Ihnatko: Microsoft Zune experience about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face

“Yes, Microsoft’s new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I’ve spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face,” Andy Ihnatko writes for The Chicago Sun-Times. “‘Avoid,’ is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that’s so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.”

Ihnatko writes, “The setup process stands among the very worst experiences I’ve ever had with digital music players. The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal, I found myself asking my office goldfish, ‘Has it really come to this? Am I really about to manually create and install a .dll file?’ But there it was, right on the Zune’s tech support page. Is this really what parents want to be doing at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning?”

Ihnatko writes, “That might not be Zune’s fault. After about a year of operation, it’s almost as if a Windows machine develops some sort of antibodies that prevent it from recognizing new hardware. But what’s Microsoft’s excuse for everything else?”

“The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure,” Ihnatko writes. “Throw in the Zune’s tail-wagging relationship with music publishers, and it almost becomes important that you encourage people not to buy one.”

“The iPod owns 85 percent of the market because it deserves to. Apple consistently makes decisions that benefit the company, the users and the media publishers — and they continue to innovatively expand the device’s capabilities without sacrificing its simplicity,” Ihnatko writes. “The Zune will be dead and gone within six months. Good riddance.”

Full article here.
Well now, there’s a lovely review to add to the mountain of bad reviews. This couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.

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