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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.
"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."
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
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
While I realize you're joking they actually made many, many more strategic mistakes. Forcing me to use the Zune software was one. Only having that software on the PC was another. Making that software super slow and super buggy was also quite bad. Rarely updating the firmware and software was the next mistake. Poor codec support was another. Ignoring their customers was probably the worst (one example of that: doing love/hate instead of star ratings). The thing that pissed me off the most (though they later fixed it), as an early adopter, was that their software AUTOMATICALLY and without asking, upon initial install, overwrote all of my music tags, as well as corrupting a good 75% of my music. It's all really too bad, the UI on the hardware was quite good.
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.
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."
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.
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.
How can it stop playing?! I have PlaysForSure(TM)!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
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.
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