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Details of Next Gen Zune Surface
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Apr 11, 2007 09:22 AM
from the better-luck-next-time dept.
from the better-luck-next-time dept.
KMG writes "Zune Scene has got a scoop about the next generation Microsoft Zune. There will be two new models; a flash memory based and a hard drive based. Zune with HDD will be thinner and have larger storage capacity while the flash based will feature Wi-fi, video playback. So will we see another try from Microsoft to beat Apple's iPod or it will be another vain attempt from the Redmond guys."
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Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
"Zune Scene"? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"Zune Scene"? (Score:4, Insightful)
I especially like how the article claims the Zune scene editor just happened to conveniently bump into a MS Zune employee on a business trip and then proceeded to pump him for information...
Yeah, right. And then monkeys flew out of his butt.
Parent
I always wondered why brown... (Score:4, Funny)
It would explain the color choice, though.
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Re:"Zune Scene"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, really lame. If I want official info, I'd like it without the horrid writing.
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Re:"Zune Scene"? (Score:5, Funny)
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More the Merrier (Score:5, Insightful)
Bring it on I say. MS has shown that they can learn from their mistakes. The difference between the Xbox and 360 being a prime example. MS has the money to burn to keep making mistakes and learning from them. If that means they *eventually* make an iPod killer, so be it. The market needs more competing products, not less.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
a) Buy out the competition
b) Copy the competition
c) Throw more money at the mistake and wait until next-gen to re-try A and B
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Yes there was.
You are forgetting the DreamCast and SegaNet. (Phantasy Star Online anyone ?)
But I don't mean it in a copy sort of way.
SEGA shared its know-how with MS to help them build Xbox Live.
Re:More the Merrier (Score:4, Interesting)
There will never be an iPod killer. What you'll see is the iPod's market share steadily eaten away by a large number of other players. The iPod was a once in a decade phenomena like the Walkman before it. There's was and still is a lot of hype surrounding the iPod and it is a great product but other players have caught up in terms of functionality and are able to compete on price. What currently still gives the iPod the edge is the integration with the iTMS.
Given the recent announcement that EMI will be offering DRM free music and Steve Job's statement that more than half of the music in the iTMS will be DRM free by the end of the year (suggesting that more deals are imminent), I'd argue that it is much more likely that people will begin buying DRM free music that they can use with the player of their choice and that will slowly but surely eat away at the iPod's market share as people chose to replace their iPods with lower cost alternatives without worrying about losing their investment in the music they've already purchased from the iTMS.
That scenario is a lot easier to envision than some company producing the next big thing and having consumers dumping their iPods in droves for it. What is there really left for a portable mp3 player to do? Current iPods let you watch videos, listen to music, play games, store photo's and contact and the list goes on. I think the iPhone may be more popular than some people think but the concept will take a while to catch on and that's if Apple can deliver on it's promises. I'd love to have my phone and iPod in a single device that also gives me easy access to the web and e-mail. The price and the fact that it's currently tied to a single wireless provider are what will hold it back. Although both of those things will probably change in the future.
If i was a betting man I'd say the 2nd or 3rd generation iPhone will be the closest thing that comes to an iPod killer provided Apple can increase the storage space, reduce the price and offer versions of the phone that can work with additional providers.
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Re:More the Merrier (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple was smart to slowly and systematically bring out new capabilities without making existing functionality more complex... this drove a repurchase tread that feed unit volumes and hype which allowed the iPod and Apple to capture mindshare.
It is mindshare that makes the iPod truly successful and not any integration with iTunes Music Store.
Parent
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they can make the thing order pizza and it still will not sell because of the DRM.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll never understand why we need [such-and-such] killers. An iPod killer? Why? Whether people like it or not, the iPod is a good product, so why does it need to be killed.
You're right, the more the merrier, so let's just leave the iPod in the game, but just hope that other people get in the game too. I'm hesitant to root for Microsoft after the abuse I've taken as one of their customers. I guess it's fine as long as they're sticking with MP3s or AACs, but in every instance where they're trying to for
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360 is still has, by leaps and bounds, a far larger installed base than any of the other next-gen consoles. Discounting the Wii (which services a different market entirely), the 360 is selling like hotcakes in comparison to the other major competing next-gen console.
Smartphones are far from flops. Blackberry's market share is being eaten away ever so steadily by Win-Mobile devices. It's not an avalanche victory, but it is going well for MS nonetheless.
For MS's failures, they are getting quite a few thin
Re:Xbox 360 is a flop (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as you don't include its toughest competition, the XBOX 360 is doing batshit-awesome !
Parent
video playback from a flash-based unit (Score:2)
that's a pretty great feature. While I'm not fond [at all] of the zune, that is a welcome addition. I'm just curious how much smaller the flash-based unit will be, if smaller at all. It would be interesting if they offered a smaller capacity, same-size unit with flash for the same price.
Are there any other flash-based portable devices like this that play video out of the box?
when is someon
Why should it beat the ipod? (Score:2, Insightful)
The Microsoft Track Record (Score:2)
A viable variant in this line of work will probably hit the market in time for the Christmas shopping season of the year 2012, long rumored to be the next season of the Apocalypse by the tin foil hat types, in cahoots with the Maya calendar freaks. Give my regards to Zule.
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Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it worth it? (Score:4, Interesting)
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ZunePhone (Score:3, Funny)
Real world features, plz (Score:4, Interesting)
Great move for both iPod users and other users (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice summary. (Score:4, Funny)
Come on guys, you can do better than that! Poor grammar, incorrect punctuation, and the two options don't contradict each other. It's not even a humorous or ironic "there is one option but we're pretending there are two" setup, it's just confusing.
</troll>
Will it reduce iPod prices (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple Lock-In (Score:3, Interesting)
1. must play MP3 and M4A (AAC)
2. must play nice with my Power Mac
3. must sync with iTunes (practically my entire music collection is in iTunes)
4. must work with the iPod dock connector in my car
Zune should have no problem with 1, might possibly be okay with 2, but is locked out of 3 & 4 -- along with every other non-Apple player on the market, thus far, to the best of my knowledge. If anyone knows differently, please correct me!
(And before anyone says anything. . . . No, my 1st gen iPod doesn't have a dock connector. In fact, my car stereo has only an aux input, it doesn't yet have an iPod dock connector either. My next one will. I'm looking to the future here.)
they'll lose billions but they'll keep at it (Score:3, Informative)
So it really doesn't matter what they put out, they'll just keep doing it, paying billions in marketing, discounts, and other incentives to vendors to keep pushing the product. The ONLY way this would not happen is if the press( hello
LoB
Specs are meaningless. Wifi? Yeah, right. (Score:2)
The first Zune boasted Wifi too. Misleading as hell. [msn.com]
Look. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because you don't put a question mark at the end of your badly phrased attempt to stir up the flames doesn't mean it's any less of an annoying and pointless question.
PLEASE stop with the inane, pointless, content-free rhetorical questions at the end of submissions. They're annoying, biased, and make Slashdot look like amateur hour. The conversations would flow just as well, if not better, without the obvious "here's what you should think about this story" cues. Too bad the editors keep falling for them.
Why beat apple? (Score:2)
In all seriousness, perhaps they should wait until apple is forced to open up their drm scheme so that they can compete in the installed market. Everyone knows that ipods have a life span of anywhere between 6 months and 2 years before either being dropped, over used, or just used (anyone remember the battery issue?). If microsoft could come out with a cheaper substitute that worked with itunes, they'd pro
Thinner AND more storage? Be still, my heart! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm buying one for my granddaughter. True, she already has two iPods (don't ask), but she won't want them once she hears about this! I sure hope Microsoft can meet the demand. I wonder if any of the stores are taking pre-orders now? I wouldn't want to pay $800 to get one on eBay, but, gosh, when all of her friends have them and are squirting songs to each other, I can't let her be the one to be left out.
Actually, if she has two iPods I'd better get her two Zunes.
And just the other day, my wife was saying to me "If Microsoft ever makes a Zune that is thinner and has a larger storage capacity I'd like you to get one for me."
It really sounds almost perfect, but I wonder... do you suppose... there will be new colors, too? Maybe a triple-shot!
This certainly puts the lie to all those rumor sites that were saying the next Zune would be thicker and have less storage.
Microsoft ALWAYS gets it right, eventually. (Score:5, Funny)
They scoffed at Microsoft Bob, but look what happened with Microsoft Bob 3.0.
They laughed at PlaysForSure, but where are all the skeptics now?
They winced at WinCE, but can you name a single cell phone that doesn't use it today?
Scene from a store on Zune Sharing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Customer: That sounds cool.
Me: But you can only play the shared song 3 times and it deletes itself after 3 days.
Customer: Thats lame and pointless then.
It's not really that bad (Score:4, Funny)
Too early (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess my dislike of the Zune wifi features were too early and/or poorly implemented. I'm not going to discuss the details of the shortcomings of the Zune's Wi-Fi feature. Some people may credit them with being the first to offer wi-fi of any sort but did anyone ever think about why no other manufacturer implemented it first? (Apple, Creative, Sandisk, etc) The reason being was that wireless would be (and still is) impratical.
Sure it would be cool to send songs wirelessly but that is only pratical for a few songs. You cannot transfer whole collections (measure in GBs) in a reasonable amount of time given the current state of wireless technology. 802.11g has a max rate of 54Mbps. 802.11n (540Mbps max) is the only version that can handle the rates required but wasn't in draft status until recently and won't be ratified until 2008. While USB2.0 has 480MBps and Fire400 has 400Mbps now. So if you were a manufacturer comtemplating wireless wouldn't you wait until 802.11n was more mature before implementing wireless?
Even if wireless had the transfer rates required today, there are issues with battery life and security. I have a large collection and it took over 20 minutes to put into my iPod using USB2.0. Transferring all that data wireless is going to drain the batteries quickly. And then there is security. I can see a lot of ramifications with using wireless transfers. Eventually these can be overcome but it will take time. I think MS was a bit too early. Just my 2cents.
Re:Flash seems to be the way to go.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Of course
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The lads I play poker with on a Monday night who are not technical are, in the main, the target audience and for them bigger is better. Their phones have to have the latest gadgets and they can tell you the number of pixels in their cameras without having to think about it, despite the fact that I pretty sure none of them would know a pixel if they met one in the street. I'm in a desparate battle t
Re:Flash seems to be the way to go.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is that with a larger collection, lets say 12,000 songs, who wants to spend the time to pick which 8,000 song to sync to the device?????
And when I want to hear something, I want to hear it!
So, I will not buy an MP3 player that doesn't hold my entire collection of music. I also want TV shows and movies. Eventually I plan to put every movie and TV show I own on DVD onto my computer and sync it to my iPod.
I like hard drives. I'm not a child - I can carry around an iPod without dropping it.
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Re:Flash seems to be the way to go.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Flash seems to be the way to go.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ta
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You then add this spin, whereby you somehow suggest that your "50 hours a week" of listening at/to/from work might only be around 2 weeks. You don't actually say it, though, because it looks far better for your so-called "point" to use the figure of two weeks, when even at your 50 hours a week, said collec
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How to get 1,000G: (Score:3, Informative)
It wouldn't survive being fired out of a handgun (zero to 800fps along a 5" barrel [1] implies an acceleration, assuming I did my math right, of ~468000 m/s^2 or about ~47,000 Gs).
Still, it's better than your brain inside your head, which can only take about 150-200 Gs before you start doing serious/irreparable damage [2] (the rest of your body is a lot lower, like 8-20 Gs depending on d