Zune sums up everything I hate about Microsoft
With yesterdays launch of the Zune HD’s and the new Zune Software (4.0), it didn’t take me long to realise everything I hate about Microsoft can be summed up by using Zune examples.
1. Stupid region restrictions
Neither Zune HD or regular Zunes are for sale outside North America. Likewise, the Zune Pass isn’t available outside of NA. I know plenty of people who would drop their iPod for a Zune and the Zune pass, the music subscription model is an awesome idea, and the Zune HD is some awesome looking hardware.
I know the above is the factually correct representation of the world, but I really wish us dragons could give them money on a monthly basis so we could listen to various monster rock songs.
2. Bloatware
iTunes, 89meg; Songbird, 13.3meg, WinAmp, 9.8meg… Zune Player? 131meg – and it comes in x86 and x64 separate downloads. In typical fashion, Microsoft just have to have the largest program available. Why is it so big when most of it is visualisations and data pulled from the web? That brings me to my next gripe..
3. Custom UI framework – not WPF
Why is the Zune Player 131meg? Probably because they’ve implemented their own private UI framework based on Media Center rather than using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the framework we are constantly reminded of being "good" for media and the like.
WPF is supposed to be the successor to WinForms in .NET. It can use vectors for the interface, has hardware accelerated support, pixel shader support for effects… but where has Microsoft used it? Well, there is Expression Studio (a suite of applications for… making WPF/Silverlight apps) and the unreleased Visual Studio 2010 (…a program for developing WPF/Silverlight apps amongst other things)… I can’t think of any other examples.
The apparent lack of faith in their own framework leaves us WPF developers scratching our heads and wondering if we should be calling it quits on WPF, or striving on when they finally iron out a considerable number of the show stopper bugs (virtualisation problems, resize performance problems, text blurry problems) in .NET 4.0 (or possibly later!)
4. Overlapping Products
Instead of being content with just one media/music playing application, Microsoft have decided to reinvent the wheel and have two separate programs. Zune Player and Windows Media Player (WMP). It’s be great if the features in Zune Player were a super-set of those found in Windows Media Player 12, but it lacks a host of features found in the latest (and even some found in the previous) version of WMP.
| Zune Player | Windows Media Player 12 | |
| Handles multi-disc albums | Yes | No |
| Has DNLA Support | No | Yes |
| Has Windows 7 Support | Yes | Yes |
| No, really, Win7 support including Libraries | No | Yes |
| DVD Support | No | Yes |
| Detects Folder.jpg | Sort of | Yes |
| Detects folder.jpg hidden by WMP | No | Yes |
| Syncs Zune | Yes | No |
| Syncs other mp3 devices using MTP | No | Yes |
| Has "similar song/artist" playlist | Yes (Smart DJ) | No |
| Has "autoplaylist/smart playlist" | Yes | Yes |
| Plays Internet Radio playlists | No | Yes |
| Has taskbar mode | Yes | No (But WMP11 did) |
| Search-as-you-type | No | Yes |
| Podcast support | Yes | No |
The above shows that unless you really want the pretties or the few features WMP is lacking, there isn’t much in the way to convince me to use the Zune player.
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Some of these points hit home with me too. Point 1, Apple does this too. Licensing rights and stuff like that, they probably have to take a step at a time otherwise it could take too much staff or too much time to get many countries licensed at the same time (each region or country has different people to deal with to license content or get government rights to broadcast music etc.).
Point 2, bloatware, well, its not the biggest deal right? People download large files like that without breaking a sweat these days.
Point 3, agreed, but from what I heard, each group makes their own decisions, and will choose the right technology for what they need to do, what they already have in their hands, and the experience of their teams…
Point 4, yeah… silly. One should simply be canned. And rewritten in WPF :)
Yeah, one step at a time – but considering this is version 4 (zune 1, brown, zune 2, lots of colours, zune 3 flash, zune 4 = zune HD), you’d think they’d, at the very least, release the hardware across the globe. Or at least say “this is our plan”, rather than “screw the rest of you”.
Bloatware, yes, isn’t that big a deal, but it *is* a problem with a lot of Microsoft stuff.
The problem with each team making their own decisions and making their own technologies is it undermines “Microsoft is a platforms company”, when internally they can’t even agree on one platform! I’d *love* to have access to MCML/IRIS for my applications if I can get that sort of performance that WPF can’t get!
Perhaps Media Player should be removed from Windows like Windows Mail was, and be separated into another team which can produce more frequent updates? Merge it with the Zune software team, and it could be a winner.
1) Agreed, Fail. Nothing we can do about it but piss and moan.
2) Meh. The big thing is in how it’s updated. As long as it isn’t 131mb worth of suck every time there’s a patch (Similar to the near 90ish mb of itunes) then who cares. If it was over the 250mb then we’d have a problem.
3) Agreed, Not exactly cool, but hey if it works does it matter?
4) This is a huge pain in the ass. Don’t get me wrong I’d give up my grandmother for a Zune (Yes Really.) But seriously. Why can’t Windows Media player just play everything. And why can’t the Zune do the same for when you’re not at your computer?
I agree with Paul, ditch media player from Windows, let someone else deal with it, someone who isn’t afraid of rolling around with the Zune dudes.
agree you with on a number of points. i do love the zune pass but i always have to scour for people going to the states just to get one. i hope they will consider the rest of the world on the subscription model that is just awesome. glad too see i’m not the only one. although I am loving the zune software. :)
1: I’m sure if Microsoft owned the music it woul be avail everywhere. But they don’t so it is up to Columbia records or Sony and so on. They don’t want to give away the farm to places that are still using CD’s.
2: 100MB is like a flopy disk in the 90′s now a days. Tiny.
3: When you have 1 Billion users of windows you can’t go to far out onto the bleading edge on a mainsteam product.
4: Same as 1. It is probably based on license agreements and copy protection.
@JDoe:
1. So.. the reason Microsoft haven’t released the Zune hardware is because somebody else owns the music? Oh, you mean just Zune Pass? Music is sold everywhere. If it is attractive enough, music companies aren’t going to say no to more money – thats why Apple’s iTunes Music Store is present in many other countries
2. Sure, but for the functionality its bloated, since most of it is pulled online (artwork/etc).
3. Uhm, why is WPF a bleeding edge product? .NET 3.0/3.5 works on XP upwards (which is all Zune works on). If WPF is too bleeding edge for a “mainstream product”, how are developers in the windows ecosystem supposed to use it?
4. So… zune software lacks features found in an existing Microsoft product *because* of licensing? The only one I can think of would be DVD playback. Things like Windows 7 Library support, detecting folder.jpg’s hidden by WMP, syncing other devices via MTP (which was created by Microsoft) probably don’t have licensing issues!
1. I guess with the Zune Pass they could block certain IP addresses from accessing it. Can you all get things like Netflix.com? Of course without the actual DVD delivery. Just the steaming of Premiere TV shows and movies. Typically when something sounds simple it is because someone can make more money with the status quo.
3. If only people would at least upgrade to XP. I am amazed at how many people are still using win 95, win 98. Companies still rocking Win 2000 with win 2000 server. This was one of the reasons Vista had such a problem cause windows users expect that when they upgrade to Vista64 that their old printer (from 10 F*ing years ago) will still work and when it does not, Microsoft has a PR nightmare on their hands and suddenly a product is labeled crap. But when you took the same person and put them in a room with someone who knew what they are doing and say this is a specail fancy new version of windows they fall in love with it.
There are pros and cons to this. The other side of the coin is Apple. They have a cult following so they can change the entire structure of the OS every few years and people expect to have to trash all their old stuff and upgrade. This sucks for the customer but is Great for the Stock price. It’s up around 150% this year. And still has another 30% to go at least. NASDAQ:AAPL
I hope MSFT does open up the ZUNE some day to the rest of the world. I think it can crush the ipod and if they get some games on it Crush the P2P. Throw in some VOIP or Cell service and you have one bad ass device. Who knows maybe they are just using USA as a beta site for their master plan to take over the world. At least that is what the AAPL cult folowing says :)
I forgot to mention my theory on 4:
Since Zune pass is limited to 3 computers ONLY. My guess is if they put it in MP12 format they would lose this ability to track that feature. I’m sure this is a condition that the media giants made MSFT agree to. If that was removed I bet they could move it into their standard media players.
J Doe