Zune End

28 September 2006

$249.99

November 14th.

It’s all over folks. Move along. Nothing to see here.

At the same price as the iPod, why would you buy one unless you have something against Apple? It has about 2 features that the iPod doesn’t have – wireless and built in radio – but they’ve crippled the wireless with nasty DRM and you can get radio add-ons for the iPod so really; they’ve got nothing.

In addition, you get to use the wondrous Zune store – using the same pricing model as iTunes, as well as a pricey ($15/m)subscription option. Couple this with the news that in Windows Media Player 11 they’re tying your DRM’d downloads to one machine ( source ) – so if your disk dies, or you get a new machine all your files are lost – and you get a really great customer focused experience.

Oh, sorry – no you don’t.

I got all mixed up there for a moment.

I really wish the Zune had been good. Seriously – there’s nothing worse for the end user then a dominant player that has the market all sewn up, as they no longer have the drive to keep innovating. If someone comes along with a player that’s better then the iPod then that’d be really great – everybody would benefit. The same goes with the iTunes store – it’s dangerously dominant at the moment in an area that is undergoing massive growth. It’s a lot easier to see someone effectively challenging the iTunes store then it is the iPod, as as soon as someone (MySpace? eMusic?) gets the majors on board with a DRM free store then people will start to really get on board.

I’m not, however, saying that most people care about DRM – most people don’t even know what it is. However, the influencers do care, and they’ll be the first to switch. Then they’ll recommend it to their friends. And their friends.

But the iPod? That’s altogether a trickier proposition.

One last thing; why are Microsoft going after the standard iPod? Everybody knows that the iPod Nano sells much better…

From: Articles

28 September 2006