Microsoft says Zune HD is real, will get multi-touch - Page 2

Isn't the point in being capable of playing HD video (without converting it to lower bit-rates) and radio - rather than screen resolution itself..?

Just how many times does Microsoft think they can keep pulling off this stunt?
DR DOS starts gaining a foothold and Microsoft 'announces' their vaporware that will be 'so much better' and kills off DR DOS with FUD.
So they somehow think they can pull the same BS against the industry leader?
Pathetic.

Um... you are aware there are likely more MS users that would never swap their miserable Windows experience for all-encompassing Mac experience, than all Mac users together..?


I think that this Zune actually has original and distinctive look. For me, it looks like iPod Touch as much as iPod Touch looks like some of the Palm (or other) PDAs. It is same basic principle, flat device with big touch screen and minimal number of hardware buttons. You can't really come up with something completely different looks wise (without seriously compromising functionality), so the only way to judge originality of Zune HD - as it was for iPod Touch - is basically software and features.

No, you don't understand. The difference in picture quality between OLED and the best LCD technology is staggering. I didn't understand it either, until I saw one in person. Go to your local Best Buy with a Magnolia home theater center and look for the little 11" Sony OLED TV... it blows away everything (including Kuro Plasmas and LED LCD TVs) around it by insane proportions.

If anyone is seriously anal enough to care about four screws on the back of the case (I actually like the look), then you cannot ignore the difference between the relatively crap iPhone LCDs and an OLED screen.

Same old Microsoft. No innovation. It's like they never even heard of the word. This looks just like the first generation iPhone with the metal back and plastic bottom on the back, except its a candy bar shape.

If you comprehended my post, I was not referring to anything Mac. I specifically referred only to the iPod Touch. I did not mention anything in regards to comparing OSX to Windows.

I'm referring to the user-experience on the device itself. Zune failed miserably not because of the hardware, which was actually quite good but with the implementation of the software. Whether in OSX or Windows, Apple made the product easy to use and focused more on the consumer and how easy everything should be. Forget about Microsoft focusing more on putting everything (including the kitchen sink in it) but making their software too complicated and unusable for the average Joe.

I've seen OLED screens at the Sony store several times and I spent ample time checking them out. They're nice but not great, the main advantage of OLED is the thickness.

I'll be more psyched if someone came out with epaper that has high contrast and fast refresh rate, I know it's too much to ask, but epaper uses little to no power, is thinner than OLED, and is flexible.

For as long as the government allows them, for as long as the government takes the payout money rather than do the right thing.

Just to be picky, Microsoft Bob and clippy are both rip-offs. Bob is a reaLy crappy copy of an idea that General Magic came up with and there were many comic avatar helpers before clippy.

You're right. Apple should never have released anything until the really cutting edge technology is ready. Why wait for OLED? Don't introduce anything until Terabyte chips are out too. Heck, delay that until atomic batteries are out that will power a phone for 100 years between charges! Would that please you?

If the technology is that good as you say it is, why don't we see 52" OLED screen TV's yet? I'm sure the quality would blow away LCD's as you say right?

I'll tell you why...
Cost, longevity, and manufacturing limitations.

OLED holds a lot of promise and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Apple implements it but for the time being, it is still not ready for prime-time. Due to its organic qualities, it does not endure as long as an LCD does which is why they are currently limited to smaller displays such as tiny cell-phone screens and embedded screens. They are also quite expensive still and technological hurdles still need to be resolved to make the screens both bigger and price-competitive with LCD's.

If Microsoft introduces an OLED display, I'm sure Apple will be very close behind if they aren't already getting something ready. The ZuneHD has not come out yet so I will wait and see how it goes. Perhaps M$ thinks that the screen will be enough to sway users to its platform and put aside what may be very well a typical, horrible Microsoft user experience.

You need to be realistic and understand that Apple will not go OLED until it knows the technology can withstand the test of time and get the cost lowered. Otherwise, people like you will be the first to complain and file class-action suits that the display fades after a year, and you very well know that. No one sues Microsoft if that happens since most people know they make crappy products anyways and accept that when they make a purchase.

First of all, I started a thread about this first, in General Discussion where it belongs-- the Zune is not an iPod, iPhone or Apple TV, last time I checked. So blow me, Apple Insider.

Having said that: a heavily modified version of Windows CE and IE for the browser? Does not bode well. I actually don't mind the look, it's the usual MS "industrial/edgy" thing for their consumer stuff, but the look of thing only goes so far if the software sucks.

I can't see Windows CE spawning a touch UI that's anything but clumsy, or limited, or both. And there's a very good reason not a single other manufacturer of handheld internet capable devices use IE.

MS is trying to jam their existing products into a shape Apple has defined.

Well said mah boi!

When Windows 1.0 was introduced in 1985 Microsoft had ZERO SHARE in the market for GUI-based operating systems. Obviously their persistence and aggressive marketing has paid off well over the past few decades.

In view of this history it's really silly to claim that Microsoft should just drop out of the music player market because their current market share is low. History can repeat itself.

Actually, Microsoft is that kid that rings your doorbell and leaves a flaming bag of dog crap.

Umm you conveniently left out the fact the MS already owned the PC market with MS-DOS. How convenient is that to quickly own the GUI based operating systems for the PC market.

Anyone else notice how on the display in the picture "more" is cut off on the bottom?

Can't imagine something as sloppy as that showing up on an Apple product, especially on a publicity photo.

Just another example of MicroSoft's fine inattention to detail.

It doesn't look too bad, however, it doesn't really seem like MS incorporated one of the benefits of OLED into that Zune thing... OLEDs are really thin and that Zune is way too thick. I can't imagine how thin Apple could go with the Touch if it had an OLED screen.

I see it failing like all the other Zunes. Mainly because developers aren't going to be too interested in it. Dev's are the reason why the iPhone is as popular as it is today.

I hope the Apple lawyers are ready to make sure their multi-touch patents are not being abused.
I would hate to see the 'pinch' being copied by MS, if they do I expect a lawsuit.

Honestly, is Multi-Touch really something that is so sophisticated that it should be locked down to a single company? I understand that Apple was the first one to come up with it but having a little competition never hurt. Pinching for zoom in and out just seems like basic human nature to me. It's not like Multi-Touch is what is keeping the iPod/iPhone alive... There are plenty of other reasons why the iPod/iPhone is better than Zune.

Yes it is important. Apple spent the money and development on Multi-touch and should reap the reward. Are you saying that patents don't matter? where do you draw the line?
MS have been very keen to enforce their patents in the past!

I think you missed my point. Apple has seen the reward from Multi-Touch and they will continue to do so even if other companies start incorporating it. Patenting Multi-Touch is like patenting FM radio or whatever. Apple did come up with the idea but it's not like MS is using Apple's code... It's just another feature MS (and others) are significantly late on.

Did you puposely miss the OLED part? Giggle, tee hee rotflmao, haha, who who, lolly poppy gee golly swell, (rolls eyes. Whatever.

Anyway, as someone that thinks the dune is to tech what a candid is to a lightbulb, depending on what services they offer, I may not renew mobile golly gee. Only reason I have it is due to having a mac email. Not me. Ical is okay but it's still buggy, doesn't work as advertised.

MS shouldn't use OLED screen technology as a major focus to sell the device on. MOST users could give a shit about what kind of screen it is, let alone know the difference between them.

I love apple products but Redmond start you copiers???

Google sun operating system and you will see more than 5 yard old, spotlight, quicklook and many features found in Leopard. Get a grip. Stop drinking the marketing koolaid.

It's project looking glass by sun micro systems.

LOWER LEFT (Sun Micro Systems), a few minutes in when they get to the live portion of the streaming - you will see things that you may have thought Apple came up with in Leopard, even I was surprised.
http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/

The issue here is simple: Apple bet the company that iPhone would 1) sell 2) need to be about software.

So they spent three years paring down their OS to the point at which it would run on the device. They basically wrote a new operating system in the meantime, made QuickTime X, and built an SDK that is rich and versatile.

That is no mean feat.

Microsoft have pulled together the old scraps in some small office in Redmond to try and create a device that works, but has no future potential.

The issue here: Microsoft didn't bet the company on their mobile businesses. Apple did.

Apple will win hands down.

I bought a first gen iPod touch on release day but I'd seriously consider replacing it with a Zune HD.

I'm one of those rare people who would like a Zune Pass-type subscription. I love music and I love discovering new bands. Having access to 5 million tracks would be fantastic for parties too. If Microsoft could combine it with Apple's Genius playlist idea then it would be the killer feature.

I also hate how Apple charge for software updates. It's not much money but it's the principle of the matter. When everyone else is giving something away for free, even $10 suddenly looks very expensive. Microsoft have made a lot of mistakes with the Zune but at least the software updates, even major ones, are free.

However, I have major doubts over the Zune desktop software and any browser included on the Zune HD. If Microsoft can prove me wrong on these two points, I might be ready to jump ship.

100% agree. But what if, just a small, what if, and msft is preparing the way for something bigger? We all know millions of iPhone contracts expire soon, windows is known to have touch in version 7, it runs much, much faster than vista, we all know I.T. Departmnents are going to upgrade, the palm pre looks pretty good, msft has finally found advertising that works and could be the table setting for a really bug campaign, winows mobile 6.5 looks really really good, leaps beyond present mobile and msft one time went after Google. Not sure about you but all that msft needs us one good company ( ala google/yahoo), a phone with mobile 6.5 and open source apps and they could be off and running and while I do have a National Marketing and Promotional background, its hard to see Microsoft doing something right, it has to be all that red tape that someone spoke about earlier - as they mentioned there are a few with blogs that work at Redmond and they state it's nearly impossible to see anything come to fruition. A shame really.

Personally, I think someone should run with Project Looking Glass
Bottom Left, start the streaming and about a few minutes in, when they talk to a live audience, you will see things that we now see on Leopard, very cool Operating System.
http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/


Peace.

All of that is all well and good, except that WinMob 6.5 is hardly "leaps beyond present mobile."

It's a stopgap release with some touch stuff bolted on until they can get WinMob 7 out the door. The iPhone revolution very obviously caught MS napping, and they're struggling to make their mobile offerings relevant.

They are not remotely in a position to spring some kind of huge advancement that will shake up the market.

I'm guessing they put an OLED display in the next touch. Hardly difficult is it?

inspired by the iPhone of the day before yesterday.

Not even close. Lest people have already forgotten MSFT's last round of pending layoffs. Microsoft really doesn't understand anything well beyond Office Suites and Desktop/Server OS.

No they aren't going to challenge Google for advertising even if they buy Yahoo.
I seriously doubt they can overcome Apple and Google's momentum with iPhone and Android.

Microsoft has done nothing but follow Mozilla, Opera and Webkit for browser functionality.


As far as applicable innovation the company is quickly becoming irrelevant beyond their core competency and frankly with PDF being a great document interchange format for read only I don't even know if MS Office is all that much of a necessity outside of stodgy businesses.

Folks this game is almost over. It's Apple, Mozilla and Opera defining the nextgen HTML5 spec.

Zune got crushed the the iPod and Window Mobile is going to get crushed by the iPhone. Do any of you honestly think Microsoft is going come roaring back? It took them 6 years and counting to deliver a suitable XP OS sucessor. They aren't exactly burning up the charts.

they rode on the success of DOS and the IBM PC and clones.

IBM was the one that gave them access to the PC market

I agree with Addabox. Really, there is no comparison between Windows Mobile and iPhone OS. You can gloss one up but after the main screen is gone, its still just an older version of Windows Mobile with a new number.

6.5 was like changing the appearance of the dock on the Mac - maybe it looks good but what does it matter? Even then, the Mac dock is always there, and that honeycomb isn't everywhere.

Windows 7 will be a big win for Microsoft, but the issue is simple: in mobile, Apple have a focus on one device - the iPhone. Windows Mobile has split their focus over hundreds of devices. You can't generate buzz over a product that only ships with the device, is rarely if ever upgraded, and is found on every type of device around. General marketing no-no. Don't split consumer focus over lots of products. Create a focus.

Microsoft can't.

Apple has in the phone business: iPhone
Apple has in the PMP business: iPod Touch (though to a lesser extent than the iPhone)


From a marketing perspective, WinMo is a disaster. It doesn't matter what Microsoft are doing now. They're just clawing back on the major lack of confidence from Vista. They don't have key concepts down: Integration, Easy of use, Simplicity, Focus.

One other point to make: Its hardly important to point out touch as an issue. Remember, this is basically a hacked Windows CE. It has nothing to do with Windows 7, nor any other major release of Windows. Touch in CE and Touch in Windows 7 will not be integrated, no upgrade/compromise/middleground between the two. They are fundamentally separate technologies.

Apple never made that error. The iPhone OS is Mac OS X based - to the point they could get iPhone's entire touch call stack and UIKit on the Mac itself without any issue (and EXTREMELY simply) and create the iPhone simulator. They are fundamentally the same OS. They have a lot of potential for middle ground.

Exactly

If not, Ballmer will never be able to own one.

And imagine what those exposed screw heads will be like after he gets his greasy mitts all over them.

I'm surprised Microsoft they didn't insist on a huge hard drive. Capacity would have been a clear opportunity to differentiate from the iPod touch. Aside from size and battery life advantages the app store and touch screen technology are the only real leverage Apple has to up-sell people to lower capacity solid state drives, which are decidedly more buck for your bang than their hard drive counterparts.

Apple could easily have dropped the iPod classic by now if they just made an iPod touch with a ridiculously-sized hard drive. Of course that gives people less incentive to upgrade next year because 240GB is only more useful than 120GB to people who actually own more than 120GB of portable media. In a few years this probably won't matter anyway.

Since Apple have had no worthy competitors in this space they have been allowed to bridge the transition rather elegantly.

I can see where this is going. Most people may not care about obscure acronyms, but they know HD stands for a clearer picture.

OLED may not mean a thing, but the same goes for screen resolution and ppi. It is looks and perception that matters.

Is MS counting on OLED to fool customers into believing the Zune is actually HD?

I think its success will depend how much they can make the device another PSP or DS but linked to games with the XBox. It needs to differentiate itself from the Ipod touch.

There's just little things where there is not an attention to detail. There are screws for a start. Yes that would make it easier to service. But who is going to service an mp3 player or really want to replace a battery? If the screen shots are true then you can see that the words sometimes goes off the screen. That should not happen.

Microsoft are showing some staying power in the market. But there has not been full hearted efforts at it either. They need to risk more or the device will only be a talking point to most people, not something they use

I actually think the exposed-screws look is very modern and sturdy-looking. Panasonic did a similar thing with a recent Lumix camera. I think still prefer the whimsical (read: how the fuck did they put this together?) look of many of Apple's products though.

That's another thing. MS clearly wants to get some kind of integration going across their consumer products. They've trying to pull together the UIs on the Xbox, Zune, and Windows Media Center, and presumably this will extend to WinMo 7 and future WinCE devices.

However, WinCE, WinMo, Xbox and Zune are all different operating systems, although Zune and WinCE are apparently merging, at least somewhat. Windows Media Center is an app for Xp/Vista/Windows 7 that needs to play nice with everybody.

Whereas Apple is basically deploying OS X across every part of their product line, MS has got this hodge-podge of operating systems, all of which at one time pretended to be desktop Windows except for Xbox which is now apparently the standard for what everything else ought to look like. Or vice versa. Or something.

I'm sure they can get stuff to work together more or less, but it's such a conceptual muddle I wonder if they can explain what's happening to their customers. The Zune marketplace takes over for the Xbox, which is different from the new app store for WinMo, all of which leaves all previous Zunes orphaned, maybe, but maybe they can all talk to Media Center? Is Zune an extender or extendee? Hello? Is anybody still listening?

All this stuff was developed for completely different markets, and now that MS has noticed that maybe some kind of convergence is going on, by god they're going to put everything in a room together and squeeze till it works. Maybe they can get J Allard to stand around looking hip and it will all make sense.

Apple has OS X and iTunes. Buy stuff, sync stuff, move files from device to device. The end.