Microsoft's Zune

Bounce said:

What are you thoughts on the technology?

From what i gathered so far the hardware and software may be a dud... However i may be mistaken. Microsoft has probably lost in the mp3 market so far... They should probably stick with improving xBox and MCE. IMHO. Additionally, i think it will only be locked into wma support.

I'd love to see a player (only seen one that does it) that will support a wide variety of files (as many codecs as possible [divx, vp6, avi, mp2], picture formats including adobe's suite of files, and of course a large array of musical formats (including ogg, wav, midi, aiff, mp3)

And of course hardware that isn't locked directly into Software which is what iTunes does... I rather, like the creative devices just drag and drop my files and BAM they just work.

Sorry for my rant, i cannot foresee how microsoft can possibly make a turn around from these products. Apple has already slammed the market! However will another "Bill Gates" happen again where apple came up with the idea, however microsoft stole it and sold it for less. To me i can and cannot see that happening... If it does not happen it will be a sign to me that microsoft is losing a big holy war. And it wouldn't take too much for google to come along and plop make their own OS! Using simple principles... because the fact of the matter is that a large majority of users are computer illiterate! Why has google made it so big among computer novice's and experts alike? Duh... Their technology! Guru's know why their technology is good, while novice's enjoy the easy experience!

Ok Enough teaching for today.

Click to expand...

Are you saying MS sucks? hehe. I'm a huge fan of open source software, if it were up to me I'd never use Windows again. I use Ubuntu Linux as of right now and simply stated it's 100% better than Windows for me.

In my opinion: MS steals everyone else's ideas and products, they make a few changes so they cannot be sued for patent infringement and slap a retarted logo on it (think MSN butterfly), call it their own innovative product, and make billions in the process. We already know Vista is going to a blatent copy of OS X with a lot of bugs and security vunerabilites thrown in because after all it still is Windows.

I like iPods but don't like the price as with most Apple hardware it's over priced. Now that Apple has moved to the intel platform there is no excuse to charge a premium for hardware. Apple still will charge a premium succeed because they will not license OS X to run on regular PC.

I have the cheapest MP3 player, I could find $40 for an RCA with 512 MB of flash memory. It has tons of features and it does exactly what I want it to: Play music. I don't need a fancy iPod to prove I'm cool.

Now on to DRM standards. I don't like them and will probably never buy another song from iTunes. Why you ask? I don't like being treated like a criminal when there are millions of people downloading music, movies, and tv shows illegally. I'm doing the right thing by actually paying for my music. Even at $.99 you're paying a premium for the song and you can only copy/transfer it X numer of times. I'd much rather buy a CD and spend the time to rip it into MP3 format, this way I control the bitrate and how many times I copy it for my own use.

DRM standards will only improve when people speak with their wallets. Propreitary standards (.aac .ogg .wma) will only go away when companies decide that customers come first not profits (like that will ever happen!). Apple makes money by locking you into .aac, MS makes money by locking you into .wma then licensing companies like Creative to use their "intellectual property".

It's all one big clusterf**k controlled by some of the worlds richest people who only care abou the bottom line.

[/rant]

PS: The only thing MS is good at is making mice, I've had mine for the longest time.