The question isn’t can they outsell iPod, it’s can they sell enough to make a profit.
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.
Making a pretty computer with an easy to use OS and making a pretty hard drive based music player with an easy to use interface are a lot similar than you seem to think.
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.
Yes, a radio, a subscription service and then a bunch of poorly implemented features nobody wants. The subscription service is nice but I don’t see how you build a brand around it.
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.”
I don’t see what Microsoft does better than anybody else as a far a music players go. Without that, I don’t see how Microsoft sells enough to make a profit.
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!
Yes the cult of I’d prefer companies didn’t throw millions down the rat hole with poor business models doomed to fail.
Not exactly what I’m talking about, although the Amazon MP3 store is a huge step in the right direction. What I was specifically thinking of was the “3 Plays” DRM that Microsoft wraps around all squirted* songs. It would create a sub-market for violating copyright among a lot of people and would probably bone them when it comes to getting the rights from their own music store, but they could just leave the MP3 sales to Amazon and make the money selling their un-crippled computing and media device.
I’m sure Microsoft chooses not to because they hope to make money selling music, just in case the iTunes business model ends up working long-term for Apple. They also probably assume that they’d be too juicy a target for lawsuits from the entertainment industry.
I guess I just miss the days when the computer and electronics industry was the enemy of the content producers, not the partner. :)
Has this passed into parlance for Zune owners or is it quietly ignored?
Honestly when I read about this device on some website (maybe WiNSupersite, I don’t know why I read that but I do), I got pretty excited. More excited than I did for iPod Classic, certainly. This thing might be able to carve out a niche for itself until Apple starts readying the 32+ gig iPod Touch devices… but it probably won’t.
If I was in the market for an mp3 player this holiday season I would get a Zune 80.
I’ve had mine for almost a year now, and I love it. I don’t miss the subscription, since I’ve got about 40 GB of music on my hard drive already, and most new music sucks anyways.
I hate eBay. I want to buy it in Best Buy (or even better, Tiger Direct), and get some sort of local assurance that if it breaks, I won’t have a problem.
This is Microsoft’s big push to beat the iPod, and they don’t sell it in half of North America?
I guess my next upgrade will be another Sansa. Bravo, Microsoft.
That’s the trick, though. I’m not interested in buying all of my audio/video entertainment through iTunes, and the integrated system is indifferent-to-hostile when it comes content you didn’t buy from Apple.
Retail MP3’s shouldn’t be a problem, that would fall into the indifferent category.
But, if you’re ripping your CDs and DVDs, the names and tags might be less well-aligned (especially if you’ve been doing it for years). And with videos, there’s some secret name separate from the filename that iTunes won’t let you edit to properly reflect the content.
So I got the turd brown refurb Zune from Woot a month ago for $80 and have liked it but the actual Zune PC software sucked badly. This morning I sync’d it and it had me download the new Zune software and also updated my Zune’s firmware. Now podcasts are natively supported (thanks - a year later), the Zune itself seems to navigate much snappier without those annoying pauses and the Zune PC software actually is… nice. It looks sharp and seems much more functional.
Overall I give the new software a B+ and the old software a solid C.
I’m pretty impressed they were able to update my old Zune’s firmware so completely. I haven’t tried wirelessly syncing it yet and don’t know how much I’ll use it but it’s a nice thing to have.
My wife got me a turd brown Zune this week (I also prefer that color), I think she got it from Buy.com, so probably a refurb? Anyway, never saw the old software, since it immediately updated itself. Got the Zune Pass, and it seems very nice so far, only a very few songs were not available, and most of those were not available even to purchase. Easy to navigate, got a couple podcast subscriptions going.
Anyone have recommendations for an FM transmitter for it? I’ll use it mostly in the car, and don’t have a cassette player or an auxiliary plug.
I think belkin makes one that has both the car power adaptor AND the fm transmitter in one device.
The buy.com ones are NEW, they are just the unpopular color and last year’s $250 model. Awesome deal if you ask me, it’s a great $100 media player. I had the whole series 'The Prisoner" as mp4 for my psp and it converted and sync without a hitch, they look great. It’s my first try at video on this thing.
Post your zunecard/tag thing, it’s neat to see what people listen to.
Unfortunately, my recommendation is to avoid FM modulators. I found every one I tried to be useless in the Metroplex. I would imagine SoCal has just as few free frequencies.
The only type I haven’t tried are the ones that have a lead that actually contacts your FM antenna at some point. Such as the Harmon Kardon Drive & Play kit for the iPod.
