Microsoft should release a Zune SDK (even if it is somewhat limited for DRM and stability reasons and sticks you in a .net sandbox like the XNA stuff on the 360 does). That’d be awesome.
Thanks for the sophistry. Existing DRM should be retained. If it’s a MP3 file, it should be freely sharable.
Transcoding doesn’t count, I could transcode video myself. The first video player to flawlessly support xvid will own the marketplace.
If MS wants to beat Apple, they need to stop trying to match the ipod and try to beat it. They need to offer something substantial that the ipod doesn’t. It needs to be, pardon the expression, “insanely great” to entice users away from their preexisting investment in the iTunes ecosystem. For example, how about including a GPS chip and maps of the entire US, including realtime local traffic markings? Or HD radio? Etc, etc.
I’m calling bullshit and bookmarking the thread for future reference. Get in any qualifying statements now.
Now I’m not sure what your qualifyer ‘flawlessly’ entails, but both Archos and Creative have supported Xvid for a while and I don’t see them owning the marketplace.
And that is why the Zune will fail: Features don’t trump sexy ease of use.
I’m a bit disillusioned with Apple these days, and I’d be happy to see something steal the iPod’s thunder. The Zune isn’t it, because it focuses on things I simply don’t care about:
- Yet another DRM-filled music store, when I’ve stopped using iTunes because I won’t pay for DRMed music any more.
- WiFi sharing of songs. None of my friends have Zunes, and if I wanted to share something with them, I’d stick some mp3s on a web server. Or just lend them a CD.
- WiFi sync. I need to plug the thing in to charge it anyway.
- WiFi in general. I play music on my iPod. What’s WiFi for, again?
- Bigger screen. I’d care if I lived someplace where I took public transit often. As it is, any time that I can spare the eyes to watch something, I’ve got MUCH bigger screens available to use. My iPod interfaces with my ears, not my eyes.
Plus, of course, it doesn’t work with my Mac.
The Zune doesn’t even get the indie cred of being the hot new punk all set to take Apple down. It’s from Microsoft, who are twice as in bed with the RIAA as Apple is.
The Creative Zen player does that already but it hardly dominates the market. It’s well worth a look though if you like video as it supports divx, avi, xvid, multiple mpeg formats, and wmv.
IF I could plug the Zune in and it would sync to all the stuff I bought off itunes and play them, I would consider getting one of the new Zunes.
It’s like deja vu all over again…
Things that compete with the iPod always beat it on either price or features, though, yet the iPod keeps rolling along. I thought about getting another MP3 player, but finally went for the iPod because I like the feel of it best and it has all that third-party accessory support. The Zune looked nice, but it’s expensive and offers a lot of features I’ll never use. I hardly watch TV now – I don’t need a tiny TV I can carry in my pocket so I can watch the TV shows I don’t watch now.
I think the biggest risk to Apple in the short term is not the Zune. It’s what’s going on with the content providers.
NBC dropped iTunes and EMI dropped copy protection. The first move’s effect is pretty obvious, but the second is more subtle. If all music drops content protection, the labels no longer need exclusivity. And then there was Universal Music’s dispute with Apple. I think these sorts of things will continue.
Zune may be more of a long term threat, as Microsoft continues to iterate. But short term, it’s other, non-competitive factors at play.
Yep … missed your comment bud, apologies. As an iPod owner I didn’t really give a damn about the Creative units until a coworker got one, and it played damn near everything as I’m stuck converting every video I want to watch.
Why doesn’t the Zune doesn’t integrate with the 360? Both the 360 and Zune have a highly protected DRM-friendly environment that’s proven with content already (360 - Video and Zune - Music). The two even use the same Marketplace points (and I mean the same… if you use the same Passport account it’s the same “fund” of points!).
I want my Zune Subscription to allow music download to the 360. I want my purchased TV shows on the 360 to be downloadable to the Zune.
“Close” to being better and “quite competitive” are not going to dislodge an entrenched competitor with 80% of the market.
Did Apple have any CE experience before iPod?
Apple has been a CE company for years. When is the last time they sold computers based on technical factors? They’ve been selling the sizzle of attractive design and ease of use a lot more than the steak of computing power. And they design and build (by contract manufacturers from what I gather) what they sell.
Attractive design and ease of use may only get you a small slice of the computer market, but they are pretty much the whole game in the portable player market. What added value can Microsoft bring to dislodge Apple?
Xbox and Xbox 360 are MS’s CE experience. And though you’ll never get me to claim the 360 has anything other than an abysmal hardware failure rate so far, it sure does seem to be pretty darn popular. And all MS’s competitors in that market had a “several year head start” too.
The console market pushes the big “reset” button every four or so years. A lead in one generation means little in the next generation unless you manage to drive a competitor out of the business. Players are evolutionary with incremental improvements. Consoles are revolutionary.
With Media Center, the Xbox Video Marketplace, and the Zune Marketplace, you don’t see how Zune fits into MS’s long-term business plan? Really? You can’t see how the company would want to leverage it’s burgeoning digital media enterprises into a vertically-controlled portable player market? How there could be grand future synergy between the Xbox stuff and the portable player? Hell, Zune Tags (your Zune ID used to log into the software) are identical to your Gamertag. I mean, you share the same pool of Microsoft Points even, and buy songs for 79 points a piece if you don’t have the subscription.
The iPod killing synergy Microsoft brings to the portable player market is being able to use your Gamertag and spend Microsoft points to buy songs instead of money? Beautiful! If I was a stockholder, I know that would make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
Unless someone in Redmond is sitting on the super secret secret squirrel masterstroke that allows Microsoft to leapfrog in the next generation, they’re doomed. The only way this Zune insanity makes any sense is as strike against Sony. Spend millions to take second place in the market, even if there is no way the business will ever be profitable. The thinking being: Who cares if we never make a profit, we keep Sony from making one, weakening them enough so they have to drop out of the console market in the next generation.
Doesn’t the iPod beat the Zune on price, too, since there are entry level iPods priced cheaper than the Zune? If all you want is music, why not go with a Nano over a Zune?
And then if you decide to not go with an iPod, is a Zune your natural choice? There are other third-party devices that compete with the Zune, too.
As much as people slag iTunes i think it’s a great clean system for downloading content, managing radio channels, ect., and the other systems i’ve tried are much worse. Sony’s propietary music store is going to close now (and wtf were they thinking holding 2% of the market and locking the music out of non-Sony players?), but it was horrible anyway. Media Player is better than the Connect-crap Sony software but it’s still (imo) worse than iTunes.
And it’s too bad because there really isn’t an iPod that i’m interested in anymore. My foray into the iPod world didn’t leave me completely flabbergasted with the technology (iPods also seem cheaply made and very disposable), and the paucity of model styles is a big turn off, since iPods are really not designed with athletic activity in mind. The Sony mp3 player is far superior to any iPod in shape, but my stupid phone is the only thing that can download subscription music of all the music players i have.
I lurve me Zune.
And if I wasn’t between jobs right now, I’d buy a Zune 2.0 and give my old one to my wife.
The main reason to buy the iPod is that you can find any accessory you’d ever want, and it will pretty much drop in and work.
Good luck on that with any other player.
The Zune gets slightly worse as a proposition (depending on your outlook) when you consider that the store isn’t available outside of the US.
You may be right, but every time I hear someone say this, I can’t help but think If anyone could, it’s Microsoft.
Oh, now we’re talking about whether Zune will ultimately out-sell iPods? I thought we were talking about their worth as a competitor, based on quality/feautres/etc. Even Microsoft does not expect Zune to ever be more than a strong 2nd in the marketplace.
Apple has been a CE company for years. When is the last time they sold computers based on technical factors?
Oh come on now. Selling pretty computers with an easy to use OS doesn’t make you a CE company. That’s still a computer company. I mean car companies sell “sizzle” and they’re not CE companies.
What added value can Microsoft bring to dislodge Apple?
Again, nobody is arguing that Zune will “dislodge” Apple. There’s a sentiment here, sometimes states explicitly, that they shouldn’t even try. Already this thread has offered up numerous examples of ways in which the Zune adds useful “added value” to the marketplace.
The iPod killing synergy Microsoft brings to the portable player market is being able to use your Gamertag and spend Microsoft points to buy songs instead of money? Beautiful! If I was a stockholder, I know that would make me feel all warm and fuzzy.
Who said anything about “killing iPod”, except you? You said you don’t see any synergy there, I said it was obvious. I didn’t say, or imply, that it was going to “kill iPod.”
Man, Apple fans are funny. They’re completely unwilling to accept the idea that another company could make a better product than Apple. Let alone give one the fair shake to honestly try said product for more than 5 minutes. Cult indeed!
No sophistry intended. I agree with you! Just correcting a misconception. But as much as I agree, I realize that it is not a decision Microsoft gets to make. They either don’t offer content from the major labels, or they offer the protection those labels demand. I’ll go one more and say no music you purchase should ever have DRM on it, period. But I don’t see that happening, either.
No. The new flash Zunes are priced exactly like the equivalent-capacity Nanos, only they have WiFi. The 80GB Zune is priced identically to the 80GB iPod classic, only again, it includes WiFi (and a bigger screen). Apple does offer the Shuffle for $79, but that’s a tiny display-less device and sort of a different market altogether.
Well, If you plug your Zune into the 360’s USB port, you can play audio and video off it. If your computer with the Zune software is on the same network as your 360, the 360 can stream music from it (including playlists, and including songs bought with Zune Pass). There’s no blade on the 360 that says “Zune Marketplace” or anything, which I don’t think I want anyway. The integration I want to see is combining the Xbox Video Marketplace with the Zune Marketplace. But really, everything else is sort of there. Is there a specific integration scenario you’re thinking of that isn’t supported?
If one of the reasons is because of the Zune Pass, then hey, just re-download all those songs again as part of your $15 a month. If the subscription thing doesn’t interest you, then I agree - those invested heavily in iTMS purchases are trapped (unless you rip the DRM off your iTunes stuff, because AAC does play nice with Zunes). That’s something I hate about both these devices.