This whole Zune thing is just a train wreck. Granted, the only reason I know anything about the Zune is that I read a fair number of Apple-related publications, many of which have been taking potshots at the Zune for months now. But now that the thing is in stores, I’m seeing enough reviews from less biased sources to draw some conclusions.
Let’s review:
1. Installation crashes a lot, and to purchase something from the store, you have to re-enter all the personal info you just entered during setup.
2. The install screen features hot girl-on-girl action. (No, really.)
3. You can’t install at all on Vista — which, OK, the OS isn’t out yet. But it will be two weeks from now. When exactly are they planning on making the Zune work with it?
Note, please, the quote from Ballmer (presumably on the Zune’s wireless features): “I want to squirt you a picture of my kids. You want to squirt me back a video of your vacation. That’s [an] experience.” Let me be up front about this: I don’t want to “experience” anything from Steve Ballmer, much less anything transferred in a manner that can be characterized as “squirting.”
4. In order to buy music from the store, you have to buy blocks of Zune Points.
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I, too, have been reading a lot of the Apple-biased commentary, which I sometimes question despite being an Apple addict, but it does seem to be something of a mess.
I’m just waiting for the full video ipod at this point…
This is just… unbelievable.
Really, if you’d tried this as a parody, everyone would think it was too absurd to be funny.
We all knew the Zune would suck, but I thought it would at least work!
Microsoft isn’t afraid to take an iterative approach. It’s how they’ve done everything. Granted, the Zune as it is today is a wreck, but it wouldn’t take much to make it into something really kick-ass. Some of the cool features many thought it would have (such as wireless synching) could be added via a firmware upgrade.
Many of the same things were said about the XBox and now MS is stealing market share from Sony.