[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Microsoft Zune Ad Takes a Shot at ITunes here

[slappy]

"Certified Financial Planner"

Microsoft wants us to trust this guy? Financial Planner? No thanks.

[lamorpa]

An you wouldn't trust a financial planner becase of what? He's not an Apple fanboy? What? Really. What? Or are you unable to distinguish between financiers/Bankers and financial planners?

This message was edited to remove a personal attack that is against Community Standards. Please refer to the Community Standards: http://www.pcworld.c...community.html.
Message was edited by: smax013

[Walker70]

If you do not have a large personel collection, or even if you do, Microsoft gives you the opportunity to listen to all types of music, new releases and classics for the monthly subscription cost. Plus you get 10 a month to keep. It is a great package for those who enjoy music and like to listen outside of your current box. I have become a fan of several artists I may have never experienced without the package.

[angryshortguy]

So by that reasoning, my pc would cost me $125,000 to max out my hard drive with software.

Or my Blu Ray player would cost me $100's of thousands of dollars in movies.

Oh, wait! How about my colon? Does that mean I have to keep using my toilet until it stops flushing?

Dear God! Does this mean I have to purchase every single pay-per-view and premium channel that my cable company offers?

Why didn't anybody explain this to me before I went broke?

Where do people come up with this tripe?
And worse, who buys into this?

I've yet to actually meet somebody who ownes a Zune. Do they exist?

[slntwtchr]

What I find humorous is that the reality of the situation is that a very small percentage (you can do a search and find an estimate) of people's iPods are filled with legitimate downloads. Seriously, for right or for wrong, how many people do you really think are purchasing music? If they were, the music industry's digital sales would be 100 times higher than they are.

I seem to recall MS tryin this argument when the Zune first came out.

And I think the shill for MS who commented shot the plan in the foot...AND YOU GET 10 A MONTH TO KEEP...awesome. I want to keep EVERYTHING I get access to. I'm not renting music.

[smax013]

The part that amuses me the most is that it is not like other competitors to Apple/iTunes have not tried the whole subscription approach and fared too well. Maybe Microsoft can do what others have not, but I kind of doubt it. While there are certain a significant number of people out there that like the whole subscription system, it seems that battle has already be fought and the iTunes "buy your music" method came out on top.

[jinx101]

I have a Rhapsody subscription and I LOVE it. I didn't think I'd dig the subscription model but I've found a lot of music I wouldn't have otherwise. It works to load up my old Creative MP3 player which rocks... however, Apple being Apple has dictated your usage of their products and hasn't allowed them to transfer those subscriptions to iPod's.

The iPod touch is the only reason I deal with Apple at all. Once a suitable alternative with an intuitive touch interface comes out, I'm done with Apple (there are no good alternatives to the iPod Touch yet that I've personally seen though :( ).

[celebfreezone]

I've been considering a Zune for my next mp3 player. But I'll be passing on the subscription.
For that much money I can download tracks from eMusic.com for a lot less and I get to keep all of them. Depending on the plan you opt for your per track price is .21-.60
(Granted I don't listen to top 40, emusic is for fans of independent labels not the big four.)

[jabberwolf]

WTF its right.
Of course we will all download mp3s illegally but trying to get them from itunes is a joke.
So if you want them legally, the zune package work...it just works!
I fricken miss URGE when that was around as that worked as well... and it was just a small small fee... nothing like being raped by Apple!

[EastCoast]

If you simply enjoy listening to streaming music by genre, there are free alternatives to Rhapsody such as Pandora, FlyCast etc. Don’t know how young the Rhapsody subscribers are, but I’m guessing too young to realize the long term disadvantage of renting anything.
Unlike videos, you’ll want to listen to your growing music collection for the rest of your life. Thank god we weren’t renting all our music since back in the 1980’s or we’d be hanging ourselves right now! Ten years from now you’ll wake up and realize (if Rhapsody is even still around) that you don’t want to continue paying their rising monthly subscription fees, and your vast collection of music will vanish as soon as you stop paying them. The only winner with a rental deal is the subscription landlord.
Renting anything long-term is a bad deal, no matter what the item is, house, car, skis, music. If you’re going to use it for a long term years, own it. Period. Thankfully, the sales results clearly show that the vast majority of people understand the long term consequences and refuse to rent their music.

[zunater]

I have to say, I've had my Zune for about a year and a half. In the first place, the software is LOUSY--even the recent upgrades. Microsoft has a perfectly good and quite sophisticated mp3 manager in its Windows Media Player, but the Zune can't use it! They have their own manager that has about half of the capabilities of the WMP.

Second, I've had the subscription and it didn't work out at all. Like someone said, you are basically renting the music, and the moment you aren't a subscriber anymore the zune songs won't work. But that's not the worst of it:

I have bought dozens of songs (yes, I buy them, I don't steal them) from the Zune marketplace, and probably more than a third of them don't work anymore because Zune can't find the licensing rights on my new computer--even though the songs are there, they won't play because Zune can't confirm the license.

There are some seriously wrong things with Zune software (doesn't even have a clock!) and although the hardware is good, the thing that makes it run, the software, is terrible, and the licensing is horrible. Lots of people have had these problems (and lots more have probably dumped their Zunes for an iPod at this point--I can't afford to do that).

[blafouille]

Not only the price is better but wma is better too...good deal for the quality,but non compress music will still better,I listen my music in wav at least is a matter of education...

[Evildave]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/

[bbvammy]

OMG!

I have Ubuntu, so I am not Windows or Apple.

I have Creative Zen, so I am not Zune or iTunes again.

I feel so left out

Hold me!!! ]:)

[BigKev79]

Yet youll buy all the bull the Mac ads will sell you? Even though at the heart of the actual data its mostly wrong or incorrectly stated? Stable and secure systems? Name me one enterprise that runs Mac server? Why not? Because there stable and secure right? Why was a Macbook the first to fail in a hacking competition if Apple systems are so secure? Hacked in 2 minutes! Yet the Apple ads will have you believe they are the most secure things out there... I think the Zune Pass is a great "Option" to the service. You dont need to do it, but its there. Napster does it. But Zune lets you add 10 songs to your collection every month for free as part of the service. But you dont need to to use it. Sounds like some of the Apple elite got a little sore and had to fire back when they realized how much crappier their iTunes software really is. And the Zune HD? I think it will mop the floor with apple this year.

[EastCoast]

PC Magazine writes today - "Outfitted with a 480 by 272, 16:9 widescreen OLED, the Zune HD purportedly offers a brighter, crisper video experience, although the screen's resolution is a few pixels shy of the iPod Touch's 480 by 320 array."
Not that the term “HD” means much of anything on a teeny-tiny screen. But that said, even the HD version (coming out this fall) of the Zune is behind the old standard screen of Apple's iPod Touch. Mop the floor with Apple? What fairy tale world are you living in?
The Zune is the Yugo of the MP3 players. Yugo owners, the few that owned them, loved their cars too. The rest of us just shook our heads and laughed.

[smax013]

BigKev79 said:

And the Zune HD? I think it will mop the floor with apple this year.

Just like the pundits predicted that the Zune would take out the iPod when it was first released, eh?

I am not saying it cannot happen...it just might...but I have watched countless "iPod killers" come and go and Apple still dominates the market. Of course, if you keep saying that it will happen, then maybe at some point you will get lucky and it actually will happen.

Face it, "entrenched" products are always tough to "de-throne". This is why the Mac OS and Linux will be hard pressed to ever over take Windows in the OS market. And it is why anyone will be hard pressed to over take Apple in the MP3/media player market.

Now, if Apple makes a major misstep at the same time that some other company (such as Microsoft) "hits a homerun", then it becomes more possible.

It will certainly be interesting to see if anything is different this time.

[EastCoast]

A vivid example of a misstep Smax013 speaks of would be shown with Sony’s crumbling PlayStation empire. Sony owned the game console market and Microsoft was their bitch. As Microsoft came to market with a second upgraded X-Box (to lukewarm reviews of overheating issues and overly loud fan noise) Sony had sudden and serious Blu-Ray issues on their PlayStation units and were forced to delay the introduction of their updated console for an entire year. A year delay in the electronics business is an eternity.
This gave Microsoft the miracle from god opening to gain their current foothold and gave game creators a reason to start writing for the 360 instead of concentrating solely on PlayStation - the dominating platform before the embarrassing Sony delay.
Shame on Sony, but it was a lesson that could happen to any company - even the top dog.

[smax013]

EastCoast said:

A vivid example of a misstep Smax013 speaks of would be shown with Sony’s crumbling PlayStation empire. Sony owned the game console market and Microsoft was their bitch. As Microsoft came to market with a second upgraded X-Box (to lukewarm reviews of overheating issues and overly loud fan noise) Sony had sudden and serious Blu-Ray issues on their PlayStation units and were forced to delay the introduction of their updated console for an entire year. A year delay in the electronics business is an eternity.

This gave Microsoft the miracle from god opening to gain their current foothold and gave game creators a reason to start writing for the 360 instead of concentrating solely on PlayStation - the dominating platform before the embarrassing Sony delay.

Shame on Sony, but it was a lesson that could happen to any company - even the top dog.

I agree...Sony made a bad mistake by taking so long to get the PS3 out the door...and it gave Microsoft a LOT of time to offer the Xbox 360 with no real opposition...and thus, Microsoft gained the "entrenched" ground over Sony and Sony has paid the price ever since.

The point is that there has to be some really "game changing" type mistake for things to change usually. And there does not seem to be much that Apple is missing right now in iTunes and the iPod. Thus, I am not sure I see much of an opening for Microsoft. Does not mean that there is not one...but I just don't see it right now. There are certainly some gaps that Microsoft could try to exploit (such as maybe making a Zune HD version with a larger capacity hard drive compared to lower capacity flash memory...something Apple has refused to do), but I do not know if any of them are big enough "gaps" to allow Microsoft to "dethrone" Apple in the portable media device and online music/media content markets.

In the end, only time will tell.