“Apps for [Microsoft’s] new Zune HD are now available… with an unexpected ‘bonus’: static and video ads that play during launch,” Nate Anderson reports for Ars Technica.
MacDailyNews Take: There’s nothing at all unexpected about it:
We are going to be an advertising company, and we are going to be a devices company. Advertising is a new business model. Now we don’t just talk about ISVs [independent software vendors], we talk about publishers. What’s a publisher? It’s an ISV in the modern world who also wants to accept advertising. That’s kind of the definition… We need to embrace that. We need to be world-class at that… We are hell-bent and determined to allocate the talent, the resources, the money, the innovation, to absolutely become a powerhouse in the ad business… I think we’ll bring this kind of tenacity that will enable us to, let’s just say, make great strides. – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, July 26, 2007
Anderson continues, “Nine apps are available: calculator, weather, Texas hold ’em, Sudoku, Space Battle 3, Shell Game… Of the Future, Hexic, Goo Splat, and Chess.”
MacDailyNews Take: That’s it, Zune’s App-Lack™ has ended, we’re switchin’! 
Anderson continues, “They’re ‘free,’ since Microsoft has apparently decided to sell ads against them. The ads show up during app launch, which takes an astonishingly long time.”
Microsoft’s Zune ads from Ars Technica on Vimeo:
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Zune HD has nine (9) apps. iPod touch has over 75,000. In early August, Apple told the FCC that the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch receives approximately 8,500 new applications and updates per week.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Gandu” for the heads up.]
