Excrement brown with vomit green highlights, mmmm, tasty.
Posted on 10/04/2011 2:08:31 AM PDT by Spktyr
Zune HD support page, podcast end lineup
Microsoft in spite of its earlier claims has said it will drop Zune players. A support page has made clear the company will "no longer be producing Zune players." It will keep honoring support and sales, but hasn't made mention of future OS updates.
The company quietly discontinued the Zune Insider podcast on Friday after hosts Jessica Zahn and Matt Akers said they had to move on to other projects. Zahn is working on social services involving Live.
Its end comes after two years without significant hardware updates and signs that the Zune line was coming to an end. It recently stopped selling Zune Originals and began porting Zune HD apps to Windows Phone.
While the core music component will live in Windows Phone, the Xbox 360, and the desktop, it marks an end to Microsoft's hopes of competing with the iPod almost exactly five years after entering the field in fall 2006. Microsoft had hoped to use its size and unique features to outmuscle Apple. While it had advantages such as FM radio, "squirting" songs, and later Wi-Fi syncing and the Zune Pass, they weren't considered big enough to sway users from the iPod line.
Zunes may have inadvertently helped Apple in the process. By entering with the Zune device and Marketplace, Microsoft started competing with partners that were using PlaysForSure on their music stores, such as Walmart. The Zune never got more than two percent share in the US, but it was enough to lead to the closure of some stores and mostly cannibalized device share from Microsoft's allies.
Apple's success has been credited both to stronger momentum as well as to a much more aggressive update schedule. Microsoft started slowing down as soon as 2008, when it put out a conservative update to the "clickpad" Zunes. Apple has always updated iPods at least once a year and, with the iPod nano, has had a significant redesign every year. The company was quicker to touchscreen players and had both cheaper as well as higher-end models.
Good riddance. Who thought 'excrement brown' and 'radioactive vomit green' were good combinations for a consumer electronics device, anyway?
I believe this news story to be relevant to your interests. Let the iPod list holder know too, since I don’t remember who’s running that.
Zune was a good idea in a saturated market. Frankly, with the advent of Pandora and the smart phone, even the iPod’s days are numbered.
I kinda like Microsoft because they are the most Republican supporting of all these companies. I have Windows 7, Office 2010 and xbox 360. But I don’t want a zune or Windows Phone.
Microsoft may be lower percentage Democrat, but higher absolute dollar amounts. A lot higher.
Excrement brown with vomit green highlights, mmmm, tasty.
I've always thought that the Zune case resembled something that came out of Soviet Russia. Being the ugliest consumer device on the market must have been one of it's design goals.
If it wasn't for spots where I can't get a data connection I'd have no reason to ever use my Ipod anymore.
The fact that they didn’t use “protected” crap, you could transfer back and forth (unlike the iPod), and it had what I thought was better potential, but it came on too late to even seriously challenge the iPod. Yeah, it was ugly as hell, but I’ll take ugly and functional over my iPod, which is currently gathering dust. Now, anywhere I have a cell signal, I have music (and can buy it if I want, but haven’t wanted to yet.)
And those areas are getting smaller and smaller. I run into them every so often up in the North Country (above Berlin) but not often enough to matter. And as previously stated, you can buy music off Pandora, Amazon, etc., or just burn your own into .mp3 format that will cover me just fine in the areas I don’t get cell/data service. Now if I could just get 4G service on my phone... =-(
Uh, didn’t use protected crap? The Zune’s DRM was initially more restrictive than the iPod’s, and it was Apple that was pushing to kill DRM, not Microsoft.
Add to that that the Zune’s DRM required you to resync your Zune with your computer on a regular basis or it erased your music... or sometimes it would just erase it for no apparent reason... Sorry, no, that was pretty sad.
And yet if my computer dies and I get a new one, I’m screwed when it comes to transferring my iPod music to the new computer, even a lot of the stuff I purchased won’t transfer if the artist isn’t listed on iTunes anymore. Sorry, but to me, I’ve no use for either the Zune or iPod anymore. Lack of flexibility being high on that list.
Strangely, many of us did something odd like “back up all our files” on a regular basis and even if the computer dies I still have all my music.
By the way, the Zune’s format would self-destruct if you copied it from one computer to another after three plays. Which includes the scenario that you propose.
Apple akbar!
No, that was “Jobs Akbar” - infidel. :P
I’m just outside a 4G area but since I don’t have a 4G phone yet it’s kind of a mute point. A co worker of mine just got one and he’s going to try it out in the 4G zone the next time he wonders over there.
Rather MOOT in stead of MUTE. Not enough caffeine.
“Microsoft may be lower percentage Democrat, but higher absolute dollar amounts. A lot higher.”
It’s not just about the money. They seem to have more respect for conservative values than Google and forget about Apple, with its new gay CEO
Microsoft isn’t exactly anti-gay either. They have had quite lavish same-sex partner benefits for decades.
Yes, so did I. And even then Apple wasn’t a big help. Snark isn’t your strong suit, sir.
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