were just a little late to the game.
They made a key strategic error with the Zune - they didn't realize that no one wanted a "poop brown" media device. Ooops.
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"Hey, I'm looking to buy a music player, like an iPod or something."
"Oh, okay, well what features you you want?"
"Well, I don't really care about having good software, an intuitive interface, or mind if my device will stop working on random days. I just want something that's poop brown."
"Great! Well we have just the product for you..."
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Those aren't crickets! That's a WMA file of recorded cricket sounds being streamed from Microsoft directly to my Zune!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
At least the UI. It's cleaner and faster, even if you compare it to iTunes on a Mac. They had some nasty music deleting bugs earlier on though, which is great fun when you paid for the tracks instead of having them on CD.
:D.
Zunes are durable too, at least 1st Gen. My ugly brown Zune is still going strong, and it was $100 at a time when a 30 gig iPod was $400
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It's early days yet for Zune. Microsoft has immense resources to bring to bear, and the patience to see it through. No, wait. That was something else.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Wow, you suck at reading comprehension. Where exactly did he say he wanted a world dominated by Microsoft?
And you suck at recent history. Domination is what Microsoft does best. Of course they will play that down now that Apple and Google prove resistant to their usual tactics. But make no mistake, Microsoft holds their cards close to their chest.
When Windows gets down to less than 50% of the desktop OS market, uses open standards wherever possible, is as compatible with other systems as possible including file formsts for things like MS Office, then we can talk as though you made a useful point.
Not to mention that they had great on-device software development, adding any software features that were released with new models to the older devices. Had a zune ever come out with 160GB capacity (or higher), I would have got one, quite likely... except: It's a device tied to one desktop client, and so far no one has been able to crack that. And it's a desktop client that does not serve my needs for music management, including limitations to fields that are arbitrary and significantly more restrictive than the ID3v2 spec allows for.
"They should shutter their business and release all their developers to go work on real projects that have a hope of succeeding."
While their developers are probably first rate, they have been trained by the M$ management to produce sub-stellar products. If M$ goes away, all of those managers would infect other companies. Can the world really afford that?
World dominated by Apple: the hardware costs a bit more for the computers, equal or cheaper for the devices, software is usually much cheaper than competitors but you can't do everything you want. Some features are limited or non-existant, but otherwise things run pretty smoothly, usability is first and 99.9999% of users don't need to rely on a "computer friend" to help them out.
World dominated by Google: things are usually free but spammed with advertising, you have no anonymity online and you don't control your personnal information and data, their goal is to let you access your data everywhere but in turn they must be able to access it too for advertising purposes. "Don't Be Evil" has been replaced with "Don't Screw Them Too Hard".
World dominated by Microsoft*: they are extremely prone to the "not invented here" syndrome, their software is not only really expensive but also not quite stable, their only redeeming quality is that they try to achieve backward compatibility to the point that most of the software bloat is to support users from a decade ago. Features are put ahead of security, usability is an after-thought at best, sacrificed for an overload of features that most people wouldn't even know how to use in the first place.
* we have proof since that's how it's been since the late 1980's.
They all have bad sides and good sides...
"Microsoft announces today that it will be suspending production on it's WinPhone. We want to focus our attention on the next big thing just as soon as Apples let's us know what that is."
They failed when they tried to follow Apple into the MP3 player market, and now they are planning on following Apple into the mobile phone market?!
Apple were not the first into either of those markets, so I don't know why you'd say "follow Apple".
I've never used it, so I'll see your "happy" and raise you an "ecstatic".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Awwww, you love to hate Microsoft so much that you have to live in the past now? How sad.
Yes, of course hatred is the one and only reason to be honest about who you're dealing with. Such pure hatred couldn't possibly be tainted with lesser concerns like honesty, realism, or a comprehension of the fact that history tends to repeat itself. Nope. Those logical things would interfere with momentary emotions. I am glad you use dismissal and ridicule as your primary means of making your point, since that's clearly superior to the hatred of which you accuse me.
I hate to ruin your pity party and everything but the same personalities who perpetrated Microsoft's repeated past abuses are still running the company. Especially Ballmer. It's simply foolish to act like the last 10 years of abusive behavior didn't happen. In fact, that's precisely what enables more of the same, what makes it successful. Most of their strategic methods depend on people who never see it coming, like embrace-and-extend for example. I see you can be counted among those who facilitate this, no doubt out of some misguided belief that they have suddenly seen the light.
If there had been a significant change in management then I'd agree with you about living in the past. I'd say that the new managers deserve a fair chance to show us whether they're just like the old ones. But there are no new managers, not at the top.
What you're doing there, it's called denial. The only hatred happening here is yours for anyone who makes denial less comfortable for you. Here's the deal and it's real simple: it never occurred to me to think of Microsoft's leadership as ruthless bastards until they started repeatedly acting like ruthless bastards. That was their choice. If they really have turned over a new leaf then they should recognize that trust is an especially difficult thing to restore once it is destroyed. If you don't like these basic facts, that's tough shit for you. Being a dick won't change them, nor will it persuade anyone to see things your way. Not that persuasion seems to be your goal.
The Zune was never better than a mixed bag. Horrible PC interface. Awful. No Mac interface. But the audio quality was very good.
I've got an old 30gb Zune that I bought refurbished on Woot! for about 60 bucks if I remember correctly, and it's been a hardy companion when I ride the bike. I bought it for my daughter but she scoffed at it's not being an Apple product so I ended up with it and was surprised and pleased by its stellar audio quality. It's hit the ground pretty often, so I've got no reason to expect it to keep working, but somehow it has. It's all scratched up and I've got reboot it once a week (par for the Microsoft course) but man it sounds great. For $60US it's been one of my more successful tech purchases. I've got an 8gig iPod touch, but the audio quality isn't nearly as good, and 30gb seems like a good size for a portable music collection. I wonder if the sound quality of the new iPod Touch 4g is better than my older model. Anybody know? I don't carry it on the bike much because I'm afraid it won't stand up the the abuse.
I figure at the rate I'm going my old Zune will probably last another few months, but now I have to search for a new portable with really high audio quality. This time, I'm going for something that can play flac and ogg. What do you guys think? Cowon? Archos? Sansa has better audio quality than the iPod, but not as good as the Zune, but it let's me install rockbox, which is great. And the Sansa's batteries only seem to last a year or less (although to be honest, I've only bought refurbs, so I don't know how good the Sansa batteries are. Also, I've had a few Sansa's for my daughter that have both just up and died after about 5 months.
I guess my ideal player would be 32gb of flash with really good sound and as sturdy as the built-like-a-tank and almost as heavy Zune. I think in 2011 I shouldn't have to carry a mechanical hard drive in my pocket just so I can have all the music I want. Oh, and I want it to cost $150 or less. I want to be able to control it, skip songs, fast forward and change volume without looking at it or taking it out of my pocket so a touchscreen is not indicated.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Apple were not the first into either of those markets, so I don't know why you'd say "follow Apple".
You are following whoever is in front of you, regardless of whether that person is at the front of the line. Apple went, then Microsoft went. So Microsoft followed Apple.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
I'm not sure where all this fecal mania at Slashdot comes from. Every time there is a product that is brown, the fecalphiles come out of the woodwork and start claiming that the product looks like poop. It seems to be an obsession around here. Ubuntu did not look like poop. It was brown. It was earth tones. The Zune did not look like poop any more than an iPod looked like a hand full of semen. In other words. Not at all. Unpleasant things come in pretty much every color. Associating every brown product with poop speaks more to the person making the association than it does to the product.
Don't be silly, bashing Microsoft is the only proven way to get modded up on Slashdot. Doesn't even matter if what you say is true or not.
It's really true. I mean, I thought making outrageously disrespectful statements about your mom and her promiscuity would be an easy way to get modded up "funny" - but for some reason people seem to think those statements are true...
Bow-ties are cool.
I'm sure if he was discussing the merits of the German Liberal Party you'd say "Oh vote Nazi and shut up. tl;dr and no-one else did either"
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How interesting that two extremely similar ID's both gush over Microsoft. Billy the Boy (2016540) and balls of steel (2016538).
Gee what an amazing coincidence that those numbers are so similar. It's as if they we
It looks like they're really making good progress. Windows 7, XBOX360, Windows Phone 7...All awesome products.
I kind of feel like Vista really lowered the bar and now people are happy with anything that isn't strictly worse than the previous version. I mean sure, Windows 7 has features that Windows XP doesn't, but most home users use it because it came installed on their PC and most businesses are upgrading to it primarily because they skipped Vista and they don't want to be still running XP when Microsoft discontinues support for it, rather than because it's so awesome that they had to have it.
And look at WP7: About the best you can say about it is that it's an improvement over WP6. But it still seems like a day late and a dollar short compared to its competitors.
It's good, since I really wouldn't want to live in a world dominated by Apple and Google.
I'll take Apple and Google over Microsoft any day. And realistically that seems to be the way things are going -- Android is well-positioned to become the mobile commodity OS with the lion's share of sales volume, especially in the budget market, with iOS securing the position MacOS has always held relative to Windows, i.e. lower volume but higher margins.
They kept plugging on while their competitors make mistakes (eg Netscape vs. IE5). IE5 was definitely better.
You're forgetting what IE was. Microsoft has never made a dime from IE other than as a lock-in strategy to keep people tied to Windows, nor did they ever intend to. So if your point is that Microsoft can execute a successful lock-in strategy then the point is well taken, but if you're trying to argue that their products are good for the consumer... I don't think lock-in is very good for the consumer.
Windows 7, XBOX360, Windows Phone 7...All awesome products.
I happen to agree with you that many of Microsoft's new produts are big improvements over their previous entries when evaluated individually. However, I think Microsoft's problem is that new mass-market computer products can't be evaluated as "standalone" anymore. It's all about the "ecosystem." This is why the Zune and pretty much every other standalone MP3 player has such a tiny marketshare, and why Microsoft tablets have lost out as well.
In the brave new computing world (His Steveness likes to call it the "post-PC world"), success is about an ecosystem of products that work together, and the more you use them all, the greater the value. Only three companies really get this: Apple, Google and Microsoft.
MSFT has been dominant in the PC world for so long because they had a brilliant business-centric ecosystem: Windows + Office + Exchange. For a while, they even had a smartphone dominance (remember 2007?) because Windows Mobile hooked into those things and mainly business users bought smartphones. But their consumer "media"/portable ecosystem sucked: Zune + ZunePass + Underpants Gnomes? Or even PlaysForSureAsLongAsItsNotAZune? (To be fair: they also held something of a consumer PC dominance with an ecosystem of Windows + Visual Studio + DirectX, but that has not helped them with Zune or phones.)
In the new world where mobile devices (including MP3 players) are based on consumer ecosystems, Apple has: MacOS X + iLife Applications + iOS + iTunes App Store + even Apple TV now that all work together and add collective value ... the more parts of that ecosystem you use, the better they work together and the greater value you as a user get. (e.g. an iPhone/iPad syncs up all your iTunes music/videos and iPhoto pics brilliantly and you can play them on the Apple TV as well.) Similarly, Google has Google search + amazing Google apps (Gmail, their first "killer app;" GTalk; Google Maps; Picasa; Google Docs; etc.) + Android + marketplaces + Google TV on some newer TVs. These two ecosystems have sucked up the new consumer markets and are now bleeding over even further into enterprise spaces. Google even has Chromium to enter the PC space... you can see how they really "get" the ecosystem thing and both companies are now duking it out for the throne. (I also think this is why you see RIM losing out in the smartphone market now... they nailed one part of the equation but had no answer for the others.)
To your point ... these are better products now from Microsoft, and there is more of a consumer ecosystem today (XBOX + Windows Phone 7 WP7 App Store + Bing + Silverlight) than there was before. But Microsoft's problem is they didn't "get" the consumer ecosystem space until too late, and their offerings have all been a day late and a dollar short.
P.S.: you'll note that neither Apple nor Google have "gotten" social networking as part of their ecosystem. (Microsoft at least had the sense to buy part of Facebook a few years ago.) I firmly believe that if either Apple or Google ever co-opt social networking through partnerships or acquisitions, the game will be over.
P.P.S.: when some Gartner consultant reads this and figures out what the "big strategic issue" is for Microsoft and puts it in a research note, please send me a check.
"95% of all Slashdot
Did a quick check to amuse myself. Hmm, first 6 adds on every Bing search result are spam, pretty much guaranteed. Beyond that definitely more spam on Bing than on Google, oh wait, I am using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/optimizegoogle/ to filter out crappy sites (including ebay). Well since you seem to be doing M$ advertising, is there a similar addon for Bing on IE to Optimize Google on Firefox.
Back on topic, I guess Ballmer's uncle is going to be really really disappointed to hear no more Zune, their number one customer. Using you phone to listen to music and watch streaming video is neat and convenient, apart from battery life and data download limits http://reviews.cnet.com/cell-phone-battery-life-charts/.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen