Customers vs. users and being accused of astroturfing |
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Yesterday I wrote a detailed rebuttal to Andy Ihnatko’s kevlar-piercing Zune review that made the rounds, and somebody sent it to him and he took time to stop by and comment personally in detail. I encourage you to follow that link and read his pensive reply before continuing with this post. I elevated my response to his comment to a new post because it highlighted several additional points that I think are important enough to cover in a new post.
(Rest assured, friendly readers, I’m not turning Hmm into an unofficial Zune fan blog. Following this post and the related comments, if any, I’m pretty much done speaking about the Zune for awhile unless/until/if I learn how to do some cool things or some major new Zune development breaks. And thanks for the note of review confidence, Thatedeguy, very kind.)
To summarize, Andy found my rebuttal post “very illuminating” and admits that he didn’t mention any of the positives of the Zune because he was “short on space” and seemed to agree with what I wrote more than disagree (Update 2:53pm PST: See Andy’s comment #10 below where he writes: “I do disagree with most of your points, while respecting your opinion.”). Later in his reply he refers to regular people as “consumer-oriented users.”
I am not a number, I’m a man
This is a common problem with professional technology reviewers and writers. They don’t call us what we are: customers. We aren’t consumer-oriented users. If we are contemplating a purchase we are ’shoppers’ or perhaps ‘prospective customers.’ Ironically, I think of most professional reviewers who get advanced loaner copies and don’t disclose this as non-consumer oriented writers. I enjoyed the writing style of Ihnatko’s review because it was loaded with passion. Although I disagree with all but two of the negative points he made about the Zune, I found his review spunky and engaging.
I think the whole ‘user’ term — which I’ve fallen into the trap of deploying on more than one occasion — is condescending to the vast majority of people in the world. It separates the geeks from the non-techie world. Sure, I’m a geek, but I am also a father of three teenage boys, a husband and an owner of a business offline that has nothing to do with anything tech.
I went out on launch day, reached into my wallet and bought a Zune player with hard-earned money. Was the experience as Ihnatko wrote: “about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face?” Absolutely not. Quite the opposite, I’ve been using it every day since. That’s one day shy of two weeks now, being the Zune launched on November 14.
The Christmas gift decision: Zune, iPod or neither?
Our youngest teenager wants a portable music player of some kind for Christmas and we’re currently trying to decide whether to buy him a Zune, iPod or neither. The choice seems obvious if you read the many negative reviews out there, but there is a more important choice: what does he like? He will be the customer and I don’t think he’d ever want to be regarded as a consumer-oriented user. Not in Chicago if we lived there where Andy Ihnatko’s piece ran or here in the greater Seattle area a couple thousand miles west.
What did other parents with children who want portable music players this holiday season think when they read Andy’s piece? Hard to imagine them thinking anything but the Zune is a complete piece of trash. He used the word “avoid” which suggests to me the Zune is some sort of electric fence. Couldn’t be further from the truth for those who have Windows computers in their house. For those with Apple computers I tend to agree with Andy. It’s too bad he didn’t draw this important distinction instead of painting it with a large brush.
A Bloomberg article points to the sales over the weekend:
About 33 percent of shoppers bought electronics over the weekend, including flat-panel television sets, Microsoft Corp.’s Zune digital music player and video-game consoles such as Nintendo Co.’s Wii and Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, the NRF said.
Maybe shoppers at this time of year don’t vote with their wallets and purses based on reviews after all?
MP3 are the compatibility that matters
It’s important for any review of portable music players — which many people call portable MP3 players — to note the MP3 compatibility somewhere. Nowhere in Andy’s review does he mention that the Zune is fully compatible with your existing MP3 library. That’s out of the box ready. The format MP3 isn’t even mentioned. Not even once.
In fact, Andy writes:
My chief problem with the Zune is that even in a world without the iPod, it’s just not a good buy. It’s incompatible with WMP …
Ok, let’s consider a world without the iPod for a moment. Can any of the other players work as closely with the Live marketplace and Xbox 360? Most of what Andy referred to negatively with Microsoft Points and the Live network, I look at positively. Amazing how perspective changes everything.
The Zune is not incompatible with Windows Media Player in the way that most consumers will be interested in or care about. Yes, it cannot play the PlayForSure DRM files and that is a major misstep on Microsoft’s part but only for those who bought PlayForSure DRM files. I hope Microsoft fixes that so that those customers who purchased PlayForSure music can someday play these tracks on Zune. If they don’t, they are clearly turning their backs on customers and that is a very unwise business move. As a Zune customer I’m less likely to buy any Zune DRM-laden tracks because of this move.
I think most consumers understand what an MP3 file is considering many, many devices including car stereos support the MP3 format. I think many consumers also understand — or learn quickly — that there can be compatibility issues when buying music and movies online. E.g. they will have problems using that file in a different player. This is going to cripple widespread adoption of DRM-laden strategies from all companies going forward. I realize iTMS has been a huge success for music but it is weak to date in movies/TV/video department. The Zune plays video better than the best iPod player you can buy right now. We have the 5g iPod and it isn’t as good as the Zune at playing video.
Neither Microsoft or Apple has done a very good job at breaking down the DRM walls. I do agree with Andy wholeheartedly about the problems of DRM but I think to lay the blame squarely at the feet of Zune 1.0 is wrong, and I totally disagree that the Zune is “a sucky 1.0 player.” If it didn’t play MP3 files it would be a sucky 1.0 player. I think that’s the most important feature of any portable music feature today.
What portable player will our son want?
Our teenage son cares that he can play music on the device and watch videos. He likes the bigger Zune screen and he is familiar with Windows. He enjoys playing the Xbox 360 and spends a lot of time playing live with his friends. Since we only have one Apple computer in our house and multiple Windows machines he’s more familiar with Windows. He will have an easier time dealing with the Zune than the iPod as far as loading new music onto the device, simply because he’s more familiar with the Windows OS than the Apple OS. In both cases the transfer/sync process is as easy as plugging in a USB cord and a two year old could do that.
We’re not making up our mind on the purchase for him, we’re giving him both devices to use for at least a week to try out and see which one he likes best. The one he likes we’ll most likely buy (don’t want to say yes or no, being that this is a possible Christmas present and he sometimes reads this blog). If it’s all about being cool and like everybody else at school he’ll probably opt for the iPod, but my guess is he’ll lean toward the Zune.
To get away from Microsoft vs. Apple for a moment, he also could look at the device we bought for his brother — the Sirius Stiletto 100 — but I don’t think he’s that interested in satellite radio.
What is it, really, that you look for in a portable device?
I look for the ability to interface with the hardware we already have and are using regularly. In our household we currently have two Xbox 360 that get daily, regular usage. Our single Mac gets used, but I see some problems — and maybe these problems aren’t a big deal — with having multiple iPods using the same Mac. Will we be able to create different profiles for each iPod on the same Mac? (I’m asking experienced Mac users this question, not making any sort of statement, please answer below).
We are thinking about buying a new intel based Mac and that could make another iPod purchase make more sense, but still we’d be sharing the same base music library. We can listen to music from the Zune in the Xbox 360 that we are subscribed to in the Zune marketplace. There is only one player out there that allows us to do that: Zune 1.0. So in our family that makes Zune 1.0 a great player, not a sucky 1.0 one.
Microsoft history, present time and future: the UMPC tie-in
Interesting that Andy mentions the Ultra Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC) in his comment this morning. Despite agreeing with him on the UMPC, I think he’s being way too judgemental on Microsoft with other products they’ve launched and underestimating what they plan to do with the Zune long term. Hey, that’s easy to do. Easy — and popular even — to blame Microsoft for everything evil in the world. As I was reminded yesterday and since I’ve come out speaking in defense of the Zune I’ve been seeing how unpopular it is firsthand. I’m being attacked and accused of things that have nothing to do with reality.
Microsoft’s history has — rightly in many cases — earned them the Death Star label. The fact that they won’t tell a reporter and reviewer what they plan to do in version 1.1, 2.0, etc, doesn’t surprise me. I think the tea leaves can be read fairly clearly and it seems from Andy’s conversations with other Zune customers, that many of them see the same things I’m seeing. Especially those who have and play Xbox 360 and use the Live Marketplace.
I’m very disappointed in Microsoft’s efforts to date concerning the UMPC. Bill promised to have $500 portable computers with the Tablet OS available and every one I’ve seen has been over $1,000 USD. Price will kill adoption of UMPC like it has hurt the Tablet PC, but when Vista comes out and the Tablet OS is included standard, I think you’ll see more convertible Tablet PC / Laptops and the price coming down in that department. The Tablet PC is an excellent device.
Also, if you want to point to 1.0 products from Microsoft that also got almost universally panned, look at the Xbox. Very few critics liked the Xbox and gave it similar doom and gloom predictions. What did Microsoft do? They listened and looked at the market and they improved. However, even back to 1.0 they had the underpinnings of a brilliant plan: the global arcade. I think the Zune — complete with its entertainment integration with the Xbox 360 and Live Marketplace — is poised to do something with micropayments that nobody else yet has been able to do. Nintendo still doesn’t understand the online game and from what I’ve read from customer reviews the Sony PS3 online answer to Live Marketplace is shaky at best.
I wrote much more about where I think this all is going and why in: Here’s what critics are missing about the Zune.
It’s interesting to note also in Andy’s response that he wishes he could have back the six month prediction of doom he laid on the Zune’s doorstep writing:
I’m confident that in six months’ time the Zune will have failed to make a serious dent against the iPod or the family of WMP-based players, and will have become irrelevant and mostly forgotten. But not dead and buried, not beyond revival with a terrific 2.0 firmware update.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a more balanced Zune-related review in the future from Andy.
I think Andy’s biggest mistake in his review, beyond the prediction which we both seem to acknowledge was bogus, is that he didn’t point out more clearly some of the things he wrote in his comment reply here. His comments won’t get nearly the readership of The Chicago Sun-Times audience. That’s too bad. Prospective Zune customers will miss out on these important extra details that were cut out based on editorial constraints (?).
Bottom line: the average person isn’t the ignorant digital music consumer any more. They may not know the terms for the different types of DRM, but many understand what an MP3 is and they know or learn quickly that these are friendly format files they can use to listen to music with the most amount of freedom in today’s digital world. Yes, there are other more free formats like Ogg Vorbis, but that gets into more geek-oriented territory.
Being that Andy’s article was aimed primarily at regular shoppers, not computer geeks, I think he did a large portion of these folks a disservice. Those who own Apple computers like I assume Andy does and don’t own an Xbox 360 should buy an iPod this Christmas, but the answer isn’t so clear for those who have kids with Xbox 360, Live and use Microsoft Windows (which more and more families are purchasing the 360 and Windows already has a huge percentage of the marketplace).
And then there’s Slashdot, gotta love ‘em
Yesterday I also took the brave — and perhaps patently suicidal — move of commenting on Slashdot with a link to this rebuttal. Practically any defense of products/services from Microsoft at Slashdot will be met with suspicion, condemnation and sometimes worse. Predictably, it took all of minutes for a Slashdotter to call me a Microsoft astroturfer and then in a follow up comment a $25 whore for Bill Gates.
I had to look up the definition of astroturfing (emphasis mine, via Wikipedia):
pejoratively describes formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous public reactions to a politician or political grouping, product, service, event, etc. by many diverse and distributed individuals acting of their own volition, when in fact the efforts are centrally coordinated.
So I’m being accused by a Slashdotter of being part of a centrally controlled Microsoft experiment? Obviously the slashdotter doesn’t know anything about me.
I also got flamed for making a parenthetical and admittedly dumb mistake about the iPod in the rebuttal post. I quickly fixed the mistake and credited the first person at Slashdot to mention it. I make mistakes, and do my best to fix them quickly when notified. I wish the rest of the internet worked that way, but that’s a story for another day.
Microsoft disclaimers
Just so it’s clear here and to clearly refute the bizarre, unfounded astroturfing accusation: I don’t know anybody who works on the Zune team. Despite the fact this is one of the few tech-oriented publications to positively review the Zune from an actual customer perspective, we’ve heard nothing from them. Not a single email, comment and I don’t even recall seeing a trackback from the Zune team blog (I might stand corrected on that one though). Honestly, I’m a bit surprised they haven’t reached out in any way to a rather obvious customer fan, but they haven’t as of this writing anyway.
We weren’t offered a review loaner copy of Zune and if I had and it came attached with some deal saying I couldn’t talk about it being a review copy like John Dvorak received I would have passed and sent it back. If they want to send us Zune version 2.0 to give it away to a reader after being reviewed, I’d agree to doing that but it’s obviously too late for version 1.0.
I don’t work at Microsoft, never have, nor do I have a family member or close friend who works there. I have known and know a few people who work there, and think highly of them, but I don’t know anybody personally on the Zune team.
I’ve done beta testing for Microsoft products in exchange for software which they send a 1099 for if it exceeds $600 USD per year, but never the Zune (player or marketplace). They call most the members in our family every 60-90 days to see if we qualify for a beta test. Sometimes we are invited, and sometimes they pass, but we’ll hear from them again in another 60-90 days.
I was also invited to the Microsoft Redmond campus to participate in Search Champs v4.0 which is about 45 minutes north of where our home and business are located. I gave them my honest, critical feedback about products they were working on or had already released publically under NDA. I try my best to give the same quality of feedback to any product, service or website I review. If I lived near Apple HQ and was offered the same opportunity to do periodic onsite beta testing in exchange for software or $$$ as payment (and they 1099 you), I’d sign up for it in a nanosecond.
That’s it for the conspiracy camp. I’m not in Bill’s back pocket on anything. Though I haven’t taken count, I probably dislike more Microsoft products than like. I give an honest opinion usually from a customer’s perspective on everything. If I have a conflict of interest, I disclose it.
Why do I care about Zune so much?
It might seem that I’m defending a colossal underdog with some sort of agenda or purpose, hence the astroturfing flak received from the Slashdotter, but I’m more about defending choice. If the only choice is the iPod, we as customers — not consumer-oriented users — lose. I would like to see Yahoo and Microsoft get their act together on search and better compete against Google. I appreciate and fully support the competition between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo on the console videogaming front. I don’t want there to be just Coke without Pepsi.
I was fully prepared and willing to take the Zune back to the store if it sucked like many tech writers/reviewers were saying. I returned the Windows Media Center PC we bought back in December 2004.
The Zune reviewers turned out to be wrong and seemed to be out of touch with what really mattered to me. Consider pondering today and beyond if you write, review and/or speak with others about tech that non-techies and even some techies don’t care one iota about platform wars. When it comes to portable music/video players, most folks just want to listen to music and watch videos with the least possible hassle and most convenience. Listen in their home, car, boat, RV, where it enriches their lives.
I love to read real customer reviews. Don’t you?
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Don’t have time to read the whole thing, but the whole iPod with Mac thing is slightly off. Mainly because between my girlfriend and I, we both have iPods, synch’d to the same computer (Windows 2000). So thereby, any sort of Mac tie is out.
There are three things at play:
1) file format
2) design
3) interface (store)
While Apple and Microsoft has gone away from open file formats, Apple has made significant advances with H264 and such to play video. I would give Apple a point even with their DRM by at least changing their specs to fit portable devices. Microsoft is not only using H264, but also WMA (ick).
From the design perspective, it’s anyone’s preference. Track record wise, Apple has it made. Zune has some cool features, but they’re not killer apps and the things they have, they’re not making huge leaps with (referring to WiFi sharing).
From the store? Well, that’s really up to pref. I’d love to have Apple actually come up with a way for us to buy international music, but I suppose that’s out of the question for now (small market share). I don’t know about Microsoft’s site, so I can’t comment there.
As a first generation player, Zune isn’t terrible. But there’s a lot of improvement areas that if they don’t jump on, they’ll go the way of Creative pretty quickly. It’s not that they’re terrible devices, but to take on a giant, you need a pretty darn good slingshot.
Last of all: While searching for the tech specs of Zune, I typed: http://www.microsoft.com/zune
That directs me to: http://www.zune.net where in Linux and Firefox, it just displays a plain page with one image, all text, and no background. It doesn’t display this in Windows XP with IE6. If that’s what Microsoft has to show for a Zune forward, they’ll be going down in flames with this product if they can’t even support multiple OS/browser configs on that site.
Comment by darkmoon — November 27, 2006 @ 10:31 am PST
You can download the Zune software from zune.net, darkmoon. Give it a try — frustrating as it might be to switch browsers to do so (that really is annoying, BTW, agree with you there) — and compare to WMP and iTunes on Windows yourself. Make up your own mind. Share your findings
Since we only have one iPod I do have questions about how it works with multiple iPods on the same computer, darkmoon. And I was trying to write the piece above to reflect that I still have questions about using multiple ipods on a single computer. Our youngest teen doesn’t have his own computer so he would need to share the iPod (if we go that route) with the Mac. I suppose we could throw iTunes for Windows on one of our Windows machines and he could use that, too .. so there are options.
I’m curious what happens if you try to sync to different music libraries on the same computer with iTunes — is that even possible? Or are you having to share the same library of music and use different playlists?
EXAMPLE. you get your girlfriend’s playlist when you sync up your iPod and vice versa. Or is it possible to have profiles and not receive her playlists on your machine? Private playlists, are those possible? This would be possible with two different machines.
A personal sidenote: I don’t care for the Windows version of iTunes compared to the Mac version. I know they are intended to be very similar — and are from what I’ve seen — but asthetically iTunes on the Mac just feels better. Nothing scientific about that, just a personal feeling from working with both apps and comparing. I uninstalled iTunes on Windows and greatly prefer WMP, Winamp and Zune over iTunes on Windows.
There might be tons of Windows customers with iPods like you, so others might feel differently about iPods/iTunes being a better feeling experience on the Mac than on Windows. Not trying to be an Apple snob of course, but if I owned only a Mac there would be no Microsoft option even in consideration. Certainly not the Zune.
Comment by TDavid — November 27, 2006 @ 10:57 am PST
There’s no profiles I don’t think. It does recognize different iPods with the same library. You can’t sync your iPod with different computers or music libraries (1 computer sync). However, once you set up the playlists (and they can be smart playlists where on genre/artist/albums etc) whoever drags that playlist over to sync with their ipod can do it. So you can change playlists pretty quickly and sync up.
Not sure if that answers your question since it made sense to me, but that’s usually the problem (only makes sense to me). lol.
So far, the price was the issue for me (4G-$300+) to just drop as an impulse buy but once I purchased it, I can swear by it. We ripped all of our tunes onto our iTunes library, back it up all the time, and can change our tunes on the fly. And you save like $3-7 per cd when you buy via iTunes.
Don’t have a Mac to compare with currently so I can’t say much about Mac vs. Windows iTunes, but I’d believe it. Of course, from the interface development side of things, I’ve heard a lot of how XCode is a lot easier to write in than .NET. Not sure if that has to do with the slower interfacing in Windows, but I wouldn’t doubt it’s not very optimized.
Comment by darkmoon — November 27, 2006 @ 11:14 am PST
Thanks for the additional details, darkmoon. Yes, that helps to clarify things better for me. I wish there was an option for multiple syncs. I don’t think my son will want to have our entire library on his device, but maybe he will. Also it doesn’t provide much in the way of privacy if we don’t want to share our playlist with him. Not that there is anything we don’t want to share, from a parent perspective it would be good to separate or at least block display of our playlists from showing on his. Then again, maybe it will make for comedy for his friends to see that his mom likes the Beach Boys.
And cool, just caught this link in my RSS feed of the rolling Amazon portable device bestseller list. The Zune (black) that we bought is #17. The iPod has the top 5 spots with the 5g iPod black we own at #4.
Comment by TDavid — November 27, 2006 @ 11:21 am PST
Sorry.. I wasn’t clear (I knew this was going to happen since I ramble). The whole library isn’t on the mobile device. Just what you sync. So basically this is the setup that we have here:
20G iPod
4G mini
25G of music. Both my girlfriend and I have different playlists that we sync to our devices and you look at the computer as the “master list”. Like for instance, I sync podcasts, but she doesn’t since she doesn’t care for them. There is no way to hide playlists or hide parts of the master list I don’t think, but I’m not definite. I know there is a ratings thing for kids (like G,PG,PG-13, or something like that in the options). I’m not sure if this is on the videos or music since I have it wide open.
Since both my girlfriend and I don’t read each other’s playlists, I don’t know what she has on hers unless I go snooping. Well, technically speaking anyways (I set up her iPod usually).
Would I buy another iPod over any other music device? Absolutely. If I had satellite radio, I might actually look to another device, but I don’t listen to the radio at all so that’s the only thing that would stop me. I’d probably say that from a portable device stance, I actually prefer my PSP over any other device for portable use. But that’s just me for video and such.
Comment by darkmoon — November 27, 2006 @ 11:32 am PST
Been through 4 iPods so far (all Windows iTunes). The FIRST thing I do is go into the settings and TURN OFF auto syncing since I have about 100 gigs of music and these have been 512MB shuffle to 20gig iPods. That way no matter which iPod is attached to the one computer or which user is logged in the iPod shows up but the user can create their own playlist…
We have one gigantic music library so everyone has access to all the music.
Comment by FranciscoIV — November 27, 2006 @ 12:19 pm PST
100 gigs! Yowsa, how many songs do you have, FranciscoIV? We haven’t got all our CDs ripped to MP3, but last time I looked the number of songs was under 2,000. I suspect our entire music collection, every CD, every tape if digitized, every purchased track would be less than 10,000 songs.
Comment by TDavid — November 27, 2006 @ 12:28 pm PST
Heh. yeah. 100G is an awful lot. 100G at 5M a pop if I did this right is about 20,000 songs. Assuming 12 songs per CD, it’s about 1660+ CDs. Over the time period collected at $13 a pop, is $21,580. heheh.
There’s no way I have even close to that.
Comment by darkmoon — November 27, 2006 @ 12:51 pm PST
That’s why I like the option like Zune, Napster, Y!Music where I can essentially rent and fully sample the music. We can then have access legally to a massive, constantly updated database of music for roughly $175 a year. We can pick and choose from the database the stuff we really would like to buy on CD and unshackle from the DRM, no matter what player we own or buy in the future. I really wish Apple would roll over on that and offer that at iTunes, but Steve Jobs seems very against the concept for whatever reason
Although I haven’t priced it out, I’m pretty certain we’ve spent over $20,000 USD on DVDs with our collection nearing 500 DVDs, some of which — like the Star Trek Next Generation series — were $100+ for each season (and there were seven seasons). We could have bought three Zune players for the price of the entire STNG on DVD. Thanks Paramount
Comment by TDavid — November 27, 2006 @ 2:03 pm PST
Just hope that DVD players don’t phase out like VHS. lol. You’ll have to re-buy everything on HDDVD or Bluray.
I don’t have quite the collection you do, but most of mine are Asian flicks, my Jet Li collection, Battlestar Galactica (new one), and some other collections I’ve been slowly amassing over the years. I can’t stand not having a deal so I wait for my stuff that I’m trying to get to come down a bit in price.
Unfortunately my Bond collection will be a few short again with this new movie out. hehe.
I agree that the rental thing is pretty nifty, especially since you don’t listen to old stuff always (especially with the new pop music). But somehow, it really doesn’t bother me. Probably because I can burn it to CD if I need it.
Comment by darkmoon — November 27, 2006 @ 2:12 pm PST
Howdy, Again!
Long day with little time, but I thought I’d dash in to counter a few things:
1) I don’t think you summarized my response accurately. I do disagree with most of your points, while respecting your opinion; I didn’t mention the positives of the player because (as I said in my response) they were few, and weak, and did nothing to mitigate its vast negatives…and thus weren’t worth covering, in context;.
2) It’s possible that I simply don’t understand your (rather strong) objection to my mentioning the difference between geeks and general consumers. It’s not condescending; it’s a fact of life.
You and I (I gather) are geeks. When things don’t work correctly, we know how to fix them, or we know where to look to get the answers; we’re also able to see the larger picture. Realize that the average consumer doesn’t care _why_ something doesn’t work properly, or isn’t compatible with anything else, or offers no new features over Product B. This isn’t a hobby: they want a toaster where you put the bread in and slide a thingy down and then toast pops up a minute later. THAT’s their relationship with technology.
And that’s absolutely as it should be: tech should adapt to suit the people using them, and become as transparent as possible. If you bought a microwave and there was a huge green sticker over the door reading STOP! DO NOT INSTALL this device until you visit (url) and download revised drivers!
That’s what greeted me the other day, as I unpacked an unnamed device. You and I shrug and click over into Firefox. The average person wonders just exactly what this comapny is playing at.
As a columnist, it’s also my job to educate and illuminate and broaden people’s knowledge, but the fact remains: the average consumer isn’t going to sweat through a device’s growig pains for weeks. They’re going to put it back in the box on Day Two and take it back to the store.
Christmas Day is always very illustrative for me. I visit about a dozen houses of friends and family, and I always keep a backfull of cables and hard drives and software in the car as I make my rounds. Because at 8 AM that morning, dozens of digital cameras and music players and computers and the like were delightfully unwrapped, and by the time I’ve arrived, it’s likely that nobody’s managed to get the things working.
Again, always appreciate that there are folks out there who expect the Toaster Effect from consumer electronics. They’ve a right to expect that as an ideal, which is why products that get close to it are so valuable.
(And for the record, I’ve never had to set up someone’s iPod. Anecdotal, I know, but there it is.)
3) I also don’t know why you keep confusing the simple phrase “It’s not compatible with Windows Media Player” with other things. I never said or suggested that you couldn’t play WMA or MP3 content on it, yet your response seems to suggest that I did.
Lack of WMP compatibility is one of the true tragedies of Zune; MS has thrown away one of the biggest advantages of every iPod alternative. Buy whatever player you want. Shop at any store you want. Don’t worry, WMP will make it all work together. The iPod isn’t compatible with WMP either, but at least there’s a solid argument to be made that iTunes is a better app for managing a music library and a portable music player than WMP.
Not true of the Zune app; it’s a true downgrade.
4) I also don’t regard my deathwatch as bogus. I just wish I’d elaborated a bit. I don’t think that the Zune will be Betamax dead; just VHS dead. You can still buy yourself a VHS deck if you look, but it’s going to be tucked away at the back of the display, and the companies that haven’t dropped them from the price list aren’t really working very hard to promote them.
IMHO — and every review is just that, a personal opinion — 1.0 is a dog. It offers no advantages over any other Windows Media Player-based device, and offers many disadvantages. So: 1.0 isn’t worth the time or trouble. Should MS come out with a 2.0, I’ll be happy to write a second review and I certainly do hope that MS finally produces a worthwhile product. But I won’t need to take back anything I said about 1.0; it’s all 100% accurate.
Comment by Andy Ihnatko — November 27, 2006 @ 4:31 pm PST
Hi Andy - welcome back
I provided all relevant links and encourage readers to visit and draw their own conclusions of the very public discussion including your unedited comments. I’m glad to see you use the comments to correct anything you feel I didn’t make clear and wish I had had the opportunity to do so on your Chicago Times-Sun piece. I’ll update the sentence above about “and you seemed to agree more than disagree” to reflect what you wrote in #10 comment above.
Bottom line, I’ll still be here, health willing of course, in May 2007 and we’ll see where the Zune is actually at and will be happy to reassess the Zune situation. It won’t be anywhere close to VHS dead or any other bogus prediction you are making about it — and yes bogus is the right word. You are not looking deeply into the long term Zune strategy and current possibilities (Xbox, xbox, xbox). It seems to me like you got hung up on the install process problems and couldn’t get past that. I understand that, we’ve all been there and it sucks, but you painted with way too broad a brush.
Of course in our case on two different machines we didn’t experience any installation problems and we are sharing a library on a FAT32 drive with both a Mac and Windows machine. So now there are three installations and only one of them went badly.
I’m looking at the Zune 1g the Xbox 1g. People bagged on the Xbox 1g too and look at Xbox 360 now. Time will tell if Microsoft executes in a similar manner with the Zune. We’ll see.
Comment by TDavid — November 27, 2006 @ 5:50 pm PST
I don’t understand why you keep making this a Mac/PC dilemma when it comes to your household - I haven’t read too much in the sea of negativity about the software that drives song management, but even on a PC iTunes is a pretty robust, well-organized piece of software. I’m brand loyal to iPod mostly because of all the database info i have tied up in iTunes.
Comment by peter — November 27, 2006 @ 6:33 pm PST
I didn’t realize I was making a Mac/PC dilemma of any kind, Peter, except in the case of only having one Mac in our household and wanting to limit the playlists appearing on the second iPod. We have multiple Windows PCs so it would seem we could do that on an additional PC. I’m more inquisitive about using multiple iPods with a single sync machine than anything else (since I personally prefer the Mac version of iTunes to Windows), I think. Can you elaborate a little more on what you are referring to specifically?
The answer might be to buy an Intel-based Mac to go along with a new iPod. I’m not sure which way our son wants to go (iPod, Zune or neither).
Comment by TDavid — November 27, 2006 @ 7:35 pm PST
DVD Jon defends the Zune.
He didn’t care for the substance of your article either, Andy.
Comment by TDavid — November 28, 2006 @ 4:54 pm PST
[…] 10. Connectivity. At the very least, expect to be able to connect to anything an iPod can connect to now. The iPod does not have wireless features like the Zune, but it seems like the Zune was crippled for DRM purposes. Cell phones are inherently wireless, so it will be interesting to see what Apple does here. […]
Pingback by 10 Reasons You Will Want the Apple iPhone - Unsought Input — November 30, 2006 @ 1:44 am PST
A Few More in-depth Reviews
Some folks have pointed out great reviews I didn’t like to. What’s my excuse for missing them? Well,
Trackback by Zune Insider — December 8, 2006 @ 3:34 pm PST
You must be joking. Zune is an indefensible piece of bowel pickle and is in no way deserving of anything besides crushing and disposal.
Comment by Barfy — December 29, 2006 @ 12:12 am PST
I like the look of the Zune, but until I actually physically hold one I wont know if I’ll prefer it to my iPod.
Comment by Dave — January 10, 2008 @ 3:23 pm PST