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Zune HD Hands on Demo and Impressions

dornoforpyros said:
Thread summary:
bla bla bla M$ is teh gey to teh max!!!1!!!
They ripped of apple!!!11!!!
FAIL!!!1!
What a piece of garbage!!1!! I'd rather use my newton then that piece of junk!!1!! It doesn't even have a pen!!11!
:rolleyes:
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Feel like trolling anymore? :rolleyes:

Anyway, I think MS actually might have a good product this time, the screen is GORGEOUS and while the UI goes the standard MS route i can see it appealing to many. Good Job MS, but its going to be an uphill battle seeing how engrained the ipod is into people
 
I like it. I like the dark interface. White = boring. If it sounds as good as the former zunes, it'll be an instant buy for me. It would be amazing if it were compatible with Windows mobile applications. It's going to be difficult for the Zune to steal customers to Apple, but it looks like a very nice PMP.
 
Sedulous said:
I don't understand why the top 15% of the screen always has the menu section title in a huge font that is mostly cut off. Why bother taking up the top 15% so that you can see the bottom half of the menu section title?
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I think its supposed to be hip and cool. Could work, but im much more of a calm cool and collected guy, thats why I like apple's UI's.
 
NT1440 said:
Lol im sure everyone is just clamoring for an FM tuner on the top of their lists.
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a lot of commuters taking trains to work will be able to listen to their morning shows using HD OTA vice battery sucking 3G.
 
Looks like a touch screen device.
wow.
Until you can actually TRY one - its sheer fantasy - sorry, zune fans.
 
I love when things like the Zune HD and Palm Pre come out. They force Apple to pump up the iPhone and iPod Touch. We may not see it this year, but within a year or so the iPhone/iPod Touch will have an OLED screen, because the Zune HD has it. The Palm Pre forced the iPhone to get a bunch of features it was missing. The same thing is about to happen.

It won't really compete with the iPod Touch, but it's good Microsoft is pushing the envelope. It looks solid. But to be honest, I don't think I've touched a Zune in my entire life...I think I've seen one not on the internet...my weird friend had one..
 
Competition rocks :D
It might be just me... but I noticed some lag when he touched the screen at some points of the vid..
 
DHarrisDBS34 said:
We may not see it this year, but within a year or so the iPhone/iPod Touch will have an OLED screen, because the Zune HD has it.
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I love the idea, but this statement is totally wrong. The ipod wont have it BECAUSE the zune has it, it will because its a superior technology thats going to become the standard very soon (for obvious reason).

What hes saying is that there have been alot of great products taken down a few pegs because of crappy touchscreen implementation, like the storm for example.

Basically, wait until you actually try it before making final judgement. The previews look great, but they did for tons of other products that were dissapointments as well.
 
dae5dia said:
Leave it to Microsoft to simply expand on something Apple has already been producing for a year. If they were actually innovating, it would be impressive.
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That's exactly what the Japanese have been doing (well, literally, contracting rather than expanding :)) for 30 years, but no one complains about that.
 
NT1440 said:
I love the idea, but this statement is totally wrong. The ipod wont have it BECAUSE the zune has it, it will because its a superior technology thats going to become the standard very soon (for obvious reason).
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Then Apple should have had it for the next round of upgrades. You are going to be a year behind the curve and chasing the puck before Apple has it on the iPhone or the Touch.

The competition isn't catching up. It's in the express way while Apple is waiting for Steve to come back. He's OLD and past his time and at this point looking out for his retirement.

Google introuduced HTML 5.0 for gmail and social networking. They have Stock, Weather and News apps that make Apple's look like 1980's software.

It's getting to the point of pathetic.
 
markojug said:
An improvement for Zune, but Apple will still over sell the Zune by far. And by the way, it does not have a better GUI than the iPhone/iPod Touch
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not to mention that apple has started their back to school promo so there will be countless kids getting an ipod touch this summer cause it will be free with their computer. that's going to be hard for the Zune to compete with
 
Even with all that effort, they could not get the font the right size to fit the word marketplace or even better, had a wordsmith work on a shorter name like... store?
;)
It plays podcasts, videos and music. How innovative. Where is the app store? Where are the games? Where are the apps?

As a mac user, I could not care less since the Zune software is windows only and I've bought so many apps on my iPhone.
 
Seahawk Fan said:
Then Apple should have had it for the next round of upgrades. You are going to be a year behind the curve and chasing the puck before Apple has it on the iPhone or the Touch.

The competition isn't catching up. It's in the express way while Apple is waiting for Steve to come back. He's OLD and past his time and at this point looking out for his retirement.

Google introuduced HTML 5.0 for gmail and social networking. They have Stock, Weather and News apps that make Apple's look like 1980's software.

It's getting to the point of pathetic.
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:rolleyes:

The ipod touch isn't up for revision yet. Your comparison is to an outdated but still incredible device.

What is so revolutionary about this besides the (very nice) oled screen? Seems pretty standard.
 
They even have the same flick to scroll and have the same invisible-when-not-scrolling scroll bar! :eek:

Anyways I really love the Radio feature. But I don't think the UI is better... Tapping on text but not icons is not acceptable for me.
 
I don't get what the fuss is about. What does the Zune HD have that's so great? I'm definitely not one of those people that thinks that Apple owns all (I'm so excited for the Pre, I love Windows), but the only benefits I see are an OLED screen and HD radio. The iPod touch is a much better/capable device, IMO.
 
NT1440 said:
What hes saying is that there have been alot of great products taken down a few pegs because of crappy touchscreen implementation, like the storm for example.

Basically, wait until you actually try it before making final judgement. The previews look great, but they did for tons of other products that were dissapointments as well.
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Do Not try and twist my words. I said all of the analysts have reviewed it and loved it (even Engadget the most Apple friendly site without iApple in the URL).

Face it, it kicks the Touch of the ball park.

OLED. You wil have it in a year at the earliest. Chasing the puck and losing Market Share.

I love Google, MS, and Palm for finally getting Steve off his skinny ass and putting out a product that competes with the CURRENT MARKET.
 
Lyra said:
Will Steve come back, last thing I heard was that he's not even going to host the event coming next month!
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do not expect Steve to be up on the stage 24/7 like the old days. that's part of how are the stock value issues started. everyone in the media etc starting latching onto the notion that Apple = Steve Jobs so every time the guy cleared his throat, farted or whatever, the stock value dropped cause he was about to die and left only a bunch of morons to run the company without any clues of what to do.

by getting off the stage and letting those 'morons' led the way, the whole Rock Star thing with Steve has started to die down and that's the best thing for Apple.
 
Seahawk Fan said:
Do Not try and twist my words. I said all of the analysts have reviewed it and loved it (even Engadget the most Apple friendly site without iApple in the URL).

Face it, it kicks the Touch of the ball park.

OLED. You wil have it in a year at the earliest. Chasing the puck and losing Market Share.

I love Google, MS, and Palm for finally getting Steve off his skinny ass and putting out a product that competes with the CURRENT MARKET.
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I wasnt even talking about your words, just responding to you about the other guy you responded to....

OLED, thats it.

We all know apple does yearly updates, why that seems to bother you so much is beyond me.
 
Microsoft is learning from its mistakes

Wow, well done microsoft. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple products, but I can say that apple has now 2 potential rivals: the Zune HD and the Palm Pre (for the ipod touch & iPhone). I think this is great for apple, because now apple has a chance to make even better products and surprise us even more.
 
kudos to microsoft for trying to take things further. I have a sneaking suspicion they got some of the xBox team involved here.

The issue is while it is making steps in the right direction, from what we have seen so far it's still not there from a design/UI view.

Hopefully this will push Apple to pick up the OLED screens a little faster. They are gorgeous. Also, if there was some type of HD output that would be tops.

The issue here is while the front of the device is leaps and bounds better that the first gen the back is to much with the screws. Some will like it because it's "techy/cool/whatever" but one of the main lessons on good design is less is often more and simpler is better. The sections titles and their zooming may be getting a "cool reaction" because of the animations, but from a usability standpoint they are crap. With no breadcrumbs to show where you are they are basically all flash and wasted space.

Of course it is nice to see them simplifying the UI in terms of digging down. The comments on how fast it is compared to the iPod are a little lost on me. The only thing that seems faster than my iPhone is the rotation and here's a key point about that. If every time I hinted at rotating my phone it actually rotated I would be annoyed as hell. Thats' why there is a pretty uniform second to second and a half delay with it in Apple's UI. If you are gesturing or accidentally tilt the screen on the iPhone it's taking a second to make sure you are really initiating a rotation. I'd be willing to bet this is changed on the zune before launch as well. Once you are where you want to be the zooming and flipping through are fast and smooth within the app.

Also, it's hard to compare this at all to any of the apple products at the moment minus the hardware since there is no real comparison to be made yet. You can't hear the music. You can't use the screen. You can't use any apps/there are no apps. Minus an app store there will never be a comparison. You can toss it in with all the other "cool but typical" PMPs out there. I see everyday new PMPs that I think are cool, but when I have an iPhone that does what they do and more (99% of the time) why would I give that up for anything else.

That brings us to the third point. There will be people who buy this yes. Lot's probably. The big issue here though is that it's a little late to the game. It's not bringing anything so awesome as to unseat the branding and momentum that Apple has secured...

It's cool looking though, and seems to actually bring a bit more heat than V1.0 did.
 
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