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."
Zune HD is a bizarre product (Score:1, Interesting)
Here's an interesting article [appleinsider.com] regarding the hype surrounding Zune HD (which isn't actually HD to begin with).
In Microsoft's world, HD means 480x272. HD Radio? It stands for Hybrid Digital, not High Definition and works only in US.
Re:I want my mp3 player to play music (Score:4, Interesting)
Do apps matter?
That depends on a couple factors, the first is what you want or need in a portable device, and secondly what is your device capable of.
for me having a phone with GPS and internet capability means that I'm never more than inches away from a map, thus I'm lost a whole lot less than I used to be. Product reviews and internet prices are always in my pocket, so I'm a smarter consumer even for impulse buys. If I get stuck away from home in a rainstorm on my bike, I can check to see if I'm screwed or if the rain will blow over while I sit under a bridge and wait.
So no, apps are not needed, but they sure made my life better without having to carry another item.
Sheldon
Wow, biased much? (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, I know this is slashdot and all, but this is a VERY biased article.
They don't have an open app store yet because they want all the games to be free, and developed in house, which isn't as bad as this summary makes it sound.
They aren't merging with windows mobile's store because they want to make extra sure the Zune is perfect, and I absolutely don't blame them.
I'm pretty annoyed that whoever wrote this summary was this biased, the Zune HD looks awesome and its really unfair to try to make it look bad on a site that gets 2 million hits a day. If it ends up being bad, that's one thing, but give it a freakin chance.
-Taylor
Re:Marketing speak is pretty funny (Score:3, Interesting)
Beta testers. They have opinions that are ignored unless they properly align with prepared marketing assets.
it does (Score:5, Interesting)
Are these damn players becoming like cell phones? Do app stores matter? Makes no sense to me.
In the case of the iPod Touch, it's become a highly popular gaming platform, not to mention having things like iCal, wifi, safari bundled, etc etc. It's either filled a void by providing a hybrid PDA+music player+gaming device, or created that void and told people that they need this. Imho it's a bit of both.
Re:Gruber is irrelevant. (Score:3, Interesting)
There's an old saying that goes "If Hitler says 2+2=4, you can't argue with him." Did you RTFA? How is this NOT a convoluted mess?:
It's hard to say right now. If you look around the company at other places where things like this are important, Windows Mobile rises to the top... Right now our product roadmaps didn't line up perfectly for us to snap to what they're doing or vice versa. That being said, we know people want things like this on their devices so we're going to build them ourselves, they're going to be super high-quality, and they're going to be free.
Down the road if there's a way we can work with Windows Mobile or another group inside the company that's building an app store and take advantage of that, that's something we'll look into.
This thing has been in development for YEARS and they're JUST NOW realizing that maybe people will want to run apps on them, and they're announcing that they don't know how, if, or when that will happen? I don't care who says it--John Gruber, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, it doesn't matter--it is clearly a convoluted mess.
For fuck's sake, why on Earth DIDN'T MS just build the Zune functionality on top of WIndows Mobile? Zune has been out for almost 3 years; Windows Mobile for about 9. What is so mind-blowingly intense about what the Zune does (plays music, shows pictures, plays video; probably with neat sliding or fading transitions between menus and modes) that there was NO FUCKING WAY that all the great minds in Redmond could POSSIBLY make it work with ANY variant of Windows Mobile? Really, all they had to do was make a shiny "media app" that ran on top of Windows Mobile, the same way that "Media Center" is just an app that runs on top of regular Windows.
Re:Is a store really necessary (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure a dedicated app store is a great way to funnel your customers to your door. But that's like saying you only have one store available to you, and you have to pay in Stokessd-town dollars. I'm sure you would have less total customers than if the unit was open to applications from anywhere, although you'll most likely collect more stokessd-town dollars.
You're only seeing half the picture. Having a built in store that collects all the apps in one place is a feature and customers really, really, really like being able to get everything from one place in one consistent way. This leaves phone implementors with three choices:
MS picked the choice that is the least work, least innovative, and works like Windows. For some reason I'm not surprised.
Neat, maybe I want one! Oh, fine print: (Score:4, Interesting)
*Zune HD AV Dock and an HDTV (all sold separately) are required to view video at HD resolution. Supported 720p HD video files play on the player, downscaled to fit the screen at 480 x 272 â" not HD resolution. Zune Pass subscription required; streaming via wi-fi available in U.S. only. HD Radioâ is a proprietary trademark of iBiquity Digital Corp. Learn more about HD Radio here.
So does that mean I need a "zune pass" to play video on my zune? What the hell is a zune pass [zune.net] anyway? Ok, so I look it up, but now why do I need it again?
what the press still isn't saying... (Score:3, Interesting)
...is how this time, M$ decided to leave behind their prior Zune models with any new features in the update. Discontinuing them should have been the sign. As a 18-month owner of a Zune80, I'm seriously disappointed. The only new features we legacy Zune (18months is legacy now?) users get are for the desktop app, which personally I only use to manage my device, and nothing more. Since I have it running on a Windows Media Center PC, why do I need yet another app that does pretty much the same thing, especially from the same vendor. Even more, in a time of recession, where I don't want to drop another couple hundred for a replacement device that's hardly showing its age or need for replacement, why would I possibly want to replace it?
If you read the Zune forums, its full of device feature requests for simple things...unicode support, crossfade, better playlist management, better integration with Windows apps (there is currently none for WMP or WMC). All of these pretty much since Gen-1 of the device, and all have been disregarded since the Zune marketing team felt it necessary to take this route instead.
Its simply a sad example of greed overtaking common sense at the expense of a bit more hard work. A philosophical example of modern capitalism and American excess too?
Anyone wanna buy a Gen-2 Zune80 is Good condition? I'll use the $ to buy a MiniSD for my cellphone to consolidate my gadgets instead.
Re:I want my mp3 player to play music (Score:3, Interesting)
Bear in mind that, the iPod touch is not apple's music player device. Apple have the iPod shuffle/nano/classic for that purpose. As steve jobs himself stated in their recent iPod announcement, the iPod touch is a portable games console.
Re:I want my mp3 player to play music (Score:5, Interesting)
Your opinion of what is relevant in the market is proportional to how much of that market you comprise.
The fact of the matter is, these apps and a convenient source for them are very much in demand. I highly recommend you at least borrow someone's iPod Touch of iPhone, check out the app store (right from the device!) and see if there isn't something there you would like to have.
My 3GS is not only my phone, my ebook reader, my mp3 player, my backup navigation device, my portable dictionary, my (surprisingly good) camera, my portable gaming device, compass, and, and even a crude level, in fact it's the first device I've owned that's fast enough and user friendly enough that I'd call it a general purpose portable computer. I held out on getting an iPhone until the 3GS and it was worth the wait.
I'll get off your lawn now.
Must be a new definition of "unique" (Score:3, Interesting)
It will come with some unique features, though, like an HD radio tuner
Does "unique" mean "just like the iPod Nano"?
(The Nano's ability to show artist and song names, and its "iTunes Tagging" features, shared with some FM radio iPod docks, also use HD radio. Apple just doesn't, for whatever reason, put "HD radio" in giant flaming letters in its advertising.)
Re:HD radio (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever heard a CD that you would confuse with a live performance?
Are you *really* serious? I don't buy that at all. You must not have had a very good CD player or summin. I have a *large* collection of LP's, 45's, and CD's, and most of my library I listen to is on my iPod now. I've spent enormous amounts of time comparing the AAC version of what I've recorded to the original. Can't tell a difference.
What I have found is that CD's tend to unmask the weakness of the original recording, making it a little less pleasurable to listen to. An extreme example is Journey "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin". If you listen to it on a cheap radio over FM it's not too bad. Listen to it on LP it sounds better. Listen to it on a CD with high-end equipment (I have Mackie studio monitors) and it sounds absolutely friggin horrible. It's not the mastering of the CD or the quality of the A/D conversion, it's the original recording. Now go and listen to James Taylor "Everyday" - the remastered version - downloaded from iTunes. That's probably some of the best quality audio you'll ever hear.
Oh, and IAASE (I am a studio engineer)
Re:HD radio (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh...it's been proven that the PVC polymer chains that comprise LPs don't offer as much resolution, even on the molecular level, as 44.1 KHz sampled audio.
Back in the early seventies they introduced a recording technology called "quadrophonic" -- four channel sound. How they did they ger four channels out of a single groove? Well, monophonic records' up and down motion of the stylus was used for the signal. When stereo was introduced, they wanted them to be backward compatible, so the up and down motion encompassed both channels, while the left and right motion was a single channel. Whan that signal was added to the signal from the up and down motion, the signal from the sideways motion cancelled out leaving the other channel.
For the rear channels of quadrophonic they modulated the signals with a 44kHz tone, which was demodulated in the player. A CD's top frequency is 22kHz. If what you say had any validity, quadrophonic would have been impossible.
The infinite resolution thing is a myth.
Of course the resolution isn't infinite, nothing but infinity is infinite. But it's far better than CD.
Furthermore, LPs max out at maybe 70-80 dBa of dynamic range, while 16-bit CDs offer 96
Yes, CDs have superior dynamic range. Too bad nobody ever uses that dynamic range, and in fact modern engineers screw up old recordings. There is no technical reason why the dynamics of Boston's first album are less on the CD than the LP, it's just that the remastering was crap.
That being said, many early CDs were poorly mastered.
So are way too many modern CDs. A lot of old analog LPs were badly mastered, too. The tape hiss on Aerosmith's first album is clearly audible in the LP, but they did a far better job on the second album; no audible noise.
Re:I want my mp3 player to play music (Score:3, Interesting)
What gets me is that they are eroding storage space, and somehow expecting me to not notice thanks to being blinded by bloat. Looking at the latest iPod selection, only two models will actually hold all my music now (the $400 touch, and the Classic, which will probably go away in a year or so). The Zune page is being sucky right now, but I'm pretty sure they only have 2 players that could hold my library with room for growth. I don't think that the ability to "shuffle" my music collection is a feature, nor do I think being forced to choose what I might be in the mood for at some indeterminate point in the future is desirable (if I liked this, I would have stuck with lugging CDs with me, or a cheap flash player).
Its very nice that I can now continually spend money on my MP3 player for silly little apps that tell me things that Google would tell me for free on my phone. Its very nice that I can watch HD video on a microscopic screen, or take crappy videos to post to YouTube (which I can do on my phone, for free, as well). But what happened to being able to store a shit-ton of music?
Didn't there used to be a market for this? Where did it go? How many 80Gb+ players still exist? Did people suddenly all delete their music libraries?
Re:Would you care to give an example? (Score:4, Interesting)
It cannot be said that Microsoft didn't lock them down, even if you said the lockdowns weren't completely effective. And don't forget that people have been prosecuted/fined/sent to prison for modifying them so that unofficial programs can be run on them.
On the PC front, I have 3 words: Protected Video Path [wikipedia.org]