Certainly not with the current generation Zune but the Zune HD out later on this year will have a full touch interface and run on Nvidia Tegra.
I doubt that it will gain any significant traction because they are too late now but I expect sales of the Zune HD to be much better, especially if it's also marketed as a games device and Microsoft put their games division to work on it. They might even have mobile Halo.
Certainly not with the current generation Zune but the Zune HD out later on this year will have a full touch interface and run on Nvidia Tegra.
I doubt that it will gain any significant traction because they are too late now but I expect sales of the Zune HD to be much better, especially if it's also marketed as a games device and Microsoft put their games division to work on it. They might even have mobile Halo.
I guess. There seems to be kind of a blurring of expectations, though-- everything I've seen of the Zune HD UI suggests a kind of touch enhanced rival to the Nano, not the Touch. There are the same big-font, list based hierarchical menus, just with some nicer animations to transition between screens.
Yet everyone is acting as if the Zune HD will be be a natural competitor for the Touch, just because of the form factor. There is blithe talk of "apps" being available, as if apps were just something that could be tossed onto a device that is technically capable of running them, without needing to worry much about the actual mechanics of the OS and UI. To make a true Touch rival, MS is going to have to do some pretty radical work on the HD's WinCE underpinnings, certainly a lot more than just making a given screen slide or zoom into the next and using oversized fonts.
There's a lot more to the Touch's OS than pretty animations. It has the same kind of care and attention to detail that OS X has had, the same kind of sweating the details when it comes to the particulars of user interaction, consistency between apps, integration across apps, discoverability, etc.
I don't think anybody generally thinks those things about WinCE, so what evidence does anyone have the that all over Zune HD experience (beyond the prettied-up basic media functionality we've already seen) will rival Apple's palm-top computer? And if they have managed to get WinCE to work like OS X mobile, what's the hang-up with WinMo 7? Wouldn't that be the higher priority, if major reworkings of the mobile OSes were in the cards?
I agree that microsoft is still aiming for the Media Player crowd , while the Touch has more or less converged to a PDA type device that plays media, the Zune will still be a direct competitor to the nano and whatever Apple replaces the Hard Drive classic Ipod with.
Zune was never going to be competition for the iPod. It has only ever been a cheap copy of Apple's current sensation to get a piece of the market that Apple defined. When the Classic became too big to ignore, MS copied that. When the Touch replaced it, MS copied that. That is all the ZHD will ever be. MS is not even trying to get out front with innovation. They just hope to get caught up in the iPod wake. That is not competition; that is band-wagoneering.
Zune was never going to be competition for the iPod. It has only ever been a cheap copy of Apple's current sensation to get a piece of the market that Apple defined. When the Classic became too big to ignore, MS copied that. When the Touch replaced it, MS copied that. That is all the ZHD will ever be. MS is not even trying to get out front with innovation. They just hope to get caught up in the iPod wake. That is not competition; that is band-wagoneering.
Creative with it's Zii, becomes blasphemy! Creative? No. Never.
I agree that microsoft is still aiming for the Media Player crowd , while the Touch has more or less converged to a PDA type device that plays media, the Zune will still be a direct competitor to the nano and whatever Apple replaces the Hard Drive classic Ipod with.
The iPod is already solidified into the Media and Music Area. The Zune is not. That's the clear line which Microshit is trying to erase.
i agree that microsoft is still aiming for the media player crowd , while the touch has more or less converged to a pda type device that plays media, the zune will still be a direct competitor to the nano and whatever apple replaces the hard drive classic ipod with.
I hope no one is surprised by this story...
Comments
I doubt that it will gain any significant traction because they are too late now but I expect sales of the Zune HD to be much better, especially if it's also marketed as a games device and Microsoft put their games division to work on it. They might even have mobile Halo.
Certainly not with the current generation Zune but the Zune HD out later on this year will have a full touch interface and run on Nvidia Tegra.
I doubt that it will gain any significant traction because they are too late now but I expect sales of the Zune HD to be much better, especially if it's also marketed as a games device and Microsoft put their games division to work on it. They might even have mobile Halo.
I guess. There seems to be kind of a blurring of expectations, though-- everything I've seen of the Zune HD UI suggests a kind of touch enhanced rival to the Nano, not the Touch. There are the same big-font, list based hierarchical menus, just with some nicer animations to transition between screens.
Yet everyone is acting as if the Zune HD will be be a natural competitor for the Touch, just because of the form factor. There is blithe talk of "apps" being available, as if apps were just something that could be tossed onto a device that is technically capable of running them, without needing to worry much about the actual mechanics of the OS and UI. To make a true Touch rival, MS is going to have to do some pretty radical work on the HD's WinCE underpinnings, certainly a lot more than just making a given screen slide or zoom into the next and using oversized fonts.
There's a lot more to the Touch's OS than pretty animations. It has the same kind of care and attention to detail that OS X has had, the same kind of sweating the details when it comes to the particulars of user interaction, consistency between apps, integration across apps, discoverability, etc.
I don't think anybody generally thinks those things about WinCE, so what evidence does anyone have the that all over Zune HD experience (beyond the prettied-up basic media functionality we've already seen) will rival Apple's palm-top computer? And if they have managed to get WinCE to work like OS X mobile, what's the hang-up with WinMo 7? Wouldn't that be the higher priority, if major reworkings of the mobile OSes were in the cards?
Zune was never going to be competition for the iPod. It has only ever been a cheap copy of Apple's current sensation to get a piece of the market that Apple defined. When the Classic became too big to ignore, MS copied that. When the Touch replaced it, MS copied that. That is all the ZHD will ever be. MS is not even trying to get out front with innovation. They just hope to get caught up in the iPod wake. That is not competition; that is band-wagoneering.
Creative with it's Zii, becomes blasphemy! Creative? No. Never.
I agree that microsoft is still aiming for the Media Player crowd , while the Touch has more or less converged to a PDA type device that plays media, the Zune will still be a direct competitor to the nano and whatever Apple replaces the Hard Drive classic Ipod with.
The iPod is already solidified into the Media and Music Area. The Zune is not. That's the clear line which Microshit is trying to erase.
i agree that microsoft is still aiming for the media player crowd , while the touch has more or less converged to a pda type device that plays media, the zune will still be a direct competitor to the nano and whatever apple replaces the hard drive classic ipod with.
+1!