Why The Zune Will Outdo The iPod
The Zune’s introduction was met with much criticism from the Apple community and was passed off as an iPod knockoff. Recently, Microsoft updated the platform and proved why Apple should be wary of the Redmond based company.
Consumer friendly hardware. Those three words don’t seem like something that would go hand in hand with Microsoft, but when it comes to the Zune, the two share the same traits. Compared to the iPod and even iPhone, the Zune lacks in design and capabilities, but after the recent introduction of two new flash players and a product refresh, Microsoft just showed how a product should be made in terms of support.
Apple’s intentions are locking down the iPhone and iPod Touch to deter any sort of added functionality; what you get is what’s in the box. Apple has been pushing out updates to make it more appealing to users, but there is a serious flaw in why Apple is doing it.
Apparently, Apple would rather lock you out of your iPhone and limit you to a walled garden of features. So you are being tempted to upgrade and gain new apps and other cool things, but it’s a ploy to tempt users who hacked their iPhones to upgrade and reset things to how Apple wanted them.
The Zune, on the other hand, had its software upgraded to that of the newer interface shipping on all new models. Tell me, would Apple think of upgrading their older iPods in such a way? Of course not, they’d rather you buy a new iPod just to increase sales.
Take, for instance, some other miniscule features that are disabled in the iPod Touch. Why is it that I can add a new calendar entry on my iPhone but when I turn to the iPod Touch—which runs the same exact OS—I cannot add a new entry? Now why is it that it takes a couple added lines to a .plist to enable a feature which had no bugs?
Will the Zune take over the iPod right now? Would Windows Mobile based phones squash the iPhone now? No way, the opportunity will come when Apple slips up and their user base becomes fed up with all the crippling and disabling of basic features and add-ons.
When this happens, Microsoft will be in the perfect position to take over the iPod and iPhone market share. They’ve got the resources, power, and hardware to accomplish this.
The current trend in technology is the convergence of devices; why not make a Windows Mobile phone combined with the Zune. Not so interesting right? Oh, how about some third party goodness and compatibility with other platforms and media stores. When it all comes down to it, Apple will want you locked in to their proprietary platform while Microsoft will take a different approach.
I won’t avoid the fact that almost every tech company out there would want to lock you in to their own stuff. Microsoft, in my opinion, would like to lock you down as well but keep it more open than Apple. They have a tendency of doing so, but in the process throwing in as much compatibility as possible with many other things.
Face it, as good as the iPhone is, as good as Apple wants it to be, Microsoft will slaughter them if they continue down the course they are on.
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Comments
“Tanner, your articles are generally well researched and thought out. But here you’re engaging in a surprising amount of FUD. Well even Michael Jordan had his off days.”
thats odd, jordan never made mistakes. ever. no joke, did you watch him in the 90’s? if he was a villain in comic book he would destroy planets.
too bad the ipod has a competing product, too bad creative isnt as financially sound as bill gates and microsoft. or else apple would be where it was 10 years ago(shocker)going bankrupt
Zune is just another product that honestly can compete with ipods. Really. We know that Ipod touch and Iphones are a bit advance compared to zune 2 but if you compare zune 2 to ipod classic, i must say zune wins the game. Why? same price, bigger screen and more ‘cool’ features like sharing stuff and wifi syncing. Ipod classic is cool 2 years ago. Touch and the iphone are great but lets not compare it with the zune, they are different. I think apple should really consider zune as a competitor because it will just make the market more competitive and will create cooler gadgets. Competition is good for us consumers. gadgets are getting cheaper and better. So there you go.
I think the Zune 4/8 GB takes the market that the new iPod Nano abandoned. I really think the new Nano’s form is a step backwards (wide and short). It’s a case where Apple abandoned a market it created.
Microsoft can make bigger in-roads into the iPod market if it can take a bigger jump. It is frankly too conservative in its approach. There is always a 3rd generation (3 tries again?) to get it right.
This article is so silly and pointless.
> Apple’s intentions are locking down the iPhone and iPod Touch to deter
> any sort of added functionality; what you get is what’s in the box
Is there anything you get with the Zune that’s *not* in the box??
> The Zune, on the other hand, had its software upgraded to that of the
> newer interface shipping on all new models. Tell me, would Apple think
> of upgrading their older iPods in such a way?
Apple does this all the time, as long as the product isn’t significantly older
or outdated. The Zune has been out for how long? Apple has stated from
the beginning that they’ll be adding new features to future upgrades of
the iPhone, and they already have with the Wifi iTunes store and a bunch
of other things.
> Why is it that I can add a new calendar entry on my iPhone but when
> I turn to the iPod Touch
Does the Zune even come with a calendar?!
> The current trend in technology is the convergence of devices; why not
> make a Windows Mobile phone combined with the Zune.
Because Windows Mobile isn’t that great? Even before the iPhone, I’d
refuse to buy any phones with WM on them.
> When it all comes down to it, Apple will want you locked in to their
> proprietary platform while Microsoft will take a different approach.
Because Microsoft doesn’t lock you into anything? First they take over
the market, then once they have a lot of marketshare everything goes
down the drain. Web developers have been struggling with IE for a long
time until Microsoft got scared of Firefox.
When it all comes down to it, Apple will want you locked in to their proprietary platform while Microsoft will take a different approach.
That is indeed an un-frickin-believable sentence.
@Benji, but is it not true? Apple has a history of locking things down one or another (even if they do open access to it later). That can be said for almost any tech company but in my opinion, Microsoft would be the type to through a crap ton of options, apps and whatever addons you may want and say “Ok, you have this huge selection but that’s it” where Apple will say “ok, you have this limited selection but at some point it may open up, we won’t tell you when but you are on your own.”
Microsoft only ever peddles proprietary platforms. It’s the bread, the butter, the bacon, lettuce and tomato of what they do.
Apple did something no-one else was brave or diligent enough to: forge their own music store that avoided the far more restrictive MS DRM used by all the other DAP manufacturers. That has resulted in more openness, not less.
MS was fundamentally trying to peddle a DRM system to rule the whole audio distribution world. Thanks to iPod/iTunes coming along with a better product, it failed.
Think how keen MS has been to pander to the whims of the DRM-loving Labels—note their willingness to pay the evil “piracy tax” to Universal, a $1 charge on each player that is frankly a crime against nature.
It is precisely and solely because MS has failed to conquer the world with their closed, restrictive DRM system that we are now seeing such momentum towards DRM-free music.
And it is precisely and solely because Apple has beaten them to market dominance with a better product that MS has failed.
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Think how much more open OS X is compared to Windows. I mean Darwin is frickin’ open source! So is Webkit! The development environment is included free with every copy of the OS sold. It runs a huge variety of UNIX utilities.
Look at the incredible support for open standards in OS X Server! Wake up and smell… MS calcifying in its own proprietary excrescences?