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Zune HD
- Thread starter gan6660
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There is no doubt that MS is still the market leader in software. It seems that they're a little worried about that right now, seeing as they're running ads trying to make people lean back towards buying PCs.
I'm not quite sure about that. If they knew what they were doing, then the Zune would have already made some headway in the market. The fact is, is that the iPod IS an iconic image to everyone. Everyone knows how to use one, because it's got an easy to use interface. Yes, Zune has an easy to use interface too, BUT again, it's too "flashy".
More people care about a clean, easy to use interface, and that's what's kept Apple going throughout the years. UI design is the MOST important aspect of an OS. Microsoft still doesn't have UI design down. They often make it "too flashy" and "over-designed". And by over-designed, I mean they try too hard. Windows 7 is a step forward from Vista, but still not "clean".
And you'd be surprised, that a big company CAN be a knowledge-less company, especially in something that they're not good with.
Obviously, competition is good for everyone. And who said 100% of teenagers want iPods?
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ation_point_for_ipod_itunes_use_by_teens.html
I've also seen that survey referenced on these boards.
As for your comment about UI, there just seems to be no logic in that. Whether or not it's 'flashy', is down to opinion. Zune software is far from 'flashy'. It's essentially just big text, that you can scroll through...
Pretty damn easy to use to me.
I also resent your 'it's not clean' comment.
That's just plain ridiculous. Windows 7 is an outstanding OS. Easy to use, functional, great features - and it's aesthetically pleasing. By clean, I'm presuming, that you mean 'minimalist'. If it were minimalist, then it wouldn't be Windows 7, it wouldn't be the same OS. It's function differently, and a hell of a lot harder to use.
The only problem Zune has, is time. It needs time to compete against an already-huge device. It's OS is fine.
not about fanboyism
Sure, there is some partisanism here. Are you really surprised? Coming in here and purporting unbiased and then pointing fingers isn't very helpful.
Still, I don't think that the issue of fanboyism is as relevant to negative feedback as you'd like to believe. The real seed of discussion here is whether a product like this would have ever come into existence were it not for iPods and their development. No one should have to be proved that Microsoft follows every good idea Apple brings to the table, with quarterly revelations like this one.
"Bloody marvelous" as it may be that there are other options continually springing up in Apple's shadow, the chance that true innovation will be involved with the evolution of these—including the new Zune—is unlikely. Partial regurgitation with reconstructive plastic surgery is the statistical norm. True, product details haven't been revealed, but supposing that they will try to clone iPod design and functionality (with almost-exactness as legally permitted) is an understandable assumption.
Sure, there is some partisanism here. Are you really surprised? Coming in here and purporting unbiased and then pointing fingers isn't very helpful.
Still, I don't think that the issue of fanboyism is as relevant to negative feedback as you'd like to believe. The real seed of discussion here is whether a product like this would have ever come into existence were it not for iPods and their development. No one should have to be proved that Microsoft follows every good idea Apple brings to the table, with quarterly revelations like this one.
"Bloody marvelous" as it may be that there are other options continually springing up in Apple's shadow, the chance that true innovation will be involved with the evolution of these—including the new Zune—is unlikely. Partial regurgitation with reconstructive plastic surgery is the statistical norm. True, product details haven't been revealed, but supposing that they will try to clone iPod design and functionality (with almost-exactness as legally permitted) is an understandable assumption.
It's called preference. The way you started this post meant that you do have one, and you're defending it; like how we do. The line between "fanboyism" and expressing one's stance on a company's product is really thinand blurred.
And how is that downright preposterous? This is a rumor. We are just expressing our opinion about what we know; what we see, and what we have seen; even though we sometimes assume we do not fabricate details. Again, we only comment on what we've seen, or what we see. Zune's history really left quite a lot of room for improvement.
No they're not. Not that they have ever been. They're just riding the momentum of market share that was given to them by IBM (via the IBMPC). Everything, you see, has been copied from someone else.
MS-DOS? Bought as QDOS, which was in turn an imitation of CP/M.
Windows? A face thrown onto MS-DOS to copy the GUI of the Macintosh (which the GUI was taken from PARC).
IE? Microsoft's solution to Netscape.
Word? Idea stolen from "Bravo" (word processor from PARC)
Excel? Not the first implementation either; first spreadsheet application is "Visicalc" by Dan Bricklin.
PowerPoint? Not originally developed by Microsoft either. It's initial author was Forethought Inc., which was bought by Microsoft in 1987
Xbox? Obviously an imitation of the Playstation and other consoles.
Zune? Need I say more?
The only [important] thing that Microsoft ever made, in my opinion, was to implement a version of BASIC for the Altair 8800even that was a copy of something else...
Problem being that without Bill Gates, what they are doing can be compared to a beast with it's head taken off; it can still be dangerous as it flounders about, but as long as you get out of the way you only need to wait for it to fail, fall, and die.
Competition is good. That way Apple always have an incentive to innovate.
And alright. We won't give you that survey sh** again if you can prove that "'100% of teenagers' do not want iPods.".
Somehow I agree with that. Microsoft needs to get up and actually work in order to survive.
Only because that logo somehow guarantees a better experience. (you can take a look at the satisfaction rate of customers if you need proof)
Okay. Lets assume that the "*good*" is not sarcastic. How is that a "good" product then? How does that "brown" appeal to us? How does that (not-so-well-thought-out) interface compare? (How do we know we're not sitting on another time bomb like this one if we use it?)
Now let's assume if that "*good*" is sarcasticwait, we can't; otherwise the sentence won't make sense.
I like how you say bashing others and other things as bad while you bash those who do. Lead by example, mate. And I don't see, from all those attempts at insulting us, how this post consists of "good discussion" (even though it's better than some.).
Stop arguing without anything to back your arguments up. It's beyond silly, now.
Really? Why is Office by far the most used productivity suite - including Mac users - then?
I don't give a toss who invents it, I care about who implements it best. In this case it's Microsoft and by a massive margin.
Silly statements help no-one.
Yeah it was the original 30GB...I was convinced by a friend to choose it over an iPod (which is what I really wanted) because it was supposed to be so much better. UGH!!!! Worst 250 bucks I have ever spent.
(and I didn't even have a job then.) I ended up giving it to someone who wanted one really badly as a surprise gift. I find Microsoft Word (for Mac) very useful...I just don't like Windows.
You're assuming that they got their market monopoly through software excellency. Actually, they were first handed the PC market on a platter by Gary Kildall's wife, who almost slammed the door on IBM's folks when they came knocking for CP/M to run on their new open hardware architecture, the common PC. Bill Gates was the one who referred IBM to Kildall because Microsoft at the time was a language company, not a OS company, but after they came back he didn't hesitate and bought 86-DOS (or Q-DOS) for 50,000$ off Tim Paterson (resulted in a lawsuit when he learned why they were buying it, Microsoft settled for a million).
They were instantly a monopoly for PC operating systems. DOS being a big easier to copy, some alternatives did crop up after a while (DR-DOS (by Gary Kildall's Digital Research, PC-DOS by IBM). By then, it was too late. Programmers being lazy by definition, already were using MS only APIs, and competitors were forced into the catch-up game (undocumented features need to be reversed engineered, contrary to standardised features, like the POSIX specification provides, which just need implementation).
By the time OS/2 WARP and Windows 95 were pitted against each other, Microsoft already had deals with OEMs and shipping anything besides Windows meant you wouldn't be shipping Windows at all and be relegated to irrelevance.
Also, Windows 95 had code to prevent it from running on anything but MS-DOS even if all the features it required were present (Windows 95 up to Windows Me aren't real operating systems, they're basically 32bit DOS extenders like 4/GW, with a graphical UI and require DOS to be present on the bottom end). DR-DOS/PC-DOS would've been able to run under Windows 95 without a problem, but this integration (like those to follow, namely IE4 + Windows Explorer) lead to market lock-in. This resulted in the anti-trust suit by the DOJ that showed Microsoft had indeed abused its monopoly position.
After being bailed out of the suit by the Bush administration and basically never getting sentenced after being declared guilty, well, we're still at that point.
Microsoft is everything but a compete company. They have manipulated the market and abused their monopoly in OS to force other products to monopoly positions (the not quite true, but tell-tale "DOS isn't done until Lotus123 doesn't run" paradigm).
Ok, now that history is over, on to Business Administration. Microsoft just had a big problem, not even 4 months ago, with the Zune 30 GB :
http://gizmodo.com/5121311/30gb-zunes-failing-everywhere-all-at-once?skyline=true&s=x
Microsoft makes good software right ? Well, not in the this case, they didn't make this software. Like a lot fo their "software" products, they simply licensed (sometimes they outright buy too) someone else's so to accelerate time to market. One problem this time is that the source code was available and people tracked down the actual bug :
http://www.zuneboards.com/forums/zune-news/38143-cause-zune-30-leapyear-problem-isolated.html
You'd think that before you'd ship a flagship product with code that was written outside your company, you'd run a thorough code review, or at least, I dunno, trace through the code once, or at the very least, have one of your programmers try to understand what it even does.
And since it was too late to fix once everything broke, the actual "fix" was to deprive Zune owners of their Zune for a day :
http://gizmodo.com/5121822/official-fix-for-the-zune-30-fail
Of course, the other option was letting the battery run out which resets the clock.
Because the .DOC format that's used for most of the world's word processing documents at this point is documented in a 6000 page document that includes some nifty technical comments like : "should be implemented like it was in Word 95" without anything further to add.
Microsoft pushed Office out the door using its OS monopoly to force bundling of it by OEMs in the 90s. This essentially drove many other product lines, some of which were simply better, out of the market.
First let me remark upon that unless you give us proof that ""100% of teenagers" don't want to buy an ipod", please don't dwell upon that survey. Those are facts and figures. It's time you present some facts of your own.
Now about the GUI's. There's a difference between slick and slimy. Some of us prefer one, some prefer the otherAnd frankly Microsoft has copied Apple so much that they're quite similar now. (example, another example) (and also see how Microsoft adopted their own Compositing Graphics Engine Avalon in Vista after Apple adopted theirs, Quartz, which happened, let's see, 6 years before Vista. Also Avalon's predecessor, which uses GDI graphics, which was modeled after, let's see, the ORIGINAL Macintosh! (1984))
And let me remark that when using computers, I like to use the computer to do things, not use it for fixing it, which happened oh so many times with Vista. 7 should be the free upgrade that all of us Vista users deserve for our suffering.
So why did businesses choose IBM and Office rather than, say, Apple and VisiCalc?
MS did use their position to create unfair advantage. That doesn't explain how they got that position in the first place.
Thanks. I was busy doing a rebuttal for another post.
Well Office is also part of that momentum that I've talked about. Microsofta brand name, would be what a newcomer would get. And that's what they did.
That would've been due to their pricing and that Apple was not, and still is not, as of now, ready for mass-enterprise marketing and support.
Again, Microsoft got that advantage when Gary Kildall turned down IBM for his CP/M operating system, and Gates got the contract to license MS-DOS for the IBMPC. That catapulted Microsoft into the top slot, and became the brand name everyone knew.
If that's what you're saying about software then I shouldn't have any trouble convincing you why we respect the Apple logo like no other.
Oh, and by the way, more often than not it's not Microsoft who implements it best. There were always better software out there, but Microsoft, again, with their market share and inertia, can easily wrestle customers into their territory. Embrace, extend, extinguish. (That is clearly visible with Word and the proprietary XML formatting, or IE and it's proprietary html rendering)
I just posted it in another thread. If you know about the PC's history, you know Microsoft got handed the monopoly on OSes on day 1. IBM did all the dirty work in getting the PC itself accepted.
EDIT : scratch that, it's in this very thread, on this very page. See this post for details :
I am amused by how many fanboys make fun out of Zune and then proceed to defend Macs marketshare vs Windows by stating being more popular doesn't mean it's better.
The data clearly shows Apple has a monopoly on the PMP market, and just like how Apple has trouble taking marketshare away from Windows, Zune will have trouble taking market share away from iPods. That doesn't mean Macs or the Zune is inferior because they sell less.
Microsoft has shown that they can break into new markets eg. Xbox360. You might make fun out of the "Developers, developers, developrers" quote, but if there is one thing that Microsoft does better than almost anyone out there, it is take care of their developers.
Apple has the similar momentum. Any newcomer to the PMP market will instinctively go for the iPod. Not because the iPod is better, but because it's what everyone has.
The data clearly shows Apple has a monopoly on the PMP market, and just like how Apple has trouble taking marketshare away from Windows, Zune will have trouble taking market share away from iPods. That doesn't mean Macs or the Zune is inferior because they sell less.
Microsoft has shown that they can break into new markets eg. Xbox360. You might make fun out of the "Developers, developers, developrers" quote, but if there is one thing that Microsoft does better than almost anyone out there, it is take care of their developers.
Apple has the similar momentum. Any newcomer to the PMP market will instinctively go for the iPod. Not because the iPod is better, but because it's what everyone has.
Ah, that's true. Apple's monopoly in the PMP market. That monopoly exists, but because Apple's iPod happens to be the best when it was launched, and therefore reached #1. Apple didn't have someone else catapult them up like how IBM helped Microsoft get the top slot.
Again this is seen from the iPhone's rapid climb to the top of the smartphone market.
Now if Apple slacks off, I would say that they deserve to have their market share nibbled away by another competitor. But *so far* I'd say they didn't.
By the way, about Zunes, I'd say they are inferior in ways more than one. First, their colors. Although the colors have improved, but that brown-green, pink, blue or red doesn't look nearly as attractive as the iPods. The only color that's feasible is black. Now the interface. The only thing I can say is that there's a difference between slick and slimy. I don't like slimy interfaces. Third, the time bomb. Mentioned previously in this thread, there were mass-failures of these Zunesthat doesn't reassure me that if I bought one it won't die on me so easily. Fourth, the implementation. Like how they market these Zunes as "wifi" capable, only to deliver a crippled, Zune-Zune only version. I guess that pretty much sums up what I think.
The difference lies in the way they climbed to the top.
BTW if there's another iPod competitor worth mentioning, feel free to bring it up. I might consider buying them (my iPhone's headphone jack broke as a result of a 5m fall with the thing plugged in....
)
The difference is that Apple wasn't handed the PMP market on a silver platter, nor were they first to market with the iPod. They simply offered a better product (4 GB micro-drive based devices when 128 MB flash were considered high-end) at a price point people were willing to pay.
They were literally years late to the market with the iPod. And you know what ? There's no such thing as vendor lock-in with the iPod. If someone tomorrow comes out with a trendier, more fashionable player, Apple can lose it's dominance in the course of a few months, if not weeks.
Actually there is a rumor about the return of the 5 1/4" floppy
Wooo.. sounds better than a zune
(for the windows fanbois that can't tell fact from joke, this is a joke. No way would that be better than a zune)
Jesus, I can't believe I'm wasting my time with this. Still, I'll continue, because some of this just made me laugh.
Okay, I suppose I'll give you that. There's always a little bias, but I like to think I don't sway too much to one side, considering I use products from both Apple/Microsoft on a daily basis.
The only improvement (In my opinion, of course) that could have been made to Zune's start, is perhaps making the device a little less clunkier. That did not mean, however, that the device wasn't attractive. Myself, and many, many others liked the device.
I'd like to quote Bongobanger in reply to this, because it's exactly right:
Microsoft, as a company, had the initiative. It understood what was needed, it found a way to fulfill those needs.
What you said, 'Wikinerd', is plain irrelevant.
I suppose, but I cannot foresee Microsoft's fall any time soon. Any time within the next few decades, in fact. It has too many people relying on it, to collapse. It won't happen.
Already done.
Microsoft is surviving. I can't see Apple overtaking them any time soon, as shiny and nice as Macs may be...
It doesn't guarantee a better experience at all.
It can't guarantee anything, apart from the fact it's an Apple product.
I'm afraid I wasn't being sarcastic - and the sentence makes perfect sense.
Zune's a great product, it's just not an Apple product. I bet, if before the time of the iPod, Apple came up with Zune - there wouldn't be uproar. Sure, there'd be questions. 'Why are Apple taking such a different approach?' 'What's with the brown?' - but eventually the devices would be used, and Apple fans everywhere would rejoice.
Ah, and I quote like the Brown.
Everybody like different colours, Jesus. My favourite colour's blue - doesn't mean yours has to be as well.
I don't intend to insult intellectual persons like your self, and I'm sure many others here - instead, the people that provide us with little insights into their equally little brains. I enjoy discussion, sometimes heated discussion, as many others do - but small comments with nothing to back up what was said, are unnecessary.
You mustn't be reading what I've been saying, properly.
I do recognise, that despite my efforts, there'll be argument after argument from this post onwards - I am on an Apple related forum after all.
I've given my points, which are more than valid, and further than this it becomes matter of opinion.
Okay, I suppose I'll give you that. There's always a little bias, but I like to think I don't sway too much to one side, considering I use products from both Apple/Microsoft on a daily basis.
The only improvement (In my opinion, of course) that could have been made to Zune's start, is perhaps making the device a little less clunkier. That did not mean, however, that the device wasn't attractive. Myself, and many, many others liked the device.
I'd like to quote Bongobanger in reply to this, because it's exactly right:
Microsoft, as a company, had the initiative. It understood what was needed, it found a way to fulfill those needs.
What you said, 'Wikinerd', is plain irrelevant.
I suppose, but I cannot foresee Microsoft's fall any time soon. Any time within the next few decades, in fact. It has too many people relying on it, to collapse. It won't happen.
Already done.
Microsoft is surviving. I can't see Apple overtaking them any time soon, as shiny and nice as Macs may be...
It doesn't guarantee a better experience at all.
It can't guarantee anything, apart from the fact it's an Apple product.
I'm afraid I wasn't being sarcastic - and the sentence makes perfect sense.
Zune's a great product, it's just not an Apple product. I bet, if before the time of the iPod, Apple came up with Zune - there wouldn't be uproar. Sure, there'd be questions. 'Why are Apple taking such a different approach?' 'What's with the brown?' - but eventually the devices would be used, and Apple fans everywhere would rejoice
.Ah, and I quote like the Brown.
Everybody like different colours, Jesus. My favourite colour's blue - doesn't mean yours has to be as well.
I don't intend to insult intellectual persons like your self, and I'm sure many others here - instead, the people that provide us with little insights into their equally little brains. I enjoy discussion, sometimes heated discussion, as many others do - but small comments with nothing to back up what was said, are unnecessary.
You mustn't be reading what I've been saying, properly.
I do recognise, that despite my efforts, there'll be argument after argument from this post onwards - I am on an Apple related forum after all.
I've given my points, which are more than valid, and further than this it becomes matter of opinion.
Microsoft did not always "Implement it best" like you claim. Microsoft often EEE'd it (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish). Basically, some guy comes up with a cool idea (Tim Berners-Lee, WorldWideWeb). Products compete, standards are drafted and put forth. When Microsoft comes in to the market, they start by doing what everyone else is doing. Then, they use their OS monopoly to stuff it down everyone's throat (IE 4 + Windows Explorer coupling), then they make sure to not follow the standards and just go against the grain of what everyone is doing. Finally, the Web is Microsoft's.
Good thing they failed there and now we're back on track, with the W3C standards being more and more respected, browser competition being good (on account that Internet Explorer is just awful at complying to standards and people waking up to them)... too bad it set back the progression of the web by about 10 years though, the rut caused by the stagnation of Internet Explorer, while the standards were years ahead (CSS 2.0/3.0, XHTML 1.0, HTML 5.0 upcoming).
Disclaimer : This post has nothing to do with Apple. Any observer of the web's history knows that Microsoft tried to seize it for themselves. You don't have to be an Apple fanboy or a Linux fanboy or a Sun fanboy or any kind of fanboys to agree on this point.
I guessing from the highlighted words it's obvious enough...
An improvement is actually do things with taste. What Steve Jobs said in this video pretty much sums up what I want to say. There's a difference between slick and slimy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfALGcDNEDw
And I'd like you to read my reply to said quoted message.
The question is, did it?
Ok. Let me get this straight. This is what you claim that I said.
This is what I actually said.
If not fabrication of facts, I don't know what it can be.
Maybe across the next decade. You never know. But unless Microsoft really pulls up their socks they're done for; I'd say around 5 years. Then again I can be wrong as this industry is so volatile and unpredictable that any educated guess can easily be proven wrong.
No, invisible/made up facts and figures doesn't count. We're still waiting for actual proof.
Apple will reach a saturation point of around 40%, and others, would take the rest. Unless 7 is that much of a success, Microsoft will continue in it's loss of market share.
Unless the customer satisfaction figures says otherwise.
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=166510&d=1239329245
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=166510&d=1239329245 - Notice how Apple's the only computer manufacturer on there.
I'm afraid I wasn't being sarcastic - and the sentence makes perfect sense.
Zune's a great product, it's just not an Apple product. I bet, if before the time of the iPod, Apple came up with Zune - there wouldn't be uproar. Sure, there'd be questions. 'Why are Apple taking such a different approach?' 'What's with the brown?' - but eventually the devices would be used, and Apple fans everywhere would rejoice
First, Apple wouldn't have come up with anything similar to the Zune—a crippled copycat item that's priced around the same as it's competitors. Actually, any sane person wouldn't; there's no profit in doing so. But then it's Microsoft; they have almost infinite wealth to support the production of such a product. The Zune actually proves that R&D dollars doesn't translate into innovation. This is, of course, my 5 cents on the situation.
Thanks for summing up my point about your posts.
Really? I was about to say the same with you.
I guessing from the highlighted words it's obvious enough...
An improvement is actually do things with taste. What Steve Jobs said in this video pretty much sums up what I want to say. There's a difference between slick and slimy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfALGcDNEDw
And I'd like you to read my reply to said quoted message.
The question is, did it?
Ok. Let me get this straight. This is what you claim that I said.
This is what I actually said.
If not fabrication of facts, I don't know what it can be.
Maybe across the next decade. You never know. But unless Microsoft really pulls up their socks they're done for; I'd say around 5 years. Then again I can be wrong as this industry is so volatile and unpredictable that any educated guess can easily be proven wrong.
No, invisible/made up facts and figures doesn't count. We're still waiting for actual proof.
Apple will reach a saturation point of around 40%, and others, would take the rest. Unless 7 is that much of a success, Microsoft will continue in it's loss of market share.
Unless the customer satisfaction figures says otherwise.
http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=166510&d=1239329245
First, Apple wouldn't have come up with anything similar to the Zunea crippled copycat item that's priced around the same as it's competitors. Actually, any sane person wouldn't; there's no profit in doing so. But then it's Microsoft; they have almost infinite wealth to support the production of such a product. The Zune actually proves that R&D dollars doesn't translate into innovation. This is, of course, my 5 cents on the situation.
Thanks for summing up my point about your posts.
Really? I was about to say the same with you.
Oh, I did need a good laugh. Thanks.
Microsoft still doesn't understand that features (FM radio, bigger screen, etc.) no longer attract customers. It's the software. By that I mean the iPod touch and iPhone can both access the App Store and download apps that takes PMPs to a whole new level. There's 25K apps that allow for so many functions.
Microsoft has to introduce some App Store clone along with their ZuneHD (what kind of name is that?) in order for it to sell. Why else would someone spend more $$ for the same media functions as any other PMP? People purchase the iPod touch for the App Store.
Microsoft has to introduce some App Store clone along with their ZuneHD (what kind of name is that?) in order for it to sell. Why else would someone spend more $$ for the same media functions as any other PMP? People purchase the iPod touch for the App Store.
Before doing anything like this, I recommend Micro$oft learns to make the clock on the current Zune work...
I have downloaded over a hundred apps for my iPhone and iPod touch. Want to know how many I have found useful? two. Tweetie and Things.
Want to know what features attract me to a personal media player? screen size and battery life. I can't sit through a whole film watching it on my iPod nano, nor on the iPod classic. The screen on my iPhone is great, but I won't watch a movie on it since that would kill the battery. The only time the screen is good for watching videos on is when I'm on a long flight, and even then I will probably not since I'd need the battery once I landed. I would definitely get a Zune to watch movies on for airplane trips, or to listen to music while jogging or riding my bike.