Even though Bill Gates (as seen here) thought they had an iPod killer a year ago, he now realizes that brown nosing to Hollywood turned out to be a Zune killer more than anything. With the Zunes horrible DRM protection, poor PC software suite, heinous music store, and the bulkiness of the Zune itself, what’s left good to talk about? We previously called it Microsoft’s next Bob (and Infoworld agrees) and now it looks like even Microsoft’s own “Ozymandias” from the X-box team is knocking his boss’ iPod killer.

Andre Vrignaud bought his brother a Zune for Christmas and thankfully for his brother, he didn’t just gift it and run, ’cause it wasn’t an easy iTunes install and sync set up. Vrignaud found that Microsoft’s “most secure operating system yet”, Vista, to be a bit problematic when it came to installing the software for the new Bob, er, Zune. Vrignaud comments on his blog that, “it shouldn’t have been as painful as it was.” Mmm. Once those problems were worked out, then it was off to syncing. Too bad the Zune tried to sync all of the 500 GBs worth of music from Ozymandias’ basement server. I guess Bob — crud, I keeping doing it — the ZUNE doesn’t realize he’s only got a 30 GB drive and somewhere along the line he should inform the Ozy’ man that he’s got a bit more music than the average Bob and it ain’t all going to fit. Unlike iTunes which lets you specify between a full sync or selective sync, Zunes software won’t. Ozymandias wasn’t impressed by this when he goes on to say, “Even worse, there was no option to tell the Zune software to not automatically sync to the entire library - you had to go ahead, cancel the sync, turn off automatic syncing, and then reset/erase the Zune to have any control over what tracks you want on the device. Bah.”

The problems continued after Ozymandias and his brother worked out what to sync. Vista locked up once, the Zune another time, half of an album would only sync at times, and the sync software locked up. All your standard Microsoft features for its iPod killer.

Ozymandias wasn’t all bummed out about his boss’ elated music player as he did love the interface (which I agree is nice) and the ease of use. It was bit bulky for him but overall, he like the Zune itself. I’m sure that impression will be downgraded when he shares an original audio piece from a friend and finds it deleted from his Zune three days later.

I can’t help read Ozymandias’ blog and all the other poor reviews of the Zune and think just how incredibly blind Microsoft was during development of this digital music player (DAP). If Microsoft’s own disses this DAP, then you know it really blew it. Bill Gates was very vocal about how he wanted to create a true iPod killer but it seems that him and his team always had a preconceived idea of what that was and made it instead of what the buying public would want. It reminds me of the Mercedes Benz of the late ’80s when its tag line was mockingly changed by car fans to “Designed by engineers for engineers.” It wasn’t making a car for the regular guy, it made it for a car geek. Microsoft kinda did the same thing, but in this case, it was Hollywood it truly made it for. It ignored the regular guy.

The Zune was ramped up to be Microsoft’s biggest challenge to its competition since Windows95 took on the Mac and OS/2. It may have won that earlier battle, but this time around instead of just copying the competition, it completely lost touch of its consumer base and now will have its greatest upset since Bob.

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2 Responses to “Even Microsoft’s Own X-Box Team Member Knocks the Zune”

1. Nick Says:
   January 1st, 2007 at 7:46

   I’m not convinced that Mircosoft is simply caving in to demands from Hollywood. It’s not clear to me that DRM is in the interests of the content providers, even though they most strongly beleive that it is, but it is most definitely in the interests of tech companies. The music/film companies perceived need for DRM effectively delivers them into the hands of the tech companies:

   http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/12/curtains_for_mu.php

   Microsoft may seem to be “brown nosing to Hollywood” (and the record labels) but if it can only draw them in and slam the door on any competitors (killing “plays for sure” helps to do that) then it’s sitting pretty. It becomes the sole conduit for distribution of certain types of digital media and can turn round and impose its terms on the content providers whose interests it seems, at the moment, to be catering to.

   This is a point recently made by Peter Gutmann with respect to Windows Vista. He notes that if Microsoft “represent the only available distribution channel they’ll be able to dictate terms back to the content providers whose needs they are nominally serving”.

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