“The latest iPod Killer from Microsoft has raised a lot of questions,” Daniel Eran writes for RughlyDrafted. “Here’s part two of why many analysts are getting it all wrong.”
On Wednesday, Eran presented his first 5 Myths of Zune:
1: Microsoft’s iPod killer is … Zuma
2: Zune makes a good verb
3 : The Zune isn’t just another poorly constructed piece of crap
4: Microsoft can work out their iPod Killer’s kinks over the next few years
5: Microsoft can afford an extended failure
With today’s installment, Eran covers his Myths of Zune 6-10:
6. Microsoft’s reputation for crushing competition will help the Zune.
7. Zune only competes against the iPod, not PlaysForSure Players
8. Zune pioneers novel sharing features
9. Wireless networking is a good way to squirt songs
10. From a Digg Zune fan: “a single song [squirt] takes about 7 seconds (if not less) and a full album about 30 seconds”
Full article here.
Related articles:
Five more Microsoft Zune myths – October 18, 2006
Microsoft Zune intensifies chaos in Apple iPod+iTunes also-ran market – October 16, 2006
Newsweek Q&A: Apple CEO Steve Jobs discusses iPod’s impact, Microsoft’s Zune, and more – October 15, 2006
Microsoft’s Ballmer: Zune device not money loser, wishes Apple’s 30GB iPod was $299 instead of $249 – October 11, 2006
Microsoft’s consumer electronics track record: long string of failures – October 11, 2006
MP3.com founder: ‘Zune will be an expensive failure for Microsoft because consumers aren’t stupid’ – October 06, 2006
Microsoft fails to secure key Zune domains – October 04, 2006
Microsoft rigs Zune with tricky pricing and proprietary money schemes – October 03, 2006
Why Microsoft’s Zune won’t kill Apple’s iPod – October 03, 2006
10 Apple iPod vs. Microsoft Zune myths – October 02, 2006
Analyst: Zune could lead to ‘civil war’ between Microsoft and Windows Media partners – September 29, 2006
Thurrott on Microsoft’s Zune: ‘The makings of a disaster, what the heck are these people thinking?’ – September 29, 2006
Analyst: Microsoft Zune’s as good as dead on arrival – September 28, 2006
Microsoft sets 30GB Zune price at $249.99 – September 28, 2006
How Microsoft’s Zune can kill Apple’s iPod – September 21, 2006
Microsoft’s Zune insanity – September 21, 2006
The Microsoft Zune 1.0 dud – September 20, 2006
Microsoft’s underwhelming Zune a ‘viral DRM’ device – September 18, 2006
SanDisk teams with RealNetworks against new common foe: Microsoft Zune – September 18, 2006
Creative does Apple’s dirty work by immediately attacking Microsoft’s Zune – September 17, 2006
Motley Fool’s Jayson: Microsoft’s ‘just plain ugly’ Zune a meager offering, not an iPod killer – September 15, 2006
What’s in a name? ‘Zune’ a French-Canadian euphemism for penis or vagina – September 15, 2006
Crave at CNET: ‘Microsoft Zune, all the excitement that brown can bring’ – September 15, 2006
Microsoft’s Zune underwhelms – September 15, 2006
Enderle: Microsoft Zune ‘a design mistake’ – September 15, 2006
Microsoft hypocrisy exposed with Zune: What ever happened to ‘choice?’ – September 14, 2006
Analyst: Microsoft Zune with fake scroll wheel ‘hardly an Apple iPod killer’ – September 14, 2006
Analyst: Microsoft Zune won’t spoil Apple’s biggest iPod Christmas ever – September 14, 2006
Microsoft unveils Zune 30GB player, Zune Marketplace; declines to disclose prices – September 14, 2006
Analyst: Microsoft’s Zune an ‘underwhelming’ repackaged Toshiba Gigabeat; no threat to Apple iPod – August 30, 2006
Microsoft confirms brick-like Zune to be made by Toshiba – August 25, 2006
Microsoft Zune is chunky brick made by Toshiba – August 25, 2006
Microsoft to spend hundreds of millions, several years on Zune trying to catch Apple iPod+iTunes – July 27, 2006
Zune: Apple cannot lose. Microsoft cannot win. – July 26, 2006
11. Zune squirts brown poo.
Oh wait a minute, that’s not a myth!!!
In case you didn’t know yet, Vista (no matter how awful it really is) will kill this talk. Dead. Apple is going to have to be satisfied with single digit market share now and forever.
Really, better for the Mac faithful – maybe it will keep Apple from tumbling into the trap of mass producing a slew of mediocre machines all lined up on the shelf with Dells, HPs, etc., etc.
The future: a larger tiny hand held moving picture box called the iPod Video you can control by touching the screen. Oh, and you can make telephone calls with it. And, take low res pictures of your pouch.
Vista sucks and will not keep Apple in single digits. Complete BS.
pouch? i suppose, if you’re a kangaroo. i prefer taking pics of my pooch.
In Canada, we have outlawed all Microsoft products, and switched to Mac.
I doubt we will see the Zune… ever.
Well, I was gonna make a comment but I gotta go take a Zune and then wipe my Vista.
Link doesn’t work…
“a single song [squirt] takes about 7 seconds (if not less) and a full album about 30 seconds”
One song takes 7 seconds to download and yet an entire album is downloaded in only 30 seconds.
There are four possibilities that immediately come to mind.
1) There is something wrong with my understanding of mathematics
2) They use albums with only four tracks on them.
3) Vapourware downloads at variable rates compared to real music
4) They are telling lies
My hunch is to go with #4
the only squirting that I’ll be doing is when I am watching porn on my iPod.
favorite quote from the article:
“…joining forces with Microsoft is like offering to help Hannibal Lecter get dinner ready.”
The troll above, whether he calls himself “Peterson” or “Stock Boy” or “SELL SELL SELL,” or “Sputnik” is really just a 14 year-old whose favorite pastime is coprophagia . . . which explains his professed love for the TurdZune.
Uh, and by the way, troll . . . has the “TZ” shipped yet? No? Hmmm.
The New Math of the Computing World: MS = VaporVista, VaporZune, and all other things gone with the wind (as in “Plays For Sure”).
Something brown that “squirts” is going to dethrone the iPod line? My gawd, if I had written this myself it couldn’t be funnier!
Dementia has clearly set in on the Redmond campus!
Here we go again…
Peterson, you are an idiot Microsoft public relations department disaster area..
In case you haven’t got it yet, the damage has been done, there is nothing you can do about it, so crawl back into your Windows world and weep…
(I’m having a bad day and i want to take it on someone, Peterson will do)
I have to thank Balmer for using the word “squirt”. It’s just funny.
MW: member
Ha ha . . . ha ha . . it says member
I’ve learned of yet another mark against Microsoft’s newest offering. According to a piece in InfoWorld, “The name for the device — which will take on the Apple iPod when released later this year — sounds like a vulgarity, specifically the “f” word, in Hebrew, IDG News’ Jeremy Kirk reports…
Microsoft breaks the controversy down to pronunciation. “While we do acknowledge the similarity in pronunciation to Hebrew zi-yun, that is not the intended meaning of the name Zune,” according to a Microsoft statement.”
FYI, last year an Israeli programmer developed an extension that provided right-to-left, Hebrew character displays for the iPod. Apple Israel now distributes that extension free.
Something’s amiss. I didn’t post on this Zune story – have no interest in Zune talk.
I did, however, on the niche story and meant to say pooch – as in Vista is a dog but will keep Apple Macs in single digit market share.
Sorry, but except for a few Macs here and there, you aren’t going to find them replacing PCs in the workplaces of America – or anywhere else in the world, for that matter.
“a single song [squirt] takes about 7 seconds (if not less) and a full album about 30 seconds”
It’s easy. They spliced the video tape to prove they can transfer the songs and albums in short time.
I have a story:
Last night, my mom got an annoying popup bubble message (y’know, the kind from the bottom of the screen), telling her that she needed to upgrade to IE7. Why this is, I do not know, as I disabled IE and installed Firefox (I know, it’s still there even though it says it’s not). Anyway, the thing downloads, and then it says it needs to validate Windows. Wtf?! Validate Windows to see if it’s “genuine” to download a f*cking web browser? (a shoddy one that is just playing catch-up to its rivals, mind you.)
And the frigging thing isn’t even better! A security exploit right out of the gate, and ugly as all hell! IE is for the birds. Anyone still using it deserves what they get. Did you know that it doesn’t display PNG’s correctly?
Of course, after all of this, the install fails (why was I hoping for it to work anywyay?) I can’t wait till that PC of hers gets comprimised or something and we can get her an iMac. Only a matter of time.
MW: Why am I surprised? A Microsoft program that doesn’t work? Who’d- a thunk it?!
Im getting such a raging clue right now!
I’m testing a portal website right now, and it’s being tested on five browsers [on our Macs] – Safari, Firefox, Opera, Camino and IE. I’m also testing it with IE 6.x on our PCs. The color and graphics render great on four out of five browsers on the Mac [no guesses which one doesn’t do a good job], and none out of one browser on the PC [quelle surprise!]. Plus, ‘.png’ files have never rendered correctly on Internet Explorer – either on Mac or PC – it’s simply incapable. In fact, the web creation software I use has a ‘fix’ for IE’s inability to render pngs built right in to the program.
It’s almost worse than Netscape… and that’s so last century.
People please … get a grip on your emotions you sound so scared of the Zune…
Note: if it is a a bad product it will fail
Note: if it is a good product it will hurt APPLE
Please deal with “what is” not what “might be”…
Last thing before I go , How do you know about this Zune product with putting it to the test ??? Or are you all just drinking the Steve Jobs go go juice???
“Pouch? i suppose, if you’re a kangaroo. i prefer taking pics of my pooch.”
I prefer to take pictures of my girlfriend’s cooch.
Peterson, I’ll post it again (from a few articles ago)
Again with the Vista crap! Two reasons why Vista will launch like a lead zeppelin (yes, I meant the reference): the price and the processor overhead. I predict the vast majority who end up using Vista get it by buying a new computer. Any computer produced before 2006 runs Vista like crap!
AlanAudio – I know the numbers can be a little confusing but there is a logical reason for this download time. You have to remember that the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck. It’s a series of tubes. The tube that belongs to the Zune sending the songs or albums just needs to be higher that the Zune receiving the file. The acceleration of gravity does the rest. For best results the sending Zune should be right above the receiving Zune.
Now if you’ll excuse me I need to send an Internet to my staff.
– Sen. Stevens
You know, sometimes i suspect that MDN just makes up some of these crazy personnas that show up posting in these comments in order to get us all going. Like all those wacko right wing Nazis that showed up the other day. C’mon. Those people can’t possibly be Mac users and they certainly wouldn’t all be visiting this typically liberal website, even if they were. I betcha MDN is Peterson. And prolly all the responses to Peterson, too. Ya think maybe?
Senator Stevens:
Thank you for your insightful explanation of the interweb.
Somebody buy that man a bridge.
So here’s another Zune myth:
Phone capabilities: COME ON. Does anyone really think it will last that long?
Does NO ONE remember the Tablet PC? That’s what this is going to be, MS carping about a product category that they’ll dominate because they say so. Any they won’t, because no one at MS ever asked themselves if they, personally, really wanted one. Tablet notebooks are dumb. No one wants them.
So, Zune will launch, sell, oh about as many as Toshiba did already, maybe less. And that will be it for Zune.
Anyone who buys one will NOT buy Vista. They will actually be pretty pissed by that time. =)
MW: “personal” (opinion, please read prospectus for $29.95)
quote: “9. Wireless networking is a good way to squirt songs”
I don’t want *anyone* ‘squirting’ *anything* in my direction!!!
Nuh-unh… no way!
Lets squirt peterson a little something
“It didn’t have to push the Mac out of corporate cubes to establish Windows; there simply were no existing computers in many of the markets Microsoft pioneered.”
There were Macs there, and they did get pushed out. Almost every last one.
“Microsoft is trying to spin the idea that the Zune is only competing against the iPod, not devices tethered to its PlaysForSure WMA partnerships.”
Who really cares what it competes with. if the other guys have compelling offerings, they will sell players. If not, they wont.
“it really only allows users to share a link to a song, which isn’t novel at all.”
The novel thing is that you can actually get to “try before you buy”, rather then purchase things on other people’s play lists and hope you like them.
Furthermore the sharing happens then, now, not later when you go home and try to remember what songs/play lists etc you should be finding.
How does the .Mac “equivalent” even approach that?
Also if you have the music store subscription, it equates to getting a version which lasts forever.
“WiFi wireless boasts a speed of 54 Mbit/sec, with a real-world throughput of around 20 Mbit/sec.”
Yet the contention for calculating relative speed is that USB2 has a maximum throughput of 480Mbit/sec, not derated for “real world” performance. Secondly these Zunes a probably very close to each other, about as good a scenario as is possible for wifi.
But what’s really important is how long it takes to move a song.
Taking Apple’s 60GB iPod calculations, we get to 3 MB/Song. Assuming 20Mbit/Sec throughput, it would take 1.2 seconds to move a song.
The time difference would be significant if you were transferring 20,000 songs, but not if just sharing a few.
Even if it were double or triple that, say 3.6 seconds, That doesn’t sound outside the bounds of how long anyone would wait.
“After spending ten minutes ineffectually squirting at the girl, she’ll be gone and unlikely to call again. “
Has the guy not heard of the Zune DJ mode? you know the mode where you stream what you’re listening to now, and people can tune in to that?
“brown”
So don’t buy brown, buy black or white instead. I presume those colors are acceptable to an iPod owner?
squirt … that alone may be the downfall of Zune. Its the most dorky way to say file transfer ever!
how do you measure the cool factor of a product?
when people use it as a costume for halloween:
http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/03/a-ridiculous-number-of-ipod-costumes/
“how do you measure the cool factor of a product? when people use it as a costume for halloween:”
Well from that url you know it’s crossed the threshold from being a cool product to a product for everybody, even dorks.
hey guys, microsoft will probably crush everything else, like the x-box line is going to (unfortunately) probably crush nintendo. if this one doesnt kick ass the next ones will be better, and they can afford to make big mistakes.