Wednesday, October 4, 2006 |
00:31 - Too little, too Zune
http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/02/zune-wireless-worthless-for-now/
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Engadget doesn't exactly seem enthralled with the Zune; but as noted by the Penny Arcade guys, the astroturf campaigners seem to be out in full force. Chris also noticed this article, where despite the commenters' protests to the contrary, one is left to wonder just what is up with the Scientology-sounding tone that all the various pro-Zune snippets being sighted here and there seem to affect. Like everybody who's bullish on it is some kind of marketing dweeb reading boilerplate fed to him through a blinking earpiece. You can almost hear them being read in that same nasal, plosive-laden voice that the guy in those Gilbert Gottfried "Clippy Gets Clipped" videos has—the IT guy who says "Office Ecks-Pee is a greaT upgKrade!"
I'm sure that's how Apple fans sound to the rest of the world, too; but I really think there's a difference. Off the top of my head I'd imagine it has to do with how with Apple products, people use their prescribed, corporate-fed vocabulary ("Digital Hub", anyone?) to defend existing products that we actually use and demonstrably enjoy; whereas when it comes to Microsoft stuff, it always seems to be about brand-new products or upgrades to existing stuff, stuff that it's vitally important to buy if you want to climb that ladder and grab that brass ring. It's that sort of thing that leads one to imagine that nobody would plump for Office or the Zune unless they personally stood to profit from each sale. You don't quite get that feeling from someone who writes long tracts on how great his six-year-old Power Mac is or why the first-generation iPod was the purest in execution and had the best, most tactilely satisfying interface.
That all said, I'm sure the Zune will be cool by the time its third generation or so rolls around; that's the way it always is with Microsoft: get the products into people's hands, like sleeper-cell Trojans, and then worry about upgrades later, because that's the easy part. That way you get the twin benefits of early (ha!) entry into the market, and low cost of marketing the version that really matters.
But by that time, who knows what generation of iPods will be out? Apple's still got plenty of room left to improve its offerings; a larger-screen video-centric iPod is a gimme by this point, and rental-based movie downloads now that they're into that market with both feet. But it remains to be seen precisely what good the wi-fi stuff will do it. That Engadget article doesn't exactly make the features sound all that luscious:
Can send songs / albums for the 3 x 3 trial. Songs past the three days / listens are deleted at next sync, but catalogued on your PC for record-keeping should you want to purchase them later. No word on whether Microsoft is going to keep track of which files are traded.
Uh... what? Yeah, that sounds like a compelling use case.
I find myself thinking that Apple will never even bother adding wi-fi to the iPod—how useful is it to sync wirelessly, anyway? If I'm sitting next to my computer, I've got a frickin' cable right here—and won't suffer a single sale for it. They seem to have an almost uncanny ability to gauge which features people will actually care about, no matter how the pundits might scoff at their absence—no FM tuner! Ha! Who'd ever buy a music player without an FM tuner?—and I can't help but think that even if all those white earbuds I see at the gym were connected to Zunes instead of iPods, which is the best-case scenario for this discover-nearby-devices stuff, I wouldn't exactly be interested in making eye contact with the people around me after browsing their libraries and sucking down their interesting-looking tracks while trundling away on the cross-trainer. Who does Microsoft think they're marketing this social technology stuff to—the desperately lonely?
And as usual, Penny Arcade catches on fast.
Via Sam M.
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