The more time I spend with my Zune HD, the more I like it. Sound quality aside–and I know opinions differ dramatically here, but I’m stuck with my ears and my preferences–there are a bunch of features that make Apple’s products seem like they’ve fallen behind the curve. Here are five things in particular that I miss when I use my iPhone or one of my iPods:
TV Everywhere is a concept put out by TV distributors that basically says that if you pay for cable or satellite, you should be able to watch the content you want, where you want. Everywhere. To some people this is not a good idea.
Hindered by a failure to sell large numbers of digital music players, Microsoft is singing a new Zune. A few weeks before releasing a new version of its MP3 player called Zune HD, Microsoft is taking extraordinary steps to court software developers to create applications for the device.
With less than three weeks before Microsoft launches another salvo in digital music players, the marketing executive overseeing the company’s Zune device is headed for the exit.
Chris Stephenson, general manager of global marketing for Zune, is leaving the company to take a position at Universal Music Group, according to people familiar with the matter.
The news this week that Napster is relaunching with a $5-a-month subscription plan that includes 5 free MP3 downloads would appear to be a troubling development for RealNetworks’ rival Rhapsody service, which will set you back $13 a month for a streaming service that lacks the free MP3s. It is also no doubt irritating to Real that it comes from a company that is now a unit of Best Buy: in the past, the Best Buy digital music store was a re-branded version of Rhapsody, which came pre-loaded on non-Zune, non-iPod music players sold by the retailer.
Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)
If you were buying 30,000 songs, would you rather pay $30,000 or $15 per month?
Mike Homer was many things to many people. To the people at Netscape and the myriad of start-ups that spun off afterward, he was their visionary and counselor. Nobody made a move without checking with Mike first. He was our close confidant and truest believer, always encouraging us to push forward and to never give up on our our biggest ideas.
On Dec. 31, some models of the Zune, Microsoft’s portable music player, went dark. The devices were unusable until the following day. Failures like this are sometimes caused by complex chains of mishaps, but this particular one is due to a single programming error that is reasonably easy to understand.
Everyone else is in the phone business, so why not Microsoft? Several reports suggest that this may actually be in the works–one has the phone sporting an Nvidia processor and launching at the 3GSM conference, another that it is code-named “Pink,” will be Zune-based and will launch at CES in January. No word on what the code name may allude to.
In a mixed holiday sales forecast, an electronics industry trade group is projecting that consumer spending on such gadgets will grow 3.5 percent in the fourth quarter, half the growth rate in the same quarter a year earlier.
Sitting in a McDonald’s in suburban St. Louis, breaking my rule about eating fast food when I’m not on the road and trying out the latest Zune gimmick–free wireless access via Wayport at roughly 9,800 golden arch outlets across the U.S.
On Wednesday, Adam Sohn, the head of public relations for Microsoft’s Zune division, told me: “Babies are born every day without an iPod. We will get there.” That summarizes the challenge Zune faces from Apple–and Microsoft’s determination (at least for now) to meet it.
If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on. A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it.
A vice president from Microsoft’s eHome Division, who oversaw initiatives including Windows Media Center, has shifted to the Zune team, according to the latest Microsoft organizational chart from the independent Directions on Microsoft research firm. The question: Does the change indicate a new direction for the company’s iPod competitor?
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