“Right, so this is a weird one: we’re getting tons of reports—tons—about failing Zune 30s. Apparently, the players began freezing at about midnight last night, becoming totally unresponsive and practically useless,” John Herrman reports for Gizmodo.
MacDailyNews Take: Happy New Year, Microsoft-style!
Herrman continues, “The crisis has been dubbed by Zune users ‘Y2K9’, due to the apparently synchronized faceplantings across the country. According to tipster Michael, the Zune users experienced something like this: Apparently, around 2:00 AM today, the Zune models either reset, or were already off. Upon when turning on, the thing loads up and… freezes with a full loading bar (as pictured above). I thought my brother was the only one with it, but then it happened to my Zune. Then I checked out the forums and it seems everyone with a 30GB HDD model has had this happen to them.”
MacDailyNews Take: Wow, all three Zune sufferers affected at once! Quelle tragédie! Good thing the poor bastards have already long been helmeted for their own safety.
Full article here.
Tim Stevens reports much the same for Engadget, “[The] 30GB players started locking up at midnight last night, essentially bricking themselves without any help from their owners. The failures are coming 24-hours ahead of the big ’09 changeover, but that hasn’t stopped Zune aficionados from dubbed this unfortunate flaw ‘Z2K.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In typical Microsoftian fashion, they can’t even come up with a consistent name for their latest abject failure.
Zunetards, hey, look over here! (snaps fingers) Hey! (whistles) Over here! (claps hands loudly) Look here!!! Consider this a gift of enlightenment. Now, go get yourselves a real media player: Apple’s iPod touch.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Chuckles the Microsoft CEO” for the heads up.]
@HMCIV
Elementary, Dr Watson! As Zune 30’s are now “bricks”, they weigh more than the average MP3 player.
I’m shocked at the pages and pages of people confirming the dead Zunes.
What’s more shocking is that these people are deliberately looking in their drawers to find an old Zune and are turning them on to see it get bricked!
A logical person would wait and see if there is a solution before trying to brick their device.
Is this just a symptom of a Zune buyer? Someone who hears a report that all cars are crashing due to ice on the road, they immediately get in their cars and drive around to see?
I just read a comment from a user at Zune.net that explains the mentality of a typical MS user.
“Well, I’m glad to see I’m not alone.”
I guess to them misery is ok as long as it’s shared.
The comments at Z2k are hilarious;
“I hate Apple products beyond belief”, sez one.
Hope she’s happily enjoying her MS zBrick!
Since this year has 366 days in it, it smells like MS programmers don’t fully grasp the concept of a leap year. Dec 31st would normally be Jan 1st, so the Zunes woke up thinking it was 2009 and discovered they had made an error, then self destructed like Nomad (remember that one from Star Trek?).
Must….. Ster—il—iiiizzzzeeee!
I’m more shocked that many people own 30GB Zunes and apparently all read Engadget.
So Bill Gates also had a kill switch and did use it.
This is Microsofts way of getting their users to upgrade to the yet to be released Zune Vista Edition. This is how they have always done things. Everything is working fine and then they come out with a new version. For those that don’t upgraded they give you a nrw service pack that breaks everything and then tell you your version is too old and you need to upgrade.
The guy at the desk next to me has a Zune (I guess he’s the 4th Zune owner). I asked him if it froze up last night, and he wondered how I knew! Poor bastard.
Zune buyers get what they deserve. Caveat emptor!
Fuss about nothing, I mean it’s not like they sold many.
@ Wingsy
Your theory sounds better than mine, which was that there is an integer counter in the Zune clock of seconds since Bill Gates’ birth or something equally improbable, and that the integer overflowed and the system crashed.
This fault used to exist in Unix and in the GPS clock system. Both were fixed before causing crashes though.
Back in the day when I was a programmer, I wrote lots of date routines that were Year 2000 compliant, but not Year 2100 compliant. The Y2K compliance was by accident; I figure I’ll be dead before the Y2100 crisis hits.
Hum, My iPhone works great! Although my 30gb iPod crapped out 1 month after the warranty expired.
OK, Microsoft has put out an office statement on the Zune.com site.
zune service status
Status:
Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!
Every company has failures!
The iMac has had backlight issues/gradient displays and bleeding since day one.
Almost every iMac suffers it. I have been through countless machines and tis a design flaw 🙁
So let’s not get carried away here and laugh… It happens to everyone.
I hope Microsoft can fix it for the customers….
Just like Apple had the OS 10.5.6 update hang…
These companies need to test, test and test some more before releasing products / software updates to the customers.
Can’t wait to see Apple’s response at MacWorld next week.
Zune, the gift that keeps on giving.
We need to build housing with all these new bricks. No windows.
Now we have the MS trolls trying to say that Apple has an equivalent to the Zune Y2K9 bug. Pathetic.
It has to phone home before you can use it?
Made me think about one of the early ‘Get a Mac’ ads,
@MacintoshSoftwareList.com
Just curious – was it the hard drive that failed? The only reason I ask is because the original hard drives for both of my Mac computers failed. I haven’t had good luck with stock hard drives. In both cases, the hard drives were under warrenty – the first under the original warrenty, the second under the extended warrenty.
Due to the failure of the hard drives on my Mac computers, I purchased AppleCare for my 160Gb iPod – which just turned a year old. So far no problems.
Happy New Year to you and to all of MDN’s readers.
Peace.
This has now officially been labelled ‘The Brown Screen of Death’
Don’t be shocked. They are all beta testers and product reviewers.