to make way for the ill-fated Zune Marketplace and other similarly abysmal content delivery products.
Whoa whoa whoa! Hold on a minute. Zune Marketplace was absolutely ill-fated. But “abysmal content delivery product” is a gross mischaracterization. By Gen 3 Microsoft, in 2008, had competitive hardware for the day and in most respects better software and services than Apple has in Apple Music today.
Sure, Zune had long since been panned by consumer electronics blogs, but gen 3 hardware was legit. The desktop software would still hold up against Spotify and Apple Music in terms of usability and vastly outclasses either in style. The music exploration and recommendations were excellent. I still miss the playback visualizations. They had social features baked in and had a web music player that was a first class citizen in their ecosystem. You could cast music between devices before the word “casting” had been coined. Zune Pass gave you access to unlimited streaming of 14 million tracks and let you keep 10 each month. While Apple was raising digital downloads to $1.29/track, Microsoft was offering discounted annual subscriptions at $149. It was the equivalent of buying 10 songs on iTunes each month plus $1.75/mo for unlimited streaming.
Zune lost the battle of mind share, but 13 years later I’m still waiting for someone to step up and revive the golden age of streaming music.
"By Gen 3 Microsoft, in 2008, had competitive hardware for the day and in most respects better software and services than Apple has in Apple Music today. “
Give us a fricken break will you. You sound like a disgruntled Amiga user. This crapaganda that the only reason Apple succeeds is because of marketing is as much bullshit today as it was back then.
Is this person (dare we say it) the one and only, the most infamous, pernicious Zune fanboy of all time, “ZuneTang?”
Interestingly, it appears that Microsoft was at one point considering a subscription service rather than the content licensing scheme adopted by iTunes.
Er…Zune HAD a subscription service. You had to be a subscriber to "squirt" songs from one Zune to another, or to have someone "squirt" all over yours.
(I really wish I were making this up, including the names…but I'm not.)
Remember when Ballmer made wireless file sharing sound dirty, and Jobs made sharing earwax sound endearing? Seriously, the Zune had "squirt" all over it, and Jobs's idea about sharing music was to give your beloved one of the earpieces of your iPod headset.
Somehow neither of these seemed to quite meet the needs specified.
The main problem with the Zune was bad marketing. "Squirt", "Squircle", that sort of shit-brown they came in, the lame logo,... The backend services weren't all that good, either.
Tim Cook could have caught the entire industry flat footed with the release of a $300 M1 powered Mac Nano but didn't. There was absolutely no technical reason why he could not have done that. Tim simply doesn't have Steve's vision and desire to disrupt first, dominate later. Who did the Oculus Quest catch flat footed?
No one - it's still a very small/minority/niche product. I won't bother trying to find sales numbers, but I bet it would be less than 1/1000 of any of Apple's products.
Interestingly, it appears that Microsoft was at one point considering a subscription service rather than the content licensing scheme adopted by iTunes.
Er…Zune HAD a subscription service. You had to be a subscriber to "squirt" songs from one Zune to another, or to have someone "squirt" all over yours.
(I really wish I were making this up, including the names…but I'm not.)
Remember when Ballmer made wireless file sharing sound dirty, and Jobs made sharing earwax sound endearing? Seriously, the Zune had "squirt" all over it, and Jobs's idea about sharing music was to give your beloved one of the earpieces of your iPod headset.
Somehow neither of these seemed to quite meet the needs specified.
The main problem with the Zune was bad marketing. "Squirt", "Squircle", that sort of shit-brown they came in, the lame logo,... The backend services weren't all that good, either.
Here’s to the brown Zune, a la Caddyshack.
What would you do if you saw one floating in a pool?
Comments