iPod Has Nothing To Fear From Slow-Starting Zune 422
narramissic writes, "Looks like Apple's iPod has nothing to fear from Zune this holiday season. In a research note published Tuesday, PiperJaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster writes that 'during its launch week on Nov. 16, Zune held the seventh spot on online retailer Amazon.com's top 10 best-selling MP3 players list, and it fell from that spot to 13 on the list only five days after launch, on Nov. 20.' Even worse, only 8% of retailers surveyed by PiperJaffray recommend the Zune to customers, while 75% recommend Apple's iPod." The article notes Apple's 5-year headstart in the portable player market and Microsoft's stated intention to invest heavily in the Zune over the next several years.
The Zune is brown (Score:3, Funny)
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You would think that they would have been popular with the UPS delivery guys.
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Watch out (Score:3, Funny)
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Did they plan on this? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Did they plan on this? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Did they plan on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's a picture of the factory the Zune is made in.
Is this what you saw? (Score:4, Informative)
Via boingboing
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/14/weird_screen
Re:Did they plan on this? (Score:4, Funny)
I'd say she looks rather disoriented...
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It boils down to this: What about the ROKR? When that came out, people were digging up every possible excuse for why it was a good idea. Well, it probably wasn't -- but it did have some positive reverberations.
Same for the Zune. It'll flop tremendously. But the Zune people have put WiFi on a media player. Their failure will scare off anyone else trying to do so. At the same time, they've suppressed their gag reflex around the **AAs so that
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This statement (if you really believe it and aren't just spreading FUD) is enough for me to discount the entirety of your post.
The iPod doesn't require FairPlay or iTMS files to play. It plays
If you really think otherwise, please return your "geek" credentials at the door. You know next to nothing about how the leading
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DRM on iTMS files is almost a non-issue.
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The reason is simple: AAC is a lossy compression format. It's pretty good for what it is, but it introduces distortions of its own, and it does lose clarity. When you burn it to an audio CD, you're creati
What about it? (Score:2, Funny)
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Re:Did they plan on this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Did they plan on this? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, MS seems to have perfected the business model of losing billions of dollars and coming in a very distant second.
The Zune's got the Sansa in its sights!
Re:Did they plan on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The XBox still hasn't gotten it right in terms of market acceptance.
Maybe that's because there will always be a group of people that simply won't buy an Xbox because it's made by Microsoft ?
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The XBox still hasn't gotten it right in terms of market acceptance.
Maybe that's because there will always be a group of people that simply won't buy an Xbox because it's made by Microsoft ?
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There are seriously no family friendly titles in the vein of Mario Kart for XBox.
Re:Did they plan on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite what we would like to believe, the group of people who don't buy stuff made by Microsoft is very, very small. They don't make a difference.
Re:Did they plan on this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Xbox makes sense as a loss-leader because the games themselves are a revenue stream worth chasing. But with Apple holding song prices at just-above-breaking-even level, there's no secondary sale for the Zune to loss-lead.
Apple uses the iTunes store as a value-added proposition for iPod sales, and takes its profit from the hardware sale. The music is a not-quite-loss leader for the device.
How is Microsoft supposed to carve out a profitable market by selling the hardware at a loss and making just enough on music sales to keep its online store running?
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Maybe (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, why is that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, just try finding anybody outside of the /. readership that has the faintest idea what OGG (Vorbis or Theora, it's more fun if you name them by their codecs instead of the container) is.
Funny how the above might be interpreted as common sense.
Why is it that the cheapest and best sounding routine is the least used? You would think that a free market would grab it and promote it. The answer is that the market is not free and that the major players are a bunch of asses who want to promote their own
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Actually there is apparently a slight advantage in using MP3 over Vorbis. Since the latter is more CPU intensive, it reduces the battery life. At least that's what transpired from tests made on a user web forum with the H3x0 iRiver players. I suppose results could be different with other CPU/implementation combinations.
As to why the implementation itself isn't more widely available on the players, I have to
Honestly (Score:5, Insightful)
Well... ok (Score:4, Interesting)
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Enough, obviously.
iPod historical sales figures (Score:5, Interesting)
I had every intention of flaming you, but you are right. These sales figures [mac.com] show that it took over a year for iPod to really take off.
Re:iPod historical sales figures (Score:5, Insightful)
Bzz, wrong answer (Score:5, Insightful)
See generally http://news.com.com/Apples+iPod+spurs+mixed+react
So here is the problem for Zune: there was a "portable MP3 player market". It was tiny. There is still a "portable MP3 player market", and its still tiny. And then there is an iPod market. Apple owns the concept like Nintendo used to own "video game console" (come on, how many of you have mothers who said that the Playstation was "The new Nintendo?").
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iTunes for Windows was released. Before that, it shipped with MusicMatch Jukebox. iTunes was half of what made the iPod such a compelling solution. So, it wasn't really until iTunes that Windows users could get a "real" iPod.
Re:Well... ok (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm fairly sure the iPod was not dominating the Windows PMP market 2 weeks after the Windows iPod hit the shelves.
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The Zune was destined to start slow. It could excrete pheromones
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Zune has so much promise (Score:5, Interesting)
It takes like a minute to share (squirt) a zune song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpHzQYKDlWU [youtube.com] [youtube.com]
The thing I was wondering is this. I do not mind the squirting feature, it seems neat and probably could have been implemented in a more intuitive way (IE have a squirt button instead of traversing 3 menus and a submenu) but the idea itself is "ok." Though I do have a problem with "squirting" a song in reference to a player that looks like it was molded in shit.
So they have some possibilities for cool features! They have wireless... why do they not leverage it in more interesting ways.
As you can see in the video they can see other zune players, in fact it seems incredibly intuitive.
Now lets say that it is true wifi and could probably support 5 or 6 streams coming out of it... why do they not have some kind of "Zune broadcast" feature were people can look at zunes, see what they are broadcasting or who they are listening too, and let people tap into the music that way... maybe even have some sort of re-broadcast peer to peer feature were each zune re-broadcasts what it is playing if someone wants to listen to the same song...
This way if you knew a lot of zune friends you could have them sample the song before you squirt it into their zune... though even talking about the zune and squirting makes me kind of uncomfortable.
Also, since it has wifi, why do they not provide a program that lets your computer do the same thing... IE submit to someones current audio stream.
This is even "better" than bringing an ipod to a club and having them plug it in, you just bring your zune in, start your stream and the DJ could link into it. OR you could go to your house, have your computer plugged into a nice sound system, and have it plug into what your zune is playing, this would allow you to use the zune as sort of a music remote control were you have a nice interface in your hand.
Or it could be used the other way around, the computer could transmit music and the zune could log in and see the music being transmitted... Microsoft even has Media center edition which would be perfect for this kind of thing, or it could be a plug in to their current media player. This way people could come over, log their zunes into your computer network and listen to music rocking down the line.
Maybe internet radio, walk into a wifi cafe, set up your zune, and listen to radio streaming from a remote radio station that is on-line, NPR for example (though you might want to find one to your tastes ofc).
How about wireless synchronization with podcasts? Walk into a wifi area and hit "sync" and have it sync with all the podcasts you are behind on and then tell you which ones you haven't listened to yet.
Maybe they could work with an online video provider similar to youtube and hook up a method to stream user videos to the zune in an easy fashion, something that would nearly be a killer app for anything.
Imagine a youtube branded mediaplayer with wireless access (maybe even work with phone companies for EVDO support) were someone could log into youtube and download youtube videos right to their phone.
I mean, the possibilities are ENDLESS and OBVIOUS. You merely have to think "man what would I love to do with a wireless capable player that can be locked into a major brand and legally buy music for" etc... and it seems Microsoft chose one interesting feature to focus on and implement poorly (squirting) and then made it so that the player broke every compatibility rule that you can think of, and made a SONY mistake were it changes format and requires that you re-purchase to play.
In the end you have to ask yourself "WTF"
and note, all of this is without the criticism of making blood contracts with record companies etc... it is saying "here are the things you made me hope you would provide, then you provided... this"
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if MS caved so badly as to give the RIAA a kickback on every unit sold with the premise that they would be used for illegal means, why on earth would you think they would enable such features that almost beg for copyright infringement (as the RIAA sees it)???
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All of my suggestions would allow for on the fly DRM to be in place that would limit the time and play availability of files. I am not suggesting going against the RIAA, I am suggesting making a more useful and interesting product while protecting copyright holder interest.
The only thing I would argue for is that if a piece of music
WiFi Buzz (Score:3, Interesting)
Read about it on a blog that listed the top ten ways Microsoft could improve the Zune.
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One person sent it, then the other sent it back.
I could easily see doing it in a couple of seconds, just click on the song playing or in a list, hit "send" and then send it.
Or why even do that, just put it as "share" and share it with whoever wants it in the room. They could log into your zune list and just grab the song if they think it is neat. Think of the ultimate collaborative
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It's easy to believe, but you're hampered by MS' deliberate use of confusing terminology.
"Squirting" isn't "sharing". "Sharing" is a term the ??AA's have invested millions of dollars in, trying to convince people that it's not an altruistic expression of consideration or caring between fellow humans, but is something which is evil and wrong.
Because the term "sharing" has been poisoned by that
Seriously. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft wants to touch that, they need an interface most people understand and prefer to the iPod, and they need to STICK TO IT. Ease of use and knowing the tricks to an iPod are part of what keeps people buying them again and again. Knowing Microsoft every revision of the hardware will be wildly different from the last, breaking any device-bound loyalty people have.
CNN review of the Zune (Score:3, Funny)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=T10L9ybstps [youtube.com]
Basically it ends up being an advertisement for the new iPod shuffle. Interesting to see how "the masses" are reacting to the Zune.
Re:CNN review of the Zune (Score:5, Funny)
Besides the iPod Shuffle tangent, my favorite part of that video was, "Why don't they get some decent design people to make things look better?" Ouch!
Give it time... (Score:3, Interesting)
In my opinion, Sony screwed the pooch with the PS-3 and MS took advantage of it. With the war chest they have, they do not need a better product. They only need to be able to win a war of attrition.
Re:Give it time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Xbox: Anytime a company is willing to take billions in losses to get marketshare, the product should be able to place better than 2nd place to the PS2.
IIS: Even though it is bundled with Windows Server, it still is second place to Apache.
IE: Ahem, didn't they get sued by leveraging their monopoly on this one?
So far none of the examples succeeded on their own merits.
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If by success, you mean taking first place, then I agree with you. However, if by success you mean, "becomming relevant enough to harm competitors by taking advantage of their monopoloy on the desktop", then we disagree.
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They didn't do jack with the Xbox. In fact, I'd have to say the whole Xbox project has been a colossal failure by almost any definition.
They spent a total of more than $6 billion on the system. They have so far made back $2 billion of that.
With that $6 billion, they managed to buy 20% of Sony's market share and about 10% of the overall industry's market share. Yes, the PS2 outsold the Xbox by 5:1 worldwide.
The Xbox 360, now, is still being outsold by the PS2, and it's
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WebTV wasn't developed by Microsoft - they bought WebTV in an attempt to get into the living rooms of computerphobes.
This purchase showed that Microsoft was capable of buying crappy ideas, in addition to developing them in-house.
Almost off Amazon list (Score:2, Redundant)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/
Ugly (Score:4, Insightful)
As superficial as it sounds, Apple has right idea for a big seller: make it shiny, make it smooth.
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Not exactly a fanboi, but a nano goes a long way to sway one's opinion. (It has frozen a few times, granted, but a reset takes care of
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This is a trick question right? Every version of iTunes ever can play and rip *gasp* DRM-less files. The mp3 files I ripped using iTunes will play in any mp3 capable app or hardware.
Oh, you meant the iTunes Music Store? Have you even heard about the DRM in the Zune? Oh that's right, you wanted to excuse the DRM issue on the Zune and only talk about Apple's DRM. If you want to say Apple's is bad you have to show how MS' is better. Were you
Re:Ugly (Score:5, Informative)
With Apple, you can at least choose not to have DRM by not using the iTMS. And actually you can still use iTMS for Podcasts without any DRM which you can't on Zune.
My Experience (Score:2)
Sales will be slow.... (Score:2)
People buy from the front shelves, not the bottom shelf in the back.
Re:Sales will be slow.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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So, how do you explain the popularity of things like the Wii and PS3, before they were even on the shelves at all? How do you explain the popularity of the iPod before it was on the "front shelves."? How do you explain the popularity of Dell computers, which aren't even on shelves at all - yet is the most popular brand of PC?
ball in Apple's court (Score:2, Insightful)
Console market comparison (Score:3, Informative)
Like I said before, you can't compare the markets directly for a number of reasons, but you shouldn't count out a company that has a seemingly infinite warchest and is willing to spend it to strong-arm their way into whatever market they'd like.
Merchant Support (Score:5, Informative)
a) These merchants all have 100's of iPod Accessories. The nature of this is that if you sell a 299 dollar IPod, it will also create the sale of some other device, perhaps a speaker system or a nice little protective wallet, or some addon. Even if they would work fine with the Zune, the packaging all says 'iPod'.
b) No impulse upgrade available. Someone comes in for a 30 gig iPod and may be talked up to a 60. The shuffle buyer ends up with a Nano. Maybe the Nano buyer ends up with a video iPod.
c) The Zune is a new product from Microsoft. To most vendors that implies support issues. The worst thing for them would be to have to deal with returns. Microsoft waiting till this close to Christmas is probably to try to get enough of these into the market before the inevitable bug/virus/hardware issue comes up. They would prefer to fix it after Christmas to see big numbers.
d) Grandma buys the Zune for her kid because a salesperson said 'its like the iPod but better!' and the kid returns the Zune for store credit to get their iPod.
Basicly the profit margin can NOT be high enough to sell this at this stage. The question is WHEN.
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I will not propose any suggestions of how they could improve things. Clearly the fact that they have a wifi and fm radio in the box and an upgradeable firmware/software means they could improve these gradually. But the fact that they came so strongly with DRM that even makes my recording of my sister's karaoke performance self destruct ala mission impossible, does not bode well to the idea of a flexible portable mobile media center.
The fact is that Microsoft should be big enough player to dictate to the RIAA how things are going to be rather than the other way around. Even Apple, substantially smaller, bullied them effectively.
I haven't tried the Zune, but i also didn't buy an iPod until the Nano came out, and since I can fit my Nano in my shirt pocket and forget it is there, I don't see any comparison to Microsoft's offering.
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Bullying? The labels are making more off itunes than Apple is. I think Jobs found a workable arrangement that attracts customers, pays the labels, and manages to not lose Apple much money. If the labels made a bigger cut of the same amount Apple would lose more. If Apple jacked up the prices to appease th
Re:Merchant Support (Score:5, Informative)
I think 'bullying' is too harsh a term. I do think Apple strong-armed the labels. After all, who else is bigger than Apple in the online music market? But most people agree with Apple on pricing. The whole incident on pricing shows how short a memory the labels have. Their attempts to make money on digital music failed for years. Apple came to the music labels with the idea of iTunes store and successfully implemented it. Their argument for fixed pricing was simple. If you keep the prices simple and low enough, most people will buy music instead of pirating it. The labels allowed it to happen and they made hundreds of millions without any real extra effort on their part. Then they want to raise prices forgetting why iTunes Store was successful in the first place. Or is it that they remember but they're just too greedy?
The real reason... (Score:3, Interesting)
If these are the people that Microsoft is relying on to sell the Zune to the masses, they are seriously outgunned by the hordes of iPod lovers.
AmEx is flogging it (Score:2)
iPod vs Zune / XBox 360 vs PS3 (Score:2, Insightful)
Read about it, then tried it for myself (Score:2)
I read someone else's impressions [waynehartman.com] of it and went to Best Buy and have to mostly agree with what he says.
I too felt that the Zune felt cheap and the button interface left much to be desired. Like the reviewer, I too own an iPod.
The only MP3 player you will ever need. (Score:2, Interesting)
Get a Rio Carbon! I've had my 5-gigger for roughly 3 years now. I used to use it when working on cars (I was a professional mechanic) dropped it upwards of 20-30 times. Thing still works PERFECTLY. Drag-and-drop, no software required. Hooks up using a standard mini-USB cable, 20 hours on one charge, can also be used out of the box as a portable hard drive...small as shit. Easily controlled using one thumb, MUCH
That YouTube video... (Score:3, Funny)
The screen shows at least six other Zunes nearby.
Is there any place in the universe other than the Microsoft campus that has over six Zunes within range of each other as of November 2006?
What I don't get is... (Score:3, Interesting)
The market in portable MP3 players has been around for a fair few years now. The iPod runs the show because it does what Most People want to do, in a nice friendly way, and is brilliantly marketed. There are a thousand and one players on the market for Everybody Else, which offer more functionality, better sound quality, less DRM restrictions, lower price, whatever. Pretty much every single one of these competitors is deficient on the usability front, and most of them have some head-slappingly bad UI howlers that make you wonder just what the hell they were thinking when they designed it, or indeed whether they were thinking at all.
And then, having had years to learn from everybody else, good and bad, Microsoft rocks up with the Zune. Oops.
Why can't they, and everybody else, understand what makes for a good portable music player? Why do they give Apple such an easy ride? The iPod really isn't any great shakes, it's just that the competition is mostly rotten. With each revison Apple have done just enough to keep half a step ahead - for example, the rather fudged implementation of gapless playback that finally arrived with the last updates took away one of the main reasons why I personally wouldn't buy one (seriously, folks, if there's no gaps between the tracks on the CD, and your player puts them in, that is a bug. Fix it. And yes, I know MP3s can't really do true gapless).
Really, Apple's market dominance is there for the taking. All it takes is a bit of application. Why can't anybody come up with the goods?
It's not the hardware, it's Microsoft's approach (Score:4, Interesting)
But it's not flying off the shelves. It's NOT EVEN ON some shelves. It will fall off the Amazon top 100 in the next few days. The iPod is 5 or 6 of the Amazon top ten electronics sellers. The #1 at Amazon has firmly been an iPod for weeks. (Zune was #94 last I checked)
And Microsoft has done everything right. They were able to convince the entire non-iPod MP3 player industry to adopt Plays-For-Sure so they could all be put out of Microsofts way at once and they STILL can't outsell Creative's player.
Would you do business with them after they lured you into Plays-For-Sure?
They were carefull to pay off the RIAA through Universal Music for each Zune sold. The RIAA gets their money when you pay at the cash register. That way people can know they are doing the right thing.
Everyone who wants to send a buck to the RIAA by buying a Zune raise your hand!
They did a lot of focus groups and their ads had the right mix of Black, White, Asian, women, men, young, and old in their "Welcome to the Social" ads which feature some kind of music player. Did their ads really inform anybody about the Zune? Why I want one instead of an iPod?
They carefully came up with a misleading "points" scheme to cloud how much a song costs and to force consumers to leave a few cents on the table for each purchase. This is sure to appeal to the average buyer.
The only one who deserves a Brown Zune for Christmas is Bill Gates.
Wonder how sales are in Isreal... (Score:4, Funny)
Zune Lost on Advertising (Score:3, Insightful)
It's already pretty well understood that the hardware and legal limitations of the Zune are early shortcomings. However, I happen to think that one of its bigger shortcomings is not the player, but the advertising for it.
I've seen only one commercial for the Zune, and it was the first time I wanted a refund of my time for a commercial. All I can remember was a dog wagging its tail and the owner asking it to go outside. The Zune was never shown. As a matter of fact, I cannot really recall any advertisement where the Zune was displayed. I mean, after looking at a commercial like that, it just begs the question of WHY? Did the owner want to go outside to get a Zune? Did its dog see one and get excited about it, thus sparking a reaction from the owner to chase it or something? If I have to do a close analysis of a 30-second or less commercial, what would make me or anyone want to research further into the product, let alone buy it? The "let's-get-lots-of-interest-by-being-enigmatic" strategy for marketing and advertisement only works for ideas and philosophies, in my opinion.
Let me not even get started on what they think is "welcoming the social." I think that seeing some random Spanish (?) girl looking like she has other intentions with something cylindrical or an Asian girl seemingly fornicating (this can be looked at in so many different angles) makes me wonder what "social" I really want to be a part of. Using the verb "to squirt" to describe sending music or data doesn't help the situation either. Developers, developers, developers.
Plus, it's not like Microsoft hasn't made cool advertising before. Its advertisements for Office have been pretty interesting, and so was its commercial for Windows Vista while it was still in beta. Why couldn't they do this with the Zune? Were they afraid that the RIAA would come down on them if they played a song or anything related to music?
To be fair, when the iPod was first launched, I don't remember the advertisements for it exactly but I think they centered around the same theme that Apple uses today: showing people using iPod to listen to music. They showed people dancing, jumping, freaking out, going crazy, and doing all sorts of things that have to deal with the enjoyment of listening to music. Hell, when I saw those ads I wanted to dance. Plus, the white iPod looked really cool in them. No wonder it became a chic item to have. Hell, just for kicks Microsoft could have creative around this idea. Why didn't they?
Zune is NOT a product (Score:5, Insightful)
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iPod in 2001 (Score:2)
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Out of the gate, iPods were Mac-only, back when Apple was still flailing with the Macintosh platform. iPods didn't start supporting Windows, as far as I can remember, until sometime around the summer of 2003. It didn't take them any time to outdo the competition, if by "competition" you mean MP3 players. MP3 players were just badly designed and not widely used. It took them a while to refine iTunes, get to the Windows market, and generate enough hype to overcome the general reticence of people to ditch
Re:iPod has something to fear (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, Office succeeded more because it was a bundle for less than the cost of WP plus 1-2-3. Oh, and all components looked the same (thanks to being Windows based), and worked more similarly, so learning one meant that learning another had already started. And there were "extras" (Org Chart and so on). Despite how good technically 1-2-3 V3 and WP5.1 were, they were arcane to learn.
As for Zune, well it looks as though Microsoft used Taco's review of the iPod and stopped all thought there. No WiFi - well ours has. Smaller than an Archos - well ours is bigger. Lame - well...
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The WiFi could be a killer feature if it didn't suck, but it does, which means no squirting, which means there's really no fucking point to even having it.
Yeah, cause of course, they're not going to add any features in future firmware updates that would make more use of the WiFi.
Except it will most definitely happen. Will people still be bashing the WiFi a year down the line when, say, you can wirelessly sync with your PC, have your friends all grabbing your music stream on their Zunes so you're all listening to the same thing at the same time, grab songs from WiFi kiosks at a concert or a music store, etc? The key is getting the WiFi in the Zune and workin
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Well then, it's a good thing I didn't say that.
I said it's not worth having
Re:Bah. (Score:5, Funny)
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What do Mac users have to do with it? The vast majority of iPod owners are using Windows.
The reason (Score:5, Insightful)
Also that the devices tend to have a lot of technical depth but hide it behind a refined interface - poke around for alternate iPod management software if you want to have more control over what happens. They have moved beyond the "Cool, I can add my own graphics" that a lot of us loved at one time and have moved into the "thank god I don't have to mess with it to use it fully'.
It's like the recent story about the Microsoft shutdown menu. Like you, they thought more choices were better but really they are not. Apple is very good at folding choices into as few choices as possible.
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I believe the term you are looking for is FairPlay. iTunes is just the conduit to the iPod as well as being the media player. I don't think that people are complaining about DRM in general as much as their are on the restrictions of DRM in the Zune vs. the iPod. FairPlay allows you to play music that you bought on up to 5 computers and an unlimited number of iPods. Zune DRM allows you 3 computers and 2 Zunes. Zune allows you very limited wireless sharing (3 days or 3 plays) and even plac
Back and forth ))<>(( (Score:2)
Re:The XBox business model? (Score:4, Funny)
What they're going to have, is a proof that Microsoft is a contender in the mp3 player market. This is just a very expensive piece of marketting for their next generation player.
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Netscape - A single product company (web server + browser) driven into the dirt because MS gave away a competing product free with windows.
WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3 - both companies foolishly refused to provide Windows versions of their products, meanwhile MS made equivalent products that did support Windows, ultimately bundling them together as Office.
These scenarios are not even remotely analogous to ipod vs Zune unless you are suggesting that Microsoft are going to resort to giving Zunes awa
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Many years ago-- while I was in the military-- I got tired of carrying around all the stupid plastic cases and migrated all my music to alphabetical CD binders. It was never an optimal solution for me because buying a new cd meant yanking all the discs out of the binder and shuffling them around to keep things easy to find. The binde
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