1FPS|by David Chartier

I completely agree here:

When Goldman repeated Bach’s statement about how the version 2 Zune was now a worthy alternative to the iPod, Jobs replied, “Was he inebriated? Do you even know anyone who owns a Zune?” Ouch. People excuse Apple’s jabs toward Microsoft because they’re underdogs in the OS market, but it just seems mean when they do the same in the iPod-dominated portable media player market. [From Steve Jobs Smack Talks Zune, Brings Drunkenness Into It [Apple]]

Boasting features, simplicity, and design over the competition is one thing. But mucking silly crap like this is just childish, even if Jobs simply said “inebriated” (and don’t get fooled by other media blowing this out of proportion: asking if someone was inebriated is a far, far cry from calling them a drunk). Bad form, and very un-Jobs like.

Zune: How to Disable Zune 3-play Restriction for Shared Songs

Microsoft’s Zune player has a unique Wi-Fi sharing feature that allows you to “squirt” a song from one Zune to another. For the recipient though, the song will have a restriction that disables it after it’s played three times, even if it’s a Creative Commons-licensed file or otherwise freely sharable piece of media.

DRM silliness aside, you can apparently get around this restriction simply by changing the track’s genre to “Podcast.” Whether recipients of songs can bring the Zune home, sync it with their PC and change the genre back I don’t know, but it’s pretty sad that the workaround is this easy.

I don’t see any usage rights listed on the photo at Zooomr so I’m not going to copy and paste it here, but check this guy’s Zune tattoo out.

I wonder if it’s actually permanent.

[tags]Zune[/tags]

When was the last time you saw an iPod land on woot for nearly half price?

Thanks Jordan

Hey, I didn’t write it - whoever designed and approved this image for Microsoft.com did.

Microsoft’s bumpin’ Zune SUV disturbs the New York peace - Engadget

Dubbed an “egregious display of noise terrorism,” the 3:00AM blasting from a (presumably Microsoft owned) Toyota FJ Cruiser didn’t garner the positive attention that the firm was apparently hoping for, and consequently, quite a few residents of the area are now flaming mad and demanding restitution.

Let me guess: that ‘restitution’ involves handing out free Zunes to calm the public. Brilliant!

The various debates surrounding the Zune aside, I think I finally saw the first TV ad that made a lick of sense tonight. Up until now, everything I’ve seen has either used footage of people being social with bizarre, senseless messages like “Welcome to the social,” or the ads just went completely over the edge.

Tonight’s ad looked more like a focused redux of the original ’social’ ads. Using much of the same footage, the text overlays now made more sense: “Share music” and “share music wirelessly” are what they should have said in the first place. Gadgets are already confusing enough for consumers - that’s part of why the simplicity of the iPod and iTunes have made them such a knockout hit so far. Advertising a gadget that’s trying to usurp the iPod with cryptic marketing that confuses its target audience isn’t going to get anyone to budge and, so far, it shows.

[tags]Zune, Microsoft, markeing[/tags]

Behind the Scenes at the Microsoft Zune Design Laboratory

Far too many quotable snippets, like:

LD: Right. Well, how about we make this scroll wheel thingy textured. With little bumps and shit. The TexturePod!

AD: No. We can’t use a scrollwheel. Apple has that patented. And we want to stay away from pod, if possible.

LD: [sighs] Tell me again why we don’t just buy the fuckers?

[via Daring Fireball]

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Andy Ihnatko :: Avoid the loony Zune

Brilliant, scathing review of what is quite possibly the worst effort ever forged in competition with the iPod. I’m sorry, but it’s beautifully ironic that this blunder comes from Microsoft.

Notably, Andy blasts the Zune over what seem to be the major, fundamental problems with it:

• A Microsoft product is reportedly having widespread setup and compatibility problems with their own OS
• The store employs a retarded ‘point’ system for making purchases, revealing that the company uses the same adjective when considering how they feel towards their customers
• The Wi-Fi is horribly crippled and tramples any other rights systems that might be assigned to media files. Creative Commons and just-plain-free content still get wrapped in time-bombed DRM. It was certainly a neat idea on the drawing board - but that doesn’t mean it works in the field
• Perhaps most importantly: Microsoft agreed to pay a tax on every unit sold to the record industry. I agree with Andy here: this point, and this point alone, is a good enough reason to avoid the Zune. The statistics that the industry, Steve Ballmer and everyone else used about the supposedly low number of purchased-songs-per-iPod are bullshit, largely in part because they completely ignore the still-healthy sales of CDs and how many of those are simply ripped - legitimately - to iPods and other DAPs (digital music players). Interestingly, this is one of the points the industry has been most vocal with, while it is also one of the most hollow and misguiding

In the end, we might not have to worry about the Zune anyway. We just posted on TUAW that it’s sitting at #84 on Amazon’s electronics list, and I’m willing to bet that’s only because of all the non-Pogue and non-Mossberg second-tier techies having to buy one for review. In that light, I would love to see what Amazon’s return numbers are.

Well, at least the Zune does *one* thing right so far: offer good visual feedback when something goes wrong with the software installation. Simple error messages weren’t good enough for this engineering team, no - they had to find (or actually shoot?) some photography that really drives the point home of how painful bad design can truly be.

Kudos guys.

[image via Engadget]