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Zune HD Hands on Demo and Impressions

Boilerplate response: competition is always good (may force Apple to consider OLED sooner than they might), but product will be Epic Fail as usual. The end.
 
So it appears that the final UI does have the idiotic cut off "marketplace" menu item. Didn't anyone at MS notice this?

"Hey Bob, the word 'marketplace' has the e cut off on the menu. What can we do about that?"
"Well, Jim. To fix that will take a meeting with 3 different teams, a new build, 24 hours of compiling, and 48 hours of testing. Let's just pretend we don't see this flaw."
"... what flaw? Ship it!"
 
hefeglass said:
i was expecting to see a bunch of apple fanboys dissing and throwing hissy fits as usual...and i was right. Im excited to see some competition...i guess i cant expect much from a forum made up of 14 year olds
Click to expand...

Go somewhere and do some growing up yourself; then come back.
 
HiRez said:
Boilerplate response: competition is always good (may force Apple to consider OLED sooner than they might), but product will be Epic Fail as usual. The end.
Click to expand...

Competition is almost always good. too much competition can drive quality down to just tolerable levels, in favor of lower prices. But I agree. It probably won't do well.
 
Unprocessed1 said:
Over 2 million Zunes and over 11% of the market. The Zune HD will certainly increase their market share.
Click to expand...

Really? 11% Market share? The Mac has 10% U.S. market share and you see them everywhere, I've never seen a single person with a Zune. 😛
 
Competition is good

I'm glad to see that iPod Touch and iPhone are seeing some heavy competition (Zune HD and Palm Pre). That should prod Apple to make those beauties even better.
 
I'm honestly scared for Apple after seeing this video. Microsoft took a different, more "fast-paced" approach to the UI rather than the iPod touch's simple, elegant, maybe even boring UI. The UI feels snappier than the iPod touch one. However, it seems harder to develop for since Apple's SDK gives you standardized UI elements. Also, there is no space to put apps as another poster mentioned should Microsoft turn the Zune into a platform. However, I'm very tempted to buy a Zune now (I never would have thought I would be saying that sentence).

It's almost not fair that Apple, with such innovation creates a market for a touch screen device and then Microsoft, of all companies comes in and makes something better.

We still have the App store though.
 
That UI is better looking? Are they crazy? It's like all text, they should call it the DOSzune.

I'm surprised so many are criticizing the iPhone OS UI… which is one of the main selling points and gets pretty much universal raves. I don't know what you want them to do with it at this point in time. It's damn near perfect.

I also love how the guy is a total suck up to the other guy demo-ing it (lame!) "Oh yeah, I'm looking at it for the fifth second and I haven't even touched it myself, but the video feature is way better than something like.. an iPhone" LOL, give me a break dude!
 
HLdan said:
Really? 11% Market share? The Mac has 10% U.S. market share and you seem them everywhere, I've never seen a single person with a Zune. 😛
Click to expand...

That's apparently what they have with the hard drive players.

I know a few people with them.

I guess 11% of the public are windows fanboys.

BTW- the Zune is actually a pretty nice mp3 player if you have a windows machine (which almost 90% of people do...) with a beautiful interface. Before you guys say how much they suck (without ever even touching one) read a few reviews online, which most put it on par/exceed with the wheel-based ipods.

Zune doesn't work (literally) for OSX users, but is a great option for everyone else. I'm sure the Zune HD will work on macs though.
 
More positive reactions than I was expecting.


You know some of the negatives are hilarious when people are just writing "The E is cut off" as the main negative.


But anyway, looks good....I'm excited to see what they do at E3 in terms of the marketplace and games. My Zune 80 has 5 games right now but I'd love to see more.

I know XNA has Zune support as well.
 
Between the new Zune and the Palm Pre Apple has to be feeling the squeeze t keep innovating and improving again, instead of parceling out useless updates to appease the mindless disgusting fanboys. Just this January they would have said, we're fine without copy and paste, oled screen, multitasking, etc. What a useless bunch.
 
It seems like a very odd (and poor) design choice to have so many of the GUI elements cut off from the screen like that... It's very distracting to me
 
Unprocessed1 said:
That's apparently what they have with the hard drive players.

I know a few people with them.

I guess 11% of the public are windows fanboys.

BTW- the Zune is actually a pretty nice mp3 player if you have a windows machine (which almost 90% of people do...) with a beautiful interface. Before you guys say how much they suck (without ever even touching one) read a few reviews online, which most put it on par/exceed with the wheel-based ipods.

Zune doesn't work for OSX users, but is a great option for everyone else.
Click to expand...
If I could rep I would haha.

I came from an iPod and i'm sorry guys, on a PC, the Zune just functions better for me and has better sound quality.

I'm hoping MS realizes there are actually some Mac users who are ready to try a new player and gets their software out on Macs.
 
Treq said:
Where do you get that data? Do you work for MS?
Click to expand...

It's from your own source buddy (pretty intelligent of you, just search Zune on wikipedia)... 4% of the overall MP3 market (which is HUGE because a lot of people buy the cheap ones, some as cheap as $20)

The 11% is from the hard drive market (5/2007, which seem to be the last time hard numbers from the source were released), which are the legit, more expensive MP3 players.

I'm guessing their share has dipped below 9 or 10% in the past 2 years, but the Zune HD will easily have them past the 11% mark a year from now.

The main point is that Zunes are quality MP3 players, I'd prefer a Zune over the classic ipod, but not over the touch. We'll see if the Zune HD can compete on a performance level.
 
I think that one of the reasons the Zune... or even the Zune HD is interesting, is simply because it is different. If Apple allowed interface customizations, that would knock most of the differentiation out of the equation, but risk adding complexity and unpredictability to their customer support and ease-of-use.

Based off of this video, I couldn't imagine why ANYONE would pick this device over an iPod Touch... but I know why they'd want to consider it. The web browser would HAVE to be very good, the WiFi hotspot switching as transparent (unlike the PSP), the multimedia handling (PDF, Excel, Javascript, Mp3, etc) as complete, and features like Google Maps and YouTube would need to be as straight forward to use.

The notion that the OS would not be "smart phone grade" seems immediately obnoxious. The notion that on a competitor's device I can play tens of thousands of games and applications ("Skype", "SlingPlayer", "LogMeIn", "Joost", "Voice Notes", "Wolfenstein"), purchase music/software wirelessly, and support so many iPhone features... like "email", "notes", "calendar", "contacts"... and NOT on the Zune HD is bewildering. --I mean, if the Zune is priced even remotely similar, and its missing all of this capability, its kind of silly, unless the market is truly saying that these features do not matter.

I'm not sure Apple's billion-download marketplace is saying this is an irrelevant thing. If Microsoft is holding back on another layer to its Zune HD strategy, it would be great to hear. However, if one can access "Hulu", "YouTube", and "MLB" on iPod, and not on Zune... it would take some truly stunning XBox 360 integration and 3rd party support to crank up the heat.

~ CB
 
chonklah retardate

I've never seen more of a chonklah retarded UI. could they not afford icon illustrators? are they nutz with that font. their UI makes my ass itch like a bad student project of the kid whose parents donated the new wing.
 
Unprocessed1 said:
It's from your own source buddy (pretty intelligent of you, just search Zune on wikipedia)... 4% of the overall MP3 market (which is HUGE because a lot of people buy the cheap ones, some as cheap as $20)

The 11% is from the hard drive market, which are the legit, more expensive MP3 players
Click to expand...

Which one?
 
Looks decent, but same it's the same UI as the previous Zune's with more color. Not something to really comment on.

A little curious on where the web browser was in the presentation.

Also, what makes this product actually better than the touch? Not just on par. And where is the app store for my shopping lists?

Doesn't seem to me much new innovation in this.

Question: Have they solved the problem with OLED screens losing their brightness and contrast ratio over time, as quick as two years?
 
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