“Details are still light about Microsoft’s ‘Zune’ iPod killer but if the rumor mill is right, the device will have some or all of the following features: Wi-Fi connectivity, video playback, Xbox integration and some sort of community feature for letting music lovers interact with each other,” Eliot Van Buskirk writes for Wired News.
“Microsoft’s next-generation music store will supposedly offer music at a variety of download and subscription prices, rather than the flat $1 per-song standard inaugurated with Apple’s iTunes Music Store (and that Steve Jobs reportedly refuses to budge on, much to the record labels’ chagrin),” Van Buskirk writes. “Prior to Friday’s announcement, some were calling the new device the ‘mPod’ (Microsoft + iPod) killer. But given Microsoft’s typically tone deaf approach to usability and Apple’s market lead it will be a miracle if its next nickname isn’t the ‘iClod’ (iPod + clone + awful).”
Van Buskirk writes, “Microsoft’s entry into music-player manufacturing is obviously a last resort, undertaken kicking and screaming… [Microsoft’s] grand plan to play musical Switzerland to a host of third-party vendors, as it has done in the PC market, has proven as popular as Swiss music. (Cue accordions and alpenhorns.) …This may be Microsoft’s only remaining move, but that doesn’t make it a winning one… Having dominated the PC market with its Windows monopoly, Microsoft should know that cracking into a closed ecosystem is often a quixotic affair. Charging at a competitor whose products not only dominate but set the standard in quality is suicidal.”
Full article here.
“Apple Computer executives scrambled yesterday to put the best spin on devastating news that arch rival Microsoft will soon launch a competitor to the iPod, tentatively dubbed Windows ME2Pod,” Scott Ott blogs for ScrappleFace.
Ott writes, “While Apple’s iconic mp3 player currently owns a 77 percent share of the market for such devices, industry experts with contractual obligations to Microsoft warned that the Windows ME2Pod could quickly become the dominant player. ‘It’s a category killer,’ said one unnamed source who lives in Redmond, Washington, and has seen preliminary sketches of the product on an in-house blog.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: ME2Pod is pretty good. We’ve been referring to it as “iBob” within the cavernous halls of the palatial MDN headquarters, but, now that we’ve heard “iClod,” we like it. Until we hear a better one, Microsoft “iClod” it shall be.
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