No App Store For Microsoft's Zune HD 351
Xerfas writes 'Microsoft's Zune HD, set to go on sale Tuesday, will not feature an open application store like its competitor the iPod Touch. It will come with some unique features, though, like an HD radio tuner, and with software that has been well-received by users. Those capabilities will determine whether the ZuneHD sells well — and whether Microsoft decides to keep selling its own music player, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft.' The Zune marketing manager was quoted in the Seattle Times on whether the Zune would open up for 3rd-party apps, and he gave a response of such mind-numbing PR-speak that John Gruber of Daring Fireball was moved to provide this English translation: "No, because our mobile strategy is a convoluted mess."
I want my mp3 player to play music (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a cheap sansa. It plays mp3/ogg/flac. It plays little xvid videos and plays and records FM.
What more do I need?
Are these damn players becoming like cell phones? Do app stores matter? Makes no sense to me.
Re:HD radio (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. All those pops and scratches and distortion really make you believe being in a live performance.
Anyway, there are only a bunch of artists who sound good live making your rambling a moot point.
Marketing speak is pretty funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see, it's set to go on sale just about now. So how exactly has the software "been well-received by users"???
Re:I want my mp3 player to play music (Score:2, Insightful)
It is a valid opinion. Some people do want to carry lots of devices around.
And those who don't wouldn't buy a Zune anyway but rather a modern Windows Mobile phone - they can do pretty much everything nowadays.
Re:I want my mp3 player to play music (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not be the intended audience. If you have to carry a bare bones phone because (for example) you have one provided by an employer, or you cant have a camera (security reasons), or you don't want to upgrade and lose your ancient awesome phone plan, carrying an mp3 player that also doubles as a browser / calendar / email client / GPS / everything else is convenient and awesome.
If you just want it to play music, it's way too expensive and a waste of money.
Remember: not everyone just wants music.
Re:I want my mp3 player to play music (Score:5, Insightful)
First, when making an argument, consider you are not the only person in the world, so yes, someone somewhere probably needs something more/different/whatever.
And yes, App stores matter. Developers like them for saless. Non-geeks like them because it's a trustworthy point to get software that's pretty much guaranteed to be malware-free and won't hijack your system. Ubuntu, in fact, has an essentially same functionality in synaptic. Perhaps, if they were to leverage that into a store, it could help linux grow further.
Not all software can be free software. Can't sell support contracts for games and the like.
There is also cool software to be had for the iPhone - like some small apps to help you learn chinese or japanese, etc. App stores help promote this type of thing.
Re:HD radio (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever heard a CD that you would confuse with a live performance?
No. Thankfully I can play at less than ~100dBA.
I have heard LPs played on high end equipment that you would confuse with a live performance.
No, I would not. It does not have the ambience of a stadium and the feeling of over 1000 people around me.
I am so sick and tired of "LP is analog therefore better" bullshit that I strongly recommend you to calculate LP's channel capacity (according to Shannon's nice theorem). You will be surprised how much you have to fiddle with the numbers before you get higher than 1.4Mbit/s (stereo).
Re:I want my mp3 player to play music (Score:1, Insightful)
It never occured to you that "it all" actually is "just music" for some people? I see people with music players all day long. People doing something smart-phony with their smart phone are quite rare on the other side.
I wonder why they didn't change their prices (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow, biased much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone is very biased, but I'm not sure it was the submitter. The very fact that Zune even has a headline on Slashdot considering its 1% market share and fourth-place finish behind iPod, Sandisk, and "Other" comes close to astroturfing in my book. Zune is irrelevant in the market and pretending this is a viable product launch at ALL is awfully biased in a pro-Microsoft way.
They don't have an app store yet because it's hard and they don't want to invest in it for a potentially dying platform.
They aren't merging with Windows Mobile because that strategy is a mess (6.5? 7.0?) and a moving target. ("Make extra sure the Zune is perfect"? What does that even mean?)
The marketing folks at Microsoft are trying hard to spin, but their explanations make no sense if you examine how the current market leader won.
US only, why ? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to wonder if Microsoft really wants to sell Zunes... As an iPod user, I would welcome a stronger competition.
Please Microsoft, keep Apple at work, else they will become another lazy monopolist !
Re:Wow, biased much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone is very biased, but I'm not sure it was the submitter. The very fact that Zune even has a headline on Slashdot considering its 1% market share and fourth-place finish behind iPod, Sandisk, and "Other" comes close to astroturfing in my book. Zune is irrelevant in the market and pretending this is a viable product launch at ALL is awfully biased in a pro-Microsoft way.
They don't have an app store yet because it's hard and they don't want to invest in it for a potentially dying platform.
They aren't merging with Windows Mobile because that strategy is a mess (6.5? 7.0?) and a moving target. ("Make extra sure the Zune is perfect"? What does that even mean?)
The marketing folks at Microsoft are trying hard to spin, but their explanations make no sense if you examine how the current market leader won.
Really? The current market leader won by also not having an app store right away.
And this isn't astroturfing, as far as I'm concerned. I'm genuinely excited about the ZuneHD. Builtin HD radio, the first device with NVidia's Tegra processor for mobile 3D graphics, and a supposedly beautiful OLED screen are all reasons why this device is worth reporting on.
And I'm not a MS fanboy, I dumped windows mobile YEARS ago (thank god) for my iPhone, which I eventually dumped for Android. I just think it looks genuinely promising.
-Taylor
This release seems... apologetic? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know how else to put it. It seems like Microsoft is coming straight out the gate on the apologetic. What sort of impression is this going to send to people considering investing in the platform? They haven't expressed any clear strategy for a possible addition of Windows Mobile apps in the future, which seems equally stupid.
Do what Apple does- sometimes you just have to lie to make yourself sound impressive!
Let's take a lesson from Apple here: they've been pawning off old technology in Mac OS X as impressive new features for years. Apple knows what the fuck they're doing. The Zune marketing presentation, on the other hand, seems hyper aware of its shortcomings and the marketing response is a hurried explanation for why they aren't competing. "Sorry guys... we'll write a twitter app by the end of the year"...
END OF THE YEAR?! That's like a student project for beginning .NET development. How about they start spitting out some apps fast, and if not, just release a goddamn SDK. You are MICROSOFT, you have Visual Studio, XNA, etc. What the hell are you doing releasing a closed platform? They are competing with the iPod Touch, not the original iPod!
Do you want to know how bad of a release this is? I was going to buy one of these things until today. I assumed they had some clever card up their sleeve they were waiting to unveil at launch... nope... they were avoiding showing the App store because it has like 5 applications.
Do you want to know what I saw when I opened up the Zune software to check the app offerings this morning? ... a fucking calculator.
Really? Maybe they can distribute a Hello World app to go with that. This thing makes me want to buy an iPod Touch... and I totally hate Apple.
Fix the existing one first.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let me fix that foryou.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Although I know your post is in jest, Microsoft hasn't done anything *nearly* as terrible as Apple with their iPod/Phone shenanigans.
And I'm an Ubuntu user with little love for the boys in Redmond.
Why they matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they are finally powerful enough to replace laptops for many uses.
I just came back from Europe, on the way over I was flying next to someone who bought a Touch just so she could have email and web support while there, but without the weight of a laptop (she was going on a long biking trip). But she was also using a few applications like language tutorials and so on...
And of course, she could also have music while biking.
You device is fine for you, but it's nice to have devices that can do enough to make laptops a truly optional choice.
Re:Let me fix that foryou.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry but having an app store and causing problems for some developers beats having no app store at all.
Note: I think iTunes 9's focus on improving the app sync and letting you layout your iPod Touch/iPhones screens speaks volumes about how successful the app store has been.
Re:Let me fix that foryou.. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Microsoft's Zune HD, set to go on sale Tuesday, will not feature a tightly controlled by control freaks with degrees in control freakery application store like its competitor the iPod Touch, and therefore may or may not work and may or may not do anything you want it to do"
Further corrected.
Brett
Too Little Too Late (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPhone initially show was in January right after the first Zune came out. I thought "Wow, that's what the Zune SHOULD HAVE BEEN". The Zune might be finally getting there, but now its too late.
Don't get me wrong. The Zune HD is finally turning out to be what it should have been all along. But, it's really not anything different than the iPod Touch and the iPod Touch has a gazillion applications. Well, you say, the original iPhone didn't have an app store, but neither did anyone else. The thing Microsoft must realize is that the Zune has to compete against THIS YEARS iPod Touch.
In marketing, you have something called the "delta". This is the thing that your product has that your competitors don't. When the iPhone came out, the delta was a true to life web browser and easy syncing with your computer. It was the music player/phone/browser that everyone wanted. Since then, everyone has a music player/browser/phone combo. Now, the delta is the app store.
What's the Zune HD's "delta" that will get me to throw out my iPod Touch and line up to buy a Zune? HD Radio? It's hasn't really caught on. OLCD screen? That's a nice touch, but is it that much better than the iPod's screen? The Zune is $10 cheaper? Naw.
Here's what the Zune should have had:
* Compatibility with the XBox. Hey, you got a zillion XBox games, why not make it so they can easily be ported to the Zune?
* Camera that's integrated with Twitter/Facebook/Flickr. It should have spot metering and auto focus. Optical Zoom would be a big plus.
* Multiple platforms. Hey, the Mac now represents 15% of the consumer market. Maybe even more. Why are you immediately dropping that big a chunk of the market? Heck, the songs in iTunes aren't DRMd any more, and there's an API for perusing the catalog, so you don't even have to pull a Palm Pre. Show that you're willing to compete against Apple's home turf. And, don't leave Linux out.
* Work out a deal w/ Sprint a la Kindle for networking. Not necessarily a phone service, but use the Sprint network for your network. And, of course, WiFi.
All of this would have made the Zune something to consider despite having sand kicked into its face and its lunch money taken for the last few years. Now, it's just an also ran iPod look alike. If I want an iPod look alike, I might as well by the real thing.
Would you care to give an example? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's coming from someone who uses a mix of Mac, Linux, Windows, and OpenSolaris.
Re:Let me fix that foryou.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Who says there'll be no app store? There might well be plenty, if MS don't restrict it so that you can only run apps from one store.
No one says that the Windows platform (or Linux, OS X, Amiga or whatever) would be better if you could only download apps from one app store. And clearly, not having that doesn't mean you then have nowhere to obtain apps from!
Re:Would you care to give an example? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft has never locked down a general purpose computing device and told me what I can or can't run on it. They may have made cross platform stuff difficult, but they never banned it outright with DRM lockdowns.
Ever.
Re:Let me fix that foryou.. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Who says there'll be no app store?
Read the article you moron. The head of Zune development at Microsoft said so.
> There might well be plenty, if MS don't restrict it so that you can only
> run apps from one store.
You cannot run any apps from any store.
> No one says that the Windows platform (or Linux, OS X, Amiga or whatever)
> would be better if you could only download apps from one app store.
That is not true, plenty of people are saying just that. There are more malware titles for Windows than legitimate titles. If Windows 7 had a version that could only run signed apps that had already been certified by Microsoft to not be malware, there are users who would pay more for that version of Windows, especially businesses who have short lists of approved apps. It would run Photoshop and Office and AutoDesk and so on but not malware.
Honestly, I think you need working examples of somebody doing this better before you knock the App Store. It's a huge success. Lots of developers, lots of sophisticated apps, lots of satisfied users. I have a friend who in 10 years of Mac use never installed a 3rd party app at all, yet on his iPhone he has 10-20 apps he installed himself. I have another friend who has used a lot of Mac and PC software over the past 10 years, but never, ever paid for it. He also has 10-20 apps on his iPhone and he paid for them all, yet it only cost $75. So there are a lot of things working about the App Store that are going to be replicated on the desktop, not the other way around.
Ubuntu should have a mode "only run signed apps" and the Ubuntu people themselves should test and approve a list of 3rd party apps. Then a user could choose this safer, more secure native app mode if it's appropriate to what they're doing. Considering only about 10% of all computer users ever create any of their own software, this is going to be the default mode for computing going forward. Especially when we have a wide-open HTML5 app environment for running arbitrary stuff.
> And clearly, not having that doesn't mean you then have nowhere to obtain apps from!
Again, you have to read the article to make a contribution to this conversation. The whole point of this article is YOU CAN ONLY GET ZUNE HD APPS FROM MICROSOFT. NO 3RD PARTIES. Even if the apps come later, they are still all built-in apps. They are exactly like iPhone apps were the first year. Whatever you said or agreed with in 2007 about iPhone apps is what you should be saying right now about Zune HD if not a hypocrite. The Zune HD is like an iPod touch from 2007 with no 3rd party native apps, yet the Zune HD also does not have HTML5 like iPod touch, so it's even less 3rd party developer friendly.
Classic lives on as does space (Score:4, Insightful)
What gets me is that they are eroding storage space...and the Classic, which will probably go away in a year or so
That's what everyone said about the Classic last year. And in fact, the Classic has *gained* storage space in the recent update (updated to 160GB from 120GB). How is that erosion?
The classic will be around just long enough for flash devices to support similar storage and then, it might go away. But it's clear Classic level storage is going to stick around, there are plenty of other people with large libraries of music.