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Monday, July 24, 2006
Zune? What the heck does that mean? Even it’s web site doesn’t make sense. Who did Microsoft hire for this? Will this be Bill Gates last stumble before leaving day-to-day work at the company he helped find?
Even though there is a handful of Zune sites, like Zune Info and Zune Zone, it’s just not enough to electrify the masses, Microsoft. You’re just not, well, cool. The corperate image you’ve built can’t be shaken. Yes, there’s the X-Box and its success; however, even it lacks the hipness of the PS2 and upcoming PS3. Shesh, no matter who you put your main guy on the cover with on Time magazine, he still looks like a nerd. Sorry.
Apple’s iPod success came from many ingredients and the most powerful spice of all was the cool-factor. After the cutting edge two-tone color commercials and print ads, everyone had to have an iPod. Once consumers got their hands on one, they all could see how easy it was to use and bought them up faster than you could say, “Did you know Diamond Rio was the first digital music player?” Since the point of ease is in the forefront now, can you imagine what a junky interface Zune is going to have? Oh man, what a horrid nightmare it will be I’m sure.
Microsoft will dump a lot of money into Zune. That’s for sure. It will also lose more than it puts in when all its partners that have been pushing Windows Media players tell Microsoft to take a hike for burning them at the stake. It’s not that Napster2Go units sucked so bad that Microsoft could do better, it was just the logo plastered on it, that little flag on a green background, didn’t have the coolness of a bitten apple. That’s all.
Outside of Microsoft giving away millions of these units and buying out each users iTunes catalog to be converted to WMA files, I don’t see Zune doing much. The early adopters may pick it up for the technology aspect and few others for the undercut price it’ll have, but for the most part, iPods will be hard to find this Christmas while Zunes will be as abundant as fake mall Santa Clauses. Maybe the new slogan will be, Zune you later, dude. 
July 25th, 2006 at 5:38
I started the web site. Do they really believe people are going to listen to some drawing of a kid singing some song? Did I really want to watch a pencil man petting a pencil bunny? If I didn’t read this post, I wouldn’t know what Zune is, and based on the website, I’d know that I wouldn’t want it. Very bad.
July 25th, 2006 at 9:05
Is that guy petting the bunny a characterization of Steve Ballmer?
July 25th, 2006 at 9:46
Actually, the Diamond Rio wasn’t the first digital music player. It was, arguably, the first “well marketed” digital music player (hey, it was the first to be sued by the RIAA!!) I owned one and actually saw another person on the train with one. But, it wasn’t the first.
The very first digital music player available was from a Korean company. It was the MPMan from Saehan. Saehan released a version in the U.S. a few months prior to the Rio called Eiger Labs MPMan F10/F20.
I still have fond memories of my Diamond Rio PMP300. I think I had a sweet 96MB of space with my additional 64MB Smart Media card…
July 25th, 2006 at 11:09
Jeff, great observation! Man, you got me doing the big LOL.
Thank you, Jack, for the clarification on the first PMP. I had forgotten about that one.
July 25th, 2006 at 12:18
As for the Xbox “success,” even if you discount the staggering amount of money MS has thrown at it (spending $400 to sell each Xbox – $10 billion spent, 25 million xboxes sold) – the Xbox is really just a flat PC where you don’t have to deal with spyware and incompatbile drivers and less patches to worry about versus the hassles of regular PC games plus you don’t have to spend 4 hors fixing your machine after plugging in a new joystick … beyond PC gamers who switched, who is MS really bringing to that table?
The Zune will fail.
July 25th, 2006 at 20:00
I have to play devil’s advocate here and admit I kinda of like the whole Zune name/image/logo. What does Zune mean? Sounds like “zoom” and “tune” to make for “tunes on the go.” Aside from the name/logo, I don’t have much faith that this product will do well, except among the anti-Apple set…the ones determined to NOT buy an iPod. I don’t think there’s too many of those left, but enough to sell a good number of these.
On the other hand, they have some serious catching up to do. Considering over 150 TV shows are now available on iTunes and this new “none-touch” iPod technology (forget how retarded it sounds) Apple’s got going, I’d say MS will lose this battle, at least in the short term.
July 26th, 2006 at 7:41
There is 20% of the player market available if MS just eats it’s own. That is 20% in a growing market. MS will buy thier way in so they can do the whole home entertainment thing; They have to get into this because the traditional PC market will be declining over time.
If what I have read is correct, WMA won’t even be used for Zune. I guess that MS had to avoid Monopoly issues and went outside the Plays for Sure and Windows media player.
I agree with Jon on Zune being a pretty good name. I do not think Zune will fail to wipe out the current Windows partners. Denting the ipod will be another story. I’m guessing MS is mostly wanting to really be in the media game more than they are aiming at the iPod, in the short term.