Microsoft Confirms New Music Player 415
Udo Schmitz writes "It's official now. Reuters confirms the rumors that Microsoft wants to take on Apple's iPod and iTunes. From the article: 'Microsoft Corp. said on Friday it plans to release a new music and entertainment player and accompanying software under the "Zune" brand this year, in a belated attempt to challenge the dominance of Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod player ... Microsoft sources said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, is working with J. Allard, vice president of its Xbox team, on the digital media player/software project.'"
Tacospeak (Score:5, Funny)
There is wireless (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Tacospeak (Score:4, Insightful)
That's some pretty nifty stuff!
Re:Tacospeak (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to see Microsoft get there first and mess it up, but if it gets the iPod team moving on this, competition is good...
Re:Tacospeak (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, you should RTFA.
Music industry sources told Reuters earlier this month that Microsoft disclosed plans to be in the market before Christmas with a media player that will allow users to download videos and music wirelessly.
That is the only place discussion of Wirelss capabilities is mentioned: it apparently is not mentioned in the release, instead Reuters says, "well last month, someone told us that Microsoft told them it had wireless..."
Hardly confirmed: it is reported as a rumor.
Microsoft Re-Designs the Ipod Packaging (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k [youtube.com]
Re:Tacospeak (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In related news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In related news (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure Steve Jobs already has a plan to deal with this. It wouldn't surprise me if he tempted Microsoft into creating an iPod competitor and has some sort of elaborate trap waiting for them. The iPod helped make Apple relevant again, competing with it just gives it even more legitimacy. I'm sure Steve Jobs is pleased and we'll see some more chair throwing soon enough in Redmond when Apple unveils their master plan.
Re:In related news (Score:3, Funny)
Person 1: Hi, I'm a Zune.
Person 2: And I'm an iPod...
Re:In related news (Score:5, Funny)
Whoooo! (Score:2)
Might be a little longer than you think (Score:2, Informative)
My 1st gen iPod is still going strong, I'm not sure how many years later...
Also, the rumor was one of the things it includes is Wi-Fi so I'd take a careful look at form factor and battery life before you become convinced this is the arrival of the iPod killer that has been foretold.
Riiiight (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Apple doesn't have a particulary good design staff.
2. They're cheap with their products.
3. Apple knows when to break the "rules" of design for good effect.
Do you think Apple has sold tens of millions of iPods because of, or in spite of, design. That is an obvious design area that someone obviously conciously made a choice on, what makes you think that feature was not meant as a positive feature for users like the others?
I'll summarize it for you - if batte
Re:Whoooo! (Score:2)
Recently I was hospitalised for four months. Three weeks into my stay, my ipod died. This had happened before and I quickly got used to just reading but in a hospital you're desperate for stuff to do. I got it back 6 weeks later from the warranty place. By that time, I'd just bought a damn laptop.
Re:Whoooo! (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice name! (Score:5, Funny)
It just me or does Zune sound like some OSS dev tool?
Re:Nice name! (Score:5, Funny)
Close, Amiga actually. (Score:5, Informative)
From these [aros.org] guys.
And from their developement tool page:
I wonder how aros.org feels about this?
Re:Close, Amiga actually. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think I used it a bit in a language called Amiga E, which I really enjoyed as well.
Hm, haven't thought to ever look up if it was ported to Linux..
Re:Close, Amiga actually. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Close, Amiga actually. (Score:3, Insightful)
Two? My OS came on one diskette. It also came with an AmigaBASIC disk. However, the entire OS is not on disk. There's also 512kB (for the A500) of ROM without which the system will not function.
Re:Nice name! (Score:2)
Iron Mike's new player? (Score:5, Funny)
If this follows the suit of previous MS hardware it should be of good quality and support, but how smart is it to compete against those manufacturers supporting your Plays For Zure standard?
If someone comes up with wireless (WiFi or bluetooth) syncing as well as good sound quality (also meaning it'll support a [DRM-free] lossless codec), I'll be sold, but until then I'll hang onto my 3-year-old iRiver unless it breaks.
Re:Iron Mike's new player? (Score:2)
Music industry sources told Reuters earlier this month that Microsoft disclosed plans to be in the market before Christmas with a media player that will allow users to download videos and music wirelessly.
Re:Iron Mike's new player? (Score:2)
If the zound quality is good enough for critical listening and really iz coming to a ztore near me zune, I juzt may get one!
Re:Iron Mike's new player? (Score:2)
Re:Iron Mike's new player? (Score:2)
Re:Iron Mike's new player? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait...
"In April 2002, Microsoft's Allchin announced that Longhorn (later renamed Vista) would ship in the second half of 2004."
Re:Iron Mike's new player? (Score:2)
Re:Iron Mike's new player? (Score:2)
Naming Convention (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple:
iTunes
Microsoft:
My Zunes
In other words, Microsoft is even ripping off the name, but making it crappier.
Re:Naming Convention (Score:2)
Re:Naming Convention (Score:5, Insightful)
Creative: Zen
Microsoft: Zune
Apple must be somewhat pleased, as I imagine this will take Creative's army of lawyer's focus off them.
Won't budge iTunes market share one iota (Score:2, Flamebait)
Market Speak (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Market Speak (Score:5, Insightful)
KFG
Re:Market Speak (Score:2)
If you succeed at anything in technology, and make a good living at it, Microsoft will consider it essential to enter and attempt to dominate that market.
With a pedigree like this... (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean they'll spend $6 billion on it and end up capturing 23% of the market? Because this team is really, really good at that.
Description (Score:5, Funny)
With support for up to 15,000 songs and up to 150 hours of video on a 2.5-inch QVGA color display, iPod^H^H^H^H Zune gives you the ultimate music experience -- sight and sound -- in a lighter, thinner design. Available in classic white^H^H^H^H^H Blue and dramatic black^H^H^H^H^H Blue."
Re:Description (Score:2)
Re:Description (Score:2)
The sig is from the song "Tom Sawyer" from Rush.
Woohoo! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:2)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:2)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Funny)
"Microsoft. Promising delivery of yesterday's solutions tomorrow, but actually delivering them later the following week".
Remember the video (Score:3, Funny)
Where would Microsoft be today (Score:5, Insightful)
Odd (Score:2)
That sounds somehow familiar to me...
Re:Where would Microsoft be today (Score:2)
I don't know about you... (Score:5, Funny)
Another Loss Leader (Score:3, Insightful)
They knock-off the iTunes and buy a bunch of media ads for the holiday sell-a-thon. By now the've paid for the retail slots too.
I think they've missed the boat though.
What does it say about market confidence (Score:5, Interesting)
And it is not a media device, it is a lifestyle device...sheeesh.
Re:What does it say about market confidence (Score:2)
No thanks (Score:2)
I wonder (Score:2)
Re:I wonder (Score:2)
Another "me too" product from Microsoft. (Score:5, Insightful)
An organization that doesn't have the creativity to create something often doesn't have even the creativity necessary to copying it successfully.
--
Are you willing to pay [costofwar.com] a lot to kill Arabs?
Re:Another "me too" product from Microsoft. (Score:2)
Though the biggest foobar in this field was probably HP. About the year 2000 shortly after the Compaq merger, Compaq had an MP3 player but HP killed it, and instead tried to rebrand and sell ipods. They could have got in early but were too unimaginative to figure out what to do with it.
Re:Another "me too" product from Microsoft. (Score:2)
Re:Another "me too" product from Microsoft. (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh wait, they do already.
"Unfortunately, Microsoft's Windows Media Player Plug-in for Macintosh does not support Windows DRM. If DRM support becomes available for Macintosh, MTV will develop a version of MTV Overdrive that works on a Mac."
If a company needs exclusive deals like that, their format stinks. It is not their format even, they acquired dozens of codec companies and packaged them into some sort of naziware which never worked on other OS'es except their windows. If you don't use their OS, you get punished.
You know what makes me mad? Those videos are more likely cut, edited and processed on Mac. I wouldn't be surprised if they used Telestream pro products to produce that windows media on OS X even.
Now you would tell me Apple does not make iTunes for Linux. Well, Real just SPOKE about enabling DRM on Linux/FreeBSD and you see what happened and the feedback they got.
I am glad Apple Quicktime Division and Real Networks still alive competing with that mafia style company...
Not the first Microsoft MP3 player ! (Score:5, Informative)
See the CNET review : http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11396_7-6550266-1.ht
Ah, and has DRM (yeah !)
Daas
the UI will doom "Zunes" (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft Confirms "New Music Player" (Score:3, Funny)
desperate, pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
At this stage, for Microsoft to try and get into this market comes across as desperate and pathetic. Microsoft can't use Windows as leverage in this proposition -- like they could when they killed the well-rooted Wordperfect, Lotus123, and later Netscape -- so the only way Microsoft can make a dent here is for them to do something extremely innovative. That's simply not Microsoft's M.O.
This time next year: MS "Zune" is a distant memory, and iPod/iTunes owns 85% of the online movie rental/download business, and Apple has begun to make serious inroads in the "home media center" market.
boxlight
Re:desperate, pathetic (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you think they preannounced this piece of shit two weeks before WWDC and five months before it'll ship?
Microsoft's business as usual: Preannounce, overpromise, underdeliver. Rinse, later, repeat. Bankroll everything with Windows and Office revenue, and damn the torpedos, we'll buy ourselves as much mark
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:desperate, pathetic (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. Apple had to negotiate with the record companies (RIAA) in order to get an online store for music in the first place (read the articles on how the record companies what to restructure iTunes). Itunes is their store and they can pretty much do what they want with their store. Your not prevented from purchasing MP3's from Yahoo and downloading them to your iPod. Your not prevented from ripping your CDs and playing them on your iPod.
Are
Re:desperate, pathetic (Score:3, Insightful)
You've never seen an American movie or driven an American car, have you?
If you had, you wouldn't have such a misplaced faith in innovation. Things Microsoft can do to disturb Apple's market position include non-innovative yet time-tested measures:
Beat Apple on price
Appeal to the lowest common denominator
Subvert the supply chain (through deals with the music mafia)
Integrate Zune software in Vista (heard
Too little, too late (Score:2)
This is one way for Microsoft to 'compete' in the marketplace; they
I thought it was a fake news story... (Score:2)
Name? (Score:5, Funny)
Just lacks an 'i' and lacks a 'Pod'.
With marketing and Xbox gloss
They'll gain a share but take the loss.
With 40 billion stock bought back
Ballmer might just dodge the sack.
But Jobs would say the chance is slim,
and silhouettes will come for him.
MS Confirms New Music Player (Score:5, Insightful)
A lesson in Hebrew (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A lesson in Hebrew (Score:4, Funny)
http://herenot.livejournal.com/29371.html [livejournal.com]
this is true, and the potential for fun is endless. think of going into an israeli computer store and askeing the worker there (Specificly a female worker) "how much does a fuck cost here?"
Awesome... (Score:3, Funny)
Wishing them their usual success (Score:3)
Microsoft's Success Obsession (Score:5, Insightful)
They are a software company, Google is a search engine/web advertising company. What does Microsoft do? They get into the search engine/web advertising business and directly target Google. They jumped into the game console business because Sony was success at it, and now they are taking on the iPod. I see a disturbing trend here. Microsoft is spreading itself thin here "like too little butter spread over too much bread" quoting Bilbo from LOTR. They gotten into to many different markets and now they are getting into the MP3 player/online music store business. Not to mention they are going up against a seemingly unstoppable powerhouse; iPod+iTunes.
The company is faultering, they are under severe preassure from the EU over anti-trust violations, Windows Vista will now be 2 years late and will not have all of the features they promised, they are loosing millions on the XBox 360 project, and they are swiftly loosing users of their staple software ei; MS Office and Internet Explorer to the likes of Open Office, Firefox and Opera.
Microsoft needs to go back to what they once were, a software company and stop trying to be a do it all business. No one corporation can be in all markets at once, Microsoft is trying, but it will ultimately be their undoing.
They are not a software company (Score:3, Insightful)
No they aren't. They are a marketing company that just happens to produce software.
Re:Microsoft's Success Obsession (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, Microsoft is shrewd at annhilating competition sometimes. But the beauty of capitalism is that even though every transaction is ultimately motivated by self-interest, each transaction benefits both sides - the buyer and the seller - not just the seller. And with the kind of dirty attitude Microsoft displays, it appears that the company views the consumer as a means to an end, not an end in itself. They are not concerned with the interests of the consumer. If they were, they wouldn't be so hell-bent on destroying Google. Rather, they would observe that Google is good at what it does, and so a) they should either stay out of the enterprise search business altogether or 2) try to keep healthy competition with Google alive so as to serve the costumers along with themselves. And I'm not talking the kind of lop-sided competition Microsoft forced Apple into during the 90's.
Unfortunately, this kind of equanimous attitude doesn't really play a role among corporate strategists, and hasn't for quite some time. Instead, the prevailing attitude seems to be: overwhelm your opponents so they die; enter new markets and conquer them; don't do *one* thing really well - do many things moderately well, or even poorly. Eventually this kind of attitude is not meaningfully different from a conspiracy against the consumer. It's sad that this is the way it's going, not just with Microsoft but with other corporate giants. The whole point of the antitrust ruling and antitrust legislation was to stop this kind of behavior.
And I think that this behavior has its origin in a kind of slave morality that entrepeneurs have. The market is hard to survive in. Businesses start off small. They have fight their way tooth and nail to the top. But once they get there, they should shift their attitude to one commensurate with their new situation. After all, they are no longer in an environment where the market is a threatening force. They are no longer burdened by the possibility of extinction. However, you see it over and over again: people, having achieved power, fail to shift their attitude. In some sense, they still view themselves as the little guy, threatened by competition. They need to keep expanding into new markets, because if they don't they will be crushed. There is some very basic confusion going on, and it's built in to the way corporations are structured - executives are hired and fired based on their ability to devise new ways to crush competition. If they fail to return staggering growth, they are gone.
Unfettered growth for a select few corporations doesn't help anyone. It stifles innovation, obstructs the free market, and skews the overall composition of our society against the individual.
My Prediction! (Score:3)
Just my 2 cents.....
Does anyone feel like watching MS and the music business is like watching a bad fantasy drama? MS's henchman/proxies (WMPlayer devices) have failed to defeat the hero, iPod, and the balding, fat, but still competent with a rapier evil king gets up out of his throne huffing and puffing, yelling, "Not this time! I'll deal with you myself!"
Of course, we know how this swordfight ends in the movies. We'll see how it plays in the MP3 market. With any luck, we'll see the EU bust open Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, similar to what it did with FairPlay.
Add-on extension (Score:3, Funny)
"It looks like you are trying to play an iPod file. Would you like me to delete it?"
I want it to not suck (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPod has been at the top of the heap for a long time now, for good reason. They have created a seamless hardware/software experience that makes digital music easy enough for non gearheads to understand and enjoy. I have a 10Gb iPod and a shuffle, and use both all the time. They're excellent products, and they've changed the way I listen to music. In fact, the RIAA has even made more money off of me than they would have before, because I buy more music now.
Apple has done a lot right with the iPod/iTunes combo, but it's not a perfect combination just yet. Managing libraries across different computers and different users isn't as easy as it should be, for example. But in a larger sense, I get a bit nervous any time a single company dominates a market. Microsoft's operating system dominance has helped in many ways, but has also arguably hindered to an even larger degree. After it gobbled up Macromedia, Adobe is pretty much the only commercial game in town for graphic design software, Quark being the lone holdout of note, and they're essentially a one-product company. I don't like shelling out big bucks for Adobe product updates as I wonder if their prices would be cheaper and the software would be better if they had some serious competition.
The same is true for Apple. They've done an excellent job so far, and I want them to keep improving the iPod/iTunes combination. They *need* competition to keep them hungry, and when they're hungry, it's better for consumers like me.
I don't think Microsoft will be able to unseat Apple from the digital music throne, but if Microsoft blows this one it won't necessarily be beneficial for the digital music market in the long term.
Incompatible with PlaysForSure (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this strike anyone else as completely insane? With Napster, Yahoo, Creative, SanDisk, etc. already losing money competing with iTunes/iPod, does Microsoft really believe it can come into the market at this late with yet a third proprietary format and gain any traction at all? Is this move another sign of their arrogant belief they can do in every other market what the did in the PC space? Or, is it just desperation?
Does anyone here on Slashdot believe they can succeed with this strategy?
Microsoft makes the whole widget (Score:3, Interesting)
Its Wikipedia article (Score:5, Interesting)
Predictions: (Score:3, Insightful)
Enter the market with a solid piece of hardware that plays mp3s and doesn't require any drivers or DRM to hook up to a computer (with any OS), and then precede to dominate the market.
Enter the market with a sub-par piece of hardware that is barely as good as an ipod, and has their own wmv DRM on it, and then precede to flop in yet another market.
I'll take bets for either scenario.
Re:Zune? (Score:3, Informative)
Well seeing how this is likely a cheesy attempt to copy off of the iPod,
and how Vista is an awful, cheesy attempt to copy of OS X,
that's pretty well par for the course.
Re:Zune? (Score:2)
Re:Zune? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Zune? (Score:5, Funny)
To come up with a really horrbile name, you need to give a million dollars to a marketing firm.
Re:Zune?... How about the Mici? (Score:2)
Re:Zune? (Score:5, Funny)
or uPod
or PenisEnvy
Re:Zune? (Score:3, Funny)
or uPod
or PenisEnvy
Pod.Net
Re:DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM? (Score:2)
I don't believe it supports the OGG format though which is a sticking point for some people.
Re:some features i wish it had (Score:2)
Re:some features i wish it had (Score:3, Interesting)
It just seems idiotic that you can't just drag and drop MP3s into it like a hard drive and browse the directory list to play whatever songs you want on it, including videos if you have a video iPod. You shouldn't NEED any additional software at all beyond a USB capable computer that can read and write to the iPod filesystem like a hard drive.
This is the two-edged sword of the system the iPod uses. By using its own database and forgoing a file/directory method, it allowed you to browse music based on art
Or (Score:2)
You still sure you want everyone that meets to dance and sing?