Briefly: Reflections on some time spent with Zune

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  • Reply 21 of 115
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Flounder


    That was a totally unfounded rumor, from my understanding.



    I'll see your unfounded rumor and raise you some random wienie that just made stuff up to get hits, and a blogoverse that, as is too often the case, couldn't see how dumb of an idea that was.
  • Reply 22 of 115
    >> Ironically, the battery died during the correspondent's hands-on session



    Says nothing without knowing what it was the tester was doing, and for how long.



    >> about 99 cents more than the iPod



    Why do you keep saying "about 99 cents" when its exactly 99 cents?
  • Reply 23 of 115
    solsunsolsun Posts: 763member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hobbes


    ^^^ Exactly.



    They're set to lose far more than the operating loss per Zune, of course. There's also the R&D... plus the tens (hundreds?) of millions for the advertising/marketing campaign. It's really quite stunning.



    R&D? They left that to Toshiba... This is afterall, just a re-packaged Toshiba gigabeat.
  • Reply 24 of 115
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Chucker


    Where did Apple make such a mistake before? With the Macintosh? Are you implying that the Macintosh, or the Apple II, had a dominating market position like the iPod does now? Because?*they never did.



    They did before windows. Microsoft saw an opening to take a Macintosh style GUI and run it on top of DOS and now 95% of world runs windows.
  • Reply 25 of 115
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BenRoethig


    They did before windows. Microsoft saw an opening to take a Macintosh style GUI and run it on top of DOS and now 95% of world runs windows.



    The Macintosh never had a dominant share before or after Windows.



    Apple II had a dominant marketshare, for maybe a year or two, before being swamped by cheaper PCs like the Commodore.



    Apple has already passed the point: we've already seen lots of other MP3 players, and none have succeeded. Apple has never been in this position before in any market.
  • Reply 26 of 115
    I agree. - if the true video iPod makes it's debut before the holiday shopping season is in full swing, then the Zune will be lucky to sell half a million units.



    Though, given MS's history, they will swallow the loss, and come out with another, slightly better, loss leader next year. In 4 or 5 years they will lose a billion or two but have a compelling product that will give the iPod some real competition.



    Microsoft will engage in several anti-competive strategies which will hurt Apple and consumers even more, for which they will eventually receive a slap on the wrist some 5 years later.



    Oh yeah, and we'll each get a $40 credit towards something. Meanwhile, the portable player manufacturers will be laid to waste. Only Sony and Microsoft will be around to pick up the peices.



    But before that happens Apple will make some really great players. Let's enjoy it while we can.



    10 years from now, the portable player market will slowly regain its creativity as people open source hack their phones to do some cool stuff. Microsoft and Sony will cherry pick the best ideas to incorporate into their products for the masses.



    PLEASE Apple, prove me wrong....
  • Reply 27 of 115
    LMFAO....







    GTFOHWTBS!



    LOL
  • Reply 28 of 115
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by gregmightdothat


    The Macintosh never had a dominant share before or after Windows.



    Correct.



    Quote:

    Apple II had a dominant marketshare, for maybe a year or two, before being swamped by cheaper PCs like the Commodore.



    No, it never did.



    Apple never had a market share above 20% with any, any of their personal computers.
  • Reply 29 of 115
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Chucker


    Where did Apple make such a mistake before? With the Macintosh? Are you implying that the Macintosh, or the Apple II, had a dominating market posion like the iPod does now? Because?*they never did.



    The mistake would be thinking MS actually has to make money off this right now, they don't, unlike Apple.



    Apple needs to make money off ipods all MS cares about is getting into the market right now remember for them this is a gen 1 they have plenty of time to build on this and make mods.



    Unlike Apple, MS can use Dell, HP, Sony, Gateway, Toshiba and many others that load their systems with bloatware to keep costs down, just add another vendor next you will see 100 dollar rebates on Zunes when you buy from Dell or HP, or 100 free downloads when you buy a Zune.



    A good example in another arena is Sony PS3 799.00, for those with an Xbox 360 or considering one you can add an external HD drive for 179.00.



    By the time MS hits gen 3 this game will be at the very least even.



    Apple has a strong hold because they were the only true player in the game you can't consider Creative Labs a true player or Rio they have to make money on the primary product, MS does not.



    Microsoft unlike Apple understands they are a software company anything else they do is to gain access into the market at first and slowly gain market share like they did with the Xbox.



    MS is going to hit Apple from every angle. In 2007/2008 Office for Mac will not support VB this will hit into the business market. Vista will not support EFI that kills running Vista and OSX in a native enviroment. Next was to hit Apple on their only strong point the ipod. Like the Xbox I see this as a three year plan.



    The mistake is Steve Jobs always loses to Bill Gates yet he hasn't learned from history.
  • Reply 30 of 115
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BenRoethig


    I wouldn't take the Zune too lightly, Apple made that mistake before and it almost cost them everything. I have to admit the free downloads for songs you bought from iTunes deal kinda scares me.



    They aren't doing that.
  • Reply 31 of 115
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Chucker


    Correct.







    No, it never did.



    Apple never had a market share above 20% with any, any of their personal computers.



    They did in business before IBM came out with the PC.



    In fact, it was the Apple II that caused IBM to come up with the PC.
  • Reply 32 of 115
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by extremeskater


    The mistake would be thinking MS actually has to make money off this right now, they don't, unlike Apple.



    Apple needs to make money off ipods all MS cares about is getting into the market right now remember for them this is a gen 1 they have plenty of time to build on this and make mods.



    Unlike Apple, MS can use Dell, HP, Sony, Gateway, Toshiba and many others that load their systems with bloatware to keep costs down, just add another vendor next you will see 100 dollar rebates on Zunes when you buy from Dell or HP, or 100 free downloads when you buy a Zune.



    A good example in another arena is Sony PS3 799.00, for those with an Xbox 360 or considering one you can add an external HD drive for 179.00.



    By the time MS hits gen 3 this game will be at the very least even.



    Apple has a strong hold because they were the only true player in the game you can't consider Creative Labs a true player or Rio they have to make money on the primary product, MS does not.



    Microsoft unlike Apple understands they are a software company anything else they do is to gain access into the market at first and slowly gain market share like they did with the Xbox.



    MS is going to hit Apple from every angle. In 2007/2008 Office for Mac will not support VB this will hit into the business market. Vista will not support EFI that kills running Vista and OSX in a native enviroment. Next was to hit Apple on their only strong point the ipod. Like the Xbox I see this as a three year plan.



    The mistake is Steve Jobs always loses to Bill Gates yet he hasn't learned from history.



    The PS3 isn't $799, it's more like $599.



    VB is going away in the PC world as well. MS is depreciating it. Two years from now, and by by.



    Vista will support EFF, but not in the beginning. MS has stated that already.
  • Reply 33 of 115
    hobbeshobbes Posts: 1,252member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by extremeskater


    MS is going to hit Apple from every angle. In 2007/2008 Office for Mac will not support VB this will hit into the business market. Vista will not support EFI that kills running Vista and OSX in a native enviroment. Next was to hit Apple on their only strong point the ipod. Like the Xbox I see this as a three year plan.



    I agree that the 1G Zune is only first (and rather clumsy, IMO) step in a much larger plan over many years, but your examples don't add up. Not supporting VB is a difficult decision the MacBU had to make with the Intel transition (VB is basically being depreciated anyway). And Macs using Boot Camp or Parallels will run Vista perfectly fine -- EFI has little to do with anything.



    Honestly, I don't see what MS could done besides Zune -- Plays for Sure sure wasn't working, and Apple is being increasingly powerful in owning the standards in digital media. Not just music, but edging their way into video and movies. This is a huge area of contention -- not something MS can afford to give up.... if they want to stay dominant (or even relevant!) in the consumer space.



    What happens next, though. is very much up in the air. Currently, it's Apple's game to lose.
  • Reply 34 of 115
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross


    They did in business before IBM came out with the PC.



    In fact, it was the Apple II that caused IBM to come up with the PC.



    You're forgetting about competitors such as Commodore and Sinclair.
  • Reply 35 of 115
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by extremeskater


    The mistake would be thinking MS actually has to make money off this right now, they don't, unlike Apple.



    What leads you to believe that Apple doesn't know this?



    Quote:

    Apple has a strong hold because they were the only true player in the game you can't consider Creative Labs a true player or Rio they have to make money on the primary product, MS does not.



    So why were Creative Labs and Rio not "true players in the game", exactly?



    Quote:

    Vista will not support EFI that kills running Vista and OSX in a native enviroment.



    Oh, you mean like XP doesn't support EFI yet runs on Macs just fine? Natively?
  • Reply 36 of 115
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Chucker


    You're forgetting about competitors such as Commodore and Sinclair.



    Not in business.



    While I can't ever spell his name, the president of IBM's old PC division (Starts with a "C", Cavanarro, or something ) wrote a book about how IBM started the PC business.



    In it, he stated that it was IBM salesmen coming across Apple II's in offices of their mainframe ind minicomputer clients that gave them the incentive to start their own PC business.



    Commodore was never a business threat, and Sinclair, well, that was cute, but certainly no "real" computer.
  • Reply 37 of 115
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    So, a couple of things are clear:



    --The history of Apple's OS market share does not tell us anything about the future of Apple's portable media player market share. The idea that a proprietary DRM somehow repeats the "mistake" of a proprietary OS takes no account of the huge differences in Apple's position in the MP3 player/media download business now and its position in the computer world then.



    --The history of MS's forays into new markets tell us nothing about the likelihood of its success with the Zune. They succeeded with IE because they could simply make it the default browser on the vast majority of computers sold. They succeeded with the XBox (to an extant) because they could afford to buy the titles that would make it desirable, and sell it at a loss until installed user base growth made games a revenue source.



    What else? There's kind of a myth that MS "always" enters a market with a mediocre offering but has the deep pockets to keep plugging away until by version 3 or 4 its good enough to be competitive. But what are the examples of that, beyond Windows itself, IE and the XBox? That's not much of a track record, and you could also look at all the things that never really went anywhere, like MSN or WebTV/MSNTV.



    I don't think that it's at all a forgone conclusion that MS will keep improving the Zune over a number of iterations until it's a "threat" to the iPod. They get a lot of things wrong at first, and keep them wrong over the long haul.
  • Reply 38 of 115
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross


    Not in business.



    While I can't ever spell his name, the president of IBM's old PC division (Starts with a "C", Cavanarro, or something ) wrote a book about how IBM started the PC business.



    In it, he stated that it was IBM salesmen coming across Apple II's in offices of their mainframe ind minicomputer clients that gave them the incentive to start their own PC business.



    Commodore was never a business threat, and Sinclair, well, that was cute, but certainly no "real" computer.



    Yeah, but was there any year at all where Apple was seen as having a stronghold? Fine, before the PC market existed*as a market at all, obviously Apple virtually owned it, but that's a little silly.



    Arguments such as "If Apple had licensed the Macintosh, they would have retained their high market share" are made a lot, but the Macintosh never had much market share to begin with. Arguments such as "If the Macintosh hadn't competed with Apple's own Apple II, which was completely incompatible, Apple could have transitioned the Apple II's success over to the Macintosh" are a lot more intelligent. But even the Apple II, before the Macintosh was introduced, did not, to my knowledge, have a market share anywhere close to even being a majority, let alone a dominant one.



    So my original point was, and still is: Apple was never at this point before. The iPod's success is not "history repeating itself", because, while certainly successful, the Apple II never had such an extremely huge market share. So to argue that they're repeating past mistakes is doubly false, because, not only do we know nothing about their strategy regarding Zune (and analyzing it only starts becoming useful once the Zune actually ships), but there is no "repetition" at all.



    Arguably, Apple should have added some sort of compatibility layer to the Macintosh, or perhaps done what they later did with the IIgs. Instead, they took the huge risk (and didn't do particularly well at it) of creating a wholly new, incompatible, closed system.



    The iPod is yet another wholly new, incompatible and closed system, but it's hugely successful. That's quite a difference.
  • Reply 39 of 115
    gargar Posts: 1,201member
    3 million in 1.5 months...



    I was an early adopter back in the summer of 2004 with my 4G iPod 40Gb.

    Apple sold 4 million iPods in 2.5 years.
  • Reply 40 of 115
    Come on, this article is a load of crap. "Photo, Music, Video and Community" Menus? "No scroll wheel because Microsoft doesn't have patents", "Sources in the Far East", "Not Quite Plastic", and other winning lines make this one a real stinker.



    Congratulations on possibly the most vague "Insider report" to come along in quite a while. Was the correspondent blind and wearing thick wool gloves? I mean, really, if you actually held the unit in your hand and used it, couldn't you come up with a slightly more detailed report on it? This reads like some of the Zune rumors we saw about 6 months ago... And the bit about the battery is a nice touch, fanboy.
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