6 ms·
To be fair, the Zune actually was a better media player than the ipod in almost every way. That wasn't a false statement. The issue was the abysmal marketing a
by VCFundedGenYer 2mo ago
To be fair, the Zune actually was a better media player than the ipod in almost every way. That wasn't a false statement.
The issue was the abysmal marketing and "me too" attitude Microsoft had (and still has).
- wat10000 2mo agoIt was better in every way you can quantify in a tech specs listing, and not in any way that actually matters to the customer.
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- aatd86 2mo agome still thinking about the iRiver H320 I was lusting after...
- stillpointlab 2mo ago100% - the iPod wasn't just good enough, it was more than enough for almost everyone. The Zune was firmly in the diminishing returns category by the time it came out.
- compiler-guy 2mo agoYep. To overcome an incumbent that sells a very good product and has momentum, it is almost never enough to be somewhat better. You have to be "knock my socks off" better. The Zune may have been somewhat better (until the nano and iphone), but it wasn't enough better to overcome the ecosystem switching costs.
- georgel 2mo agoI had the OG white Zune. It was the same price as an iPod ~$250. The reason I chose Zune was the Zune Pass. A precursor to Spotify. Plus growing up in the Seattle area, I knew other people who had them and we would trade songs.
- Andrex 2mo agoI completely forgot you could "squirt" songs to other Zune owners. What a time! (Brown launch model here.)
- jimbokun 2mo agoNot much difference between storing as many songs you can listen to in a lifetime, or storing twice as many songs as you can listen to in a lifetime.
- precompute 2mo agoMy Zune 30's still kicking! Ipods aren't.
- gffrd 2mo agoTechnical capability pales in comparison to human desire.
- Razengan 2mo agoBeing easy and pleasant to use and own is also an important capacity.
- sigmoid10 2mo agoUntil you actually need to run a business. Then money is much more important than the preferences of your employees. That's why Apple has barely penetrated the business world beyond overfunded startups that are more driven by hype and design wanna-bes than actual profit.
- badprose 2mo ago> Until you actually need to run a business. Did you mean to say "Until you actually need to sell to a business."? They did do very well for a long time mostly by focusing on consumers...
- foepys 2mo agoMicrosoft fumbled the Windows ball so hard, everybody i know got rid of their Windows PC and either went to Android/iPhone or got a Mac or Linux. At work we can freely choose which OS we run on our machines. Guess what everybody wants since IT got forced to upgrade each laptop to Windows 11? Macbook Pro. I personally am running Linux just because I already know how to use it but macOS (despite its flaws) is way less intrusive and much faster than Windows. Even Microsoft's own programs (Office 365, Teams) are running faster and have better UX on macOS than on Windows.
- matthewmc3 2mo ago10% of Microsoft's revenue is Windows. Azure is closer to 40%. Their focus has shifted hard from software to services. Azure is making them around $100B and growing. It'd be far more surprising if they were putting their focus back to Windows in a saturated market given all the incentives they have to chase bigger revenue elsewhere.
- insane_dreamer 2mo agoI had the first iPod, and later the first Zune. The Zune had a beautiful UI, but by then Apple came out with the iPod Nano 2nd gen and that took the cake.
- riazrizvi 2mo agoThe Zune failed vs the iPod because of marketing? Okay.
- QuercusMax 2mo agoThe turd brown color certainly didn't help
- horsawlarway 2mo agoshut your mouth - that brown was beautiful.
- QuercusMax 2mo agoThe color definitely made me want to shut my mouth
- intrikate 2mo agoI'm with you. It was brown, and if I remember right, in the light the edges had a sort of greenish tint to them? I thought it looked so cool, hadn't seen anything like it before.
- chuckadams 2mo agoThat combined with naming the sharing feature "squirting".
- 12_throw_away 2mo ago2006 was the year Nintendo showed us how to play with our Wiis, while Microsoft asked us to squirt at THE SOCIAL.
- riazrizvi 2mo agoFor you maybe. I love the color of my turds.
- gregors 2mo ago
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- tcmart14 2mo agoNever had a zune, but I did have an iPod. I am willing to accept Zune was superior. But its just an example that, yea, often times the superior solution doesn't actually win. There is a huge list of better technology that lost out to worst technology. Which is why I find it funny the claim that the market is optimal in choosing winners and loosers.
- dpoloncsak 2mo agoThe market is optimal, you're failing to value brand perception and any social effects as a price factor Androids are probably better than iPhones. But you may lose a first date with a girl for sending a message with green bubbles instead of blue bubbles, so people buy iPhones. The iPhone is worth more than the Android, in this example.
- vntok 2mo ago> But you may lose a first date with a girl for sending a message with green bubbles instead of blue bubbles, so people buy iPhones. What.the.actual.fuck. Can you expand on this? I have so many questions.
- josephg 2mo agoI’ve met people like this. “Oh, green bubbles - I don’t know what I expected” / “I didn’t realise he was poor”. It’s 100% a thing for some people.
- __dxtj__ 2mo agoI haven't heard of people losing a first date, but I remember a few years ago seeing articles about teens being excluded from group chats if they were using an Android because it was considered something you'd only buy if you couldn't afford an iphone. Android and iphone also didn't share the same features for texting, so people didn't want Android users in their chat because it meant they couldn't use all the imessage features.
- TheBicPen 2mo ago
- saturn8601 2mo agoI recall reading this story of some user doing a sync with Zune on their new computer. The computer had no songs on it and the Zune synced with that machine and wiped all the existing music off his Zune without warning him(or something like that its been years). I recall thinking, yep thats Microsoft. And to this day I still encounter dumb ways of thinking in many of their products. The endless negative stories I hear about Windows 11 are just the tip of the iceberg. The entire company has to be following a cohesive vision with leadership at top needing to be truly involved to make great end to end products and really Microsoft has not been that in a long time.
- hex4def6 2mo agoI remember Microsoft introduced a DRM / certification program they called "Playsforsure". Two years later they introduce the Zune, which could not play "Playsforsure" music people had purchased from MSN..
- microtonal 2mo agoHeh, sounds like Windows Phone. Release Windows Phone 7, get early adopters and traction. Thank the early adopters by releasing Windows Phone 8, which is incompatible with existing Windows Phone 7 devices. Also make it use a new app development SDK so that Windows Phone 8 apps don't work on Windows Phone 7 (modulo some weird transition tech that almost nobody uses).
- cjarrett 2mo agoThe funny thing was they could have done the adaptation--instead of doing it they just presumed devs would transition. They were also done with the android-apps-on-windowsphone project but dumped it because PC marketplace managers got mad at it because then devs wouldn't use their sdk. Luckily we still got the first version of WSL because of that project's partnership with that linux team.
- mrguyorama 1mo agoAnd the Zune ecosystem had it's own DRM music format that also died IIRC. However, what the Zune ecosystem DID have that was insane for the time, was a $10 or so monthly subscription that let you listen to and download ANY song, as long as you had Wifi, with the bonus that you could download completely unprotected MP3s of ten of those songs a month. Songs at the time were still $1 each, so this was essentially free music streaming for people who bought songs regularly, with no potential for rug pulls. Outside of this subscription, you could loan a song to your friend, who could listen to it on their Zune like three times. They also had a nifty procedural playlist feature. They were trying to do social media of music! Microsoft used to be freaking nuts.
- staticman2 2mo agoFrom what I recall Zune had a much bigger screen for videos so I bought one for that reason you can see the side by side here: https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/zune-ipod.htm https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/zune-ipod.htm
- gregors 2mo agoI had to hunt this, but the classic design perspective of the ipod vs zune by Joel https://youtu.be/e-blUcmpW1s?list=PLcIkt5s7w8D0ywp0CBmNFWRTFZic3pWNn&t=168 https://youtu.be/e-blUcmpW1s?list=PLcIkt5s7w8D0ywp0CBmNFWRTF... At the end of the day Apple got design and Microsoft didn't and it showed in their sales.
- throwaway894345 2mo agoAnd the Zune media player was a much better media player than the other 6 Microsoft media players. It was crazy how much Microsoft invested in cannibalizing its own products--I remember they had a similar number of word processors, email clients, etc.
- godwinson__4-8 2mo agoThe point is that after the iPhone dropped it didn't matter.
- tambourine_man 2mo agoThe iPod's click wheel was amazing. Grab one if you have the chance and play a bit with it. I imagine a lot of people don't remember or have never used. Such a great feel and UX, Apple at its best. iTunes was also unrivaled in its first versions, before it became an everything app. And syncing was pretty great before ubiquitous internet was a thing.
- switchbak 2mo agoI owned one for a very long time. I know people loved the clicky clack, but that thing was a UX abomination. The only thing it was good for was high speed jogging - not something that you typically do very often on a music player. "Apple at its best" ... I sure hope not. But for sure, people LOVED that wheel. I would take a 4-way clicky from the Zune any day.
- tambourine_man 2mo ago> …high speed jogging - not something that you typically do very often on a music player. That’s exactly what you often do on them, when they are good at it. How would you rather browse a large library: one by one, slowly, or use a non-linear accelerator to quickly get close to where you want to be and then precisely pick your choice? The click wheel was brilliant software and hardware, simultaneously, which is why I call it “Apple at its best”. It could have been good software with unreliable, wobbly hardware, or robust hardware with a slight rendering delay, which would break the illusion. Instead it was sturdy, responsive and just a joy to use. Much like Apple’s trackpads, which remain surprisingly unmatched. But I guess we have different tastes on music players.
- switchbak 2mo agoI think it was an example of a well executed idea taken war too far, like the touchscreens on a Tesla replacing essential physical buttons. Or the obsession with getting rid of buttons on the iPhone (which we’re now thankfully retreating from). It did have its sweet spot - jogging to an exact spot in a song, or scrolling a long list. But you do a lot more than just that on a music player. And the overall experience of the iPod was actually somewhat sub par because of the overuse of that one feature.
- blauditore 2mo agoExactly. The same for Windows Phone. Both was amazing software on great hardware. They just never gained enough traction because MS was a bit late to the party and wasn't willing to push through (e.g. by compensating the late start and poor market position with heavy marketing investments and partnerships), so they eventually trashed those projects. It's such a shame that the shitty MS products survive the ages while the great ones never gain real traction. I feel a bit sorry for the people who built such amazing stuff just to see it being cancelled and then having to work on the unsolicited background execution of the SharePoint 365 rev4.7 update manager (I made this up, but it probably exists).
- brudgers 2mo agoGoogle broke YouTube for Windows Phone. Not just the app, but also the browser. Also, in my experience the Windows Phone hardware was dodgy. The first one I bought was a Dell and failed under warranty…and the replacement failed out of warranty. Then after an LG Android, I bought one of the last Lumia’s. The camera failed just out of warranty. Then the whole thing failed while I was traveling. So I bought an iPhone.
- ColdStream 2mo agoI had a great run with the Lumia range devices but I could see it vary wildly depending on designer/manufacturers. I end up on Android simply because of file drag and drop and an open App ecosystem which they are now trying to lock down.
- prmph 2mo agoYes, the death of Windows phone was a tragedy for the mobile phone market; it had a fresh take on things, and could have stirred up healthy competition with the duopoly of iPhones and Android phones. I never could understand why MS would not put heavy muscle behind it. Maybe they deep down knew hardware execution was not their strong suit. People think the software was the problem, but I think if MS really believed in the product, the software side was eminently solvable.
- ColdStream 2mo ago
- koliber 2mo agoYou’re right but that is not the point. The point t is that soon after the whole category of portable MP3 players got wiped out by smart phones.
- spacedcowboy 2mo agoAnd marketing it with "turd brown" ass (oops!) an option
- whatsThisBtn4 2mo agoApple excels in marketing. They are more similar to Nintendo than Nvidia.
- 12_throw_away 2mo ago> the abysmal marketing WELCOME TO THE SOCIAL I remember multiple tech reviewers praising the marketing at the time. It was the first time my younger and more naive self experienced that now-familiar feeling in relation to the tech industry: "am I taking crazy pills? have I slipped into the bizarro universe? have these people ever interacted with another human being?" etc
- vanderZwan 2mo agoI dated someone studying at a conservatory (the music kind) around that time. IIRC the Zune was quite popular with the students - even if most of them had an iMac - because it had one of the best microphones for recording live performances in an affordable package.
- HPsquared 2mo agoThat's part of the joke, I think.
- maerF0x0 1mo agoCreative Nomad Jukebox Zen kept me alive through a mindless summer job