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Microsoft Killing Off Zune, Windows Live Brands?
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from The Verge:
"Microsoft appears to be killing off two of its key user-facing brands with the upcoming Consumer Preview release of Windows 8. Windows Live applications have been rolled into preinstalled apps that work as the core 'Windows Communications' applications for Windows 8, and this lack of Windows Live branding is only the tip of the iceberg. 'Microsoft Account' will replace Windows Live ID in Windows 8, and the software giant has also removed traces of Zune from its Windows Store, Music, and Video applications, although Zune Pass functionality remains."
You know real nerds can just disable unwanted services.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
we shouldn't expect mobile products from MS with names like "Zune Messiah" or "Children of Zune" either.
How can anyone invest themselves in any Microsoft product when they change branding/strategy/support so much? Even if a product manages to stay around over 3-5 years, they give it an overhaul and change the way it works so people have to get used to it all over again. .Net, Live!, PlaysForSure, Zune, Silverlight, among many others, and they also drop support for older file formats and push half-assed standards over established certified ones.
There's a difference between killing and rebranding. Aside from the Zune hardware I don't see a single thing I would consider "killed" by Microsoft. And I'd even accept that idea that the Zune isn't being killed but instead reintroduced in a slightly more integrated format.
Microsoft Killing Off Zune
The what?
and think of how boned the Zune lifetime pass owners are.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I wonder if Windows 8 will have an emulation layer for x86 on the ARM.
Nope.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
I own 2 Zunes. I've been using them to listen to music at work nearly every day for the past 3 years. I've found them to be very high-quality pieces of hardware. I'm not a huge fan of the Zune software, but I don't think it's any worse than iTunes. Yet most of the time when I tell co-workers that I listen to music on a Zune, I have to endure ridicule for not using an Apple product. I have even heard from ex-MS colleagues that by-and-large, MS employees don't think very highly of the Zune.
What gives? Did I totally miss the boat on this and the Zune actually sucks? Am I just destined to be forever uncool by being associated with a failed MS product? I just never understood the hate, and somehow it seems to be worse now than ever. And now MS is apparently trying to distance itself from Zune as much as possible.
Keep your chin up, Zune. You still have a few fans out there.
My userid is prime!
The Zune's biggest problem was horrible branding. I've used one a couple of times and it was a solid device. But the marketing agent who decided making a 'squirt' service available on a device available in poo-brown was a good idea doomed the device and was hopefully fired. Frankly, I'm surprised the name lasted even longer than the device. Killing a bad brand name like that is a wise decision.
I'm shocked myself. I had assumed that it was already dead, and thus MS didn't need to kill anything.
and think of how boned the Zune lifetime pass owners are.
They didn't say YOUR lifetime.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What's to defend? The price has gone up. MS stock is traded in relatively high volume. Therefore, a significant portion of the market (read, "a lot of people") think that denis-The-menace's assessment about the future of Microsoft is wrong. The reason why lots of people think MS's stock is worth 20% more now isn't relevant to the question of whether lots of people do, in fact, think that way.
I don't see the problem. If you like Windows, you should be happy to pay $200-500 for a fully-featured copy that allows you to control the installation and not have it loaded with crapware from Norton et al.
If you don't like that, I suggest you look into alternatives. Personally, I think MS's prices are much too low, and that they should jack up their prices.
Here's some food for thought regarding your interest in understanding why companies develop products that are destined to fail.
When these CEOs have to meet with shareholders and the board of directors, they have to face questions about what the company is doing in response to the success other companies are having with a certain product. There is intense pressure on them to have an answer.
This is why Microsoft has things like their storefronts. So Ballmer can tell the shareholders they're doing a 'me-too' in response to the Apple store success. It's also why HP bought Palm and released the TouchPad. It's why motorola released the Xoom. It's why RIM released the PlayBook.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Apple changes things at pretty much the same rate...
iTools - Originally launched as a free collection of internet services for users of Mac OS
Then "relaunched" in 2002 as a paid subscription as ".Mac"
Then "relaunched" again in 2008 as "MobileMe"
which it discontinued offering, and will kill in 2012 entirely
as it herds everyone over to its newly launched "iCloud"
I'd say Apple is pretty much exactly the same thing.
Apple changes things at pretty much the same rate...
Exactly! Remember when they completely shut down iTunes 5 years ago?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
You didn't pay for a "Windows" license, you paid for a license for a version of Windows that is configured in one particular way and loaded down with a bunch of shitware. What you're doing is like buying a Chevy Aveo (with a big discount in exchange for having ads pasted to the side of the car) and then complaining that you didn't get a Corvette.
Macs are more expensive partially because they're not loaded with shitware. The shitware makes a big difference in price; that's how the mfgrs are able to sell you a laptop with Windows for less than the same laptop with Linux (which itself is free): your cost is being subsidized by all the pre-loaded shitware. By being forced to spend $300 or whatever for a fully-featured Windows license, you're only being forced to realize the true cost of the software. Of course, the preloaded Windows versions also frequently have various limitations that the higher-cost versions don't, hence the "Starter" edition which only lets you run 3 programs at a time, etc.
Comparing a shitware-loaded OEM Windows version to a Mac is apples and oranges. If the version of Windows you want ends up making your system cost as much as a Mac, then that shows that Windows isn't, in reality, any cheaper, it only appears that way when you use crippled versions and/or various vendor marketing deals that subsidize the cost.
All stocks are up this year, Microsoft's it just up a little more than the average. Stocks and commodities are going up because central banks the world over are printing staggering quantities of money. Central bank balance sheets are where money is created out of thin air and turned over to banks who then leverage it anywhere from 11X to 50X creating a tidal wave of inceasingly worthless dollars, euros, yuan, and pounds.
Stocks and commodities are going up to counteract the decline of the paper currencies they are denominated in. The actual valuation of the companies hasn't changed that much but their value in dollars and euros soars as the real value of these fiat currencies plunge as more and more are printed (they are not actually printed they are electronically conjured from thin air with a stroke of a key on a computer).
The DOW rally from 6,660 to 12,000 was driven almost entirely by the Federal Reserve flooding the worlds banks with dollars which they mostly plowed back in to stocks and commodities.
The huge rally in the stock market so far this year started on the day the ECB gifted European banks with 500 billion in newly created Euros in exchange for their increasingly worthless PIIGS bonds, in a program called LTRO. The ECB is scheduled to do another round of this at the end of this month that could equal that or go as high as 1 Trillion Euros. The ECB had a German President opposed to printing money in 2011, but he was replaced with an Italian who immediately opened the spigots to save Italy's bonds from collapse. It did miracles for Italy's bonds and stock markets the world over. Its also fueling a new round of inflation in oil and assorted other commodities.
@de_machina
If you mean windows starter edition you can run as many programs at once as you want. check your facts before posting.
I did:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/04/21/1356245/windows-7-starter-edition-3-apps-only
No, you didn't. You're just spreading FUD. See here.
pffft... you idiot. "real" nerds avoid anything microsoft like the plague and use linux, and have little idea what all the hype is about.
Actually one of the few smart things they are doing with Win 8 is they are FINALLY gonna have services that start when they are called and stop when they are no longer needed, most likely because the sweaty monkey still thinks he can sell a WinPhone and WinTab so if you don't set any family settings the service won't actually be running so no worries there.
What IS a huge worry is how a company with THAT many engineers can't see the giant screaming FAIL in 50 foot letters! I mean first they tried to jam the Windows desktop metaphor onto phones, complete with teeny tiny start button even though its a completely different form factor and when that fails miserably what do they do? they go "Herp derp i know, we'll stick the Windows tablet UI on the desktop!" which shows that anyone with common sense has done left that company for Google> I mean HOW many desktops and laptops were sold with touch enabled screens this year? MAYBE .03% of the entire market? hell take out Kiosks and POS machines and that number is probably something like 0.001% of the world PC market. So what fucking moron thinks jamming a touch focused UI on something WITHOUT A TOUCHSCREEN is a brilliant idea? Anyone? Beuller?
The ONLY thing I can think of that makes sense is the engineers have frankly gotten sick of Ballmer's Apple fetish and bullshit and are letting him have everything he wants in the hopes he'll flame so badly that even being Bill's little buddy won't save his sweaty ass. I can imagine them going "Sure Mr Ballmer (snicker) having a cell phone UI on the desktop IS a brilliant idea (chokes back a laugh) and yes sir i bet this will finally make us a "cool and hip" company like Apple (rushes to hang up phone before they bust out laughing)". But hey, don't take my word for what a big heaping of fail Win 8 is, try it yourself for free! The Consumer preview is being released to the world at the end of the month, this is the "90% complete" version so what you see is what is gonna be crapped all over desktops and laptops this Oct...well until the OEMs have a screaming shitfit as their sales plummet and they demand downgrade rights to Win 7 like they did with Vista and XP.
To me though the sad part isn't win 8 being a giant failwhale because Win 7 is supported until 2020 and hopefully Ballmer will be shitcanned by then, no what is sad to me is first with Vista and now 100 times more powerful with the combo of Win 8, the death of XP, and everyone practically living on the net Linux has been given all these great gifts. its like the competition is giving them a 250 meter head start on the 300 meter dash and what does the devs do? Do they announce a distro with ten years of support and a rock solid foundation, built upon a "It works and will consistently continue to work" philosopy? Nope first they gut the entire soundsystem for an unstable mess and then if that didn't set them back far enough they trash the two biggest DEs for a buggy blingfest that set everything back a good 5+ years with regards to stability! Its like someone went back in time with the design of the iPad and tried to hand it to the Linux devs only to have them go " Naaaaah, we're betting it all on the Foleo baby!". So instead of just taking that huge lead and waltzing across the finish line so they can finally give us a true "third way" over apple and MSFT they promptly shoot themselves in the foot and then plop down in the middle of a field to write a script in long PHP codes that makes the CLI answer them with "You are so cool master"...sigh.
As much as I can't believe i'm agreeing with that linTroll Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols all these new UIs just suck, like REALLY hard. Its like all the devs of the world just lost their damned minds when iPhone came out and then lined up to horribly fuck up their offerings in the hopes they could somehow "capture the magic" of the iShiny. It reminds me of the old Python upper class twits bit, these devs probably couldn't even shoot themselves correctly.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.