Gruber's Magic 8 Ball on Zune

You cannot tell much from a bad picture. The Zune will be more and the MS fans love it already. You can find more at the Zune Forums http://www.zunemax.com/forum/index.php

"besides the crazed fanatics who said it was inferior due to the buttons on top, puhleeeze!"

Call me a crazed fanatic then, because I HATE the buttons on my 3G. You're lying in bed, listening to an audiobook. You reach over to pick up your iPod and "Doh!" you hit the rewind button by mistake. Now you get to scan through your entire book to find your spot. Or you try to turn on the backlight in the dark and don't realize you're holding down the Play button instead of the Menu button, turning it off instead of turning on the light. Lame. The thing is completely unusable by feel. Or perhaps your fingertips aren't in ideal "iPod control" condition and the buttons don't respond at all. Bah.

I can't wait until mine dies so I can get a new one. Dang thing just keeps running, and running, and running...

"Outlook not so good"? That magic 8-ball knows everything. I think I'll ask it about Exchange Server next!

The Zune marketing feature that intrigues me the most is the one where Microsoft will replace all your iTMS bought songs with Zune ones, and pick up the tab for doing so.

Wow! What if I have 300 songs? That's about 300 * 0.70 = $210 they're paying just to get me to use their Zune, which must exceed their gross margin on the product by a huge amount.

But I heard a rumor on TWiT that it would be limited to 25 songs. In which case, what's the point.

Anyway, I think Apple WILL lose marketshare as a result of Zune, possibly a fair chunk, especially if Microsoft goes medieval on their ass, and by medieval I mean quasi-antitrust activity: Zune Media Player coming pre-installed on Vista, using secret APIs to make Zune Media Player work better than iTunes (eg, ActiveSync vs Palm Desktop), etc.

"He acts like a completely Microsoft-controlled system from the player to the music store is a bad idea, except has cited that as the main reason Apple's system works so well in the past."

Exactly - he's saying that the model that Apple managed to make work can be copied by Microsoft, but they won't be able to do it well. That's what makes it a bad idea. It's not the concept of it that makes it a bad idea, it's the fact that Microsoft will be behind it.

Oh, I didn't realize one of the requirements of being a Mac geek is liking Daring Fireball. My mistake...

In my opinion, the article focuses more on being funny than informative or insightful. For instance, Gruber claims that Microsoft could pull the same move as they do with the 360 and sell the unit for a loss, except this isn't a game console we're talking about: selling at a loss is not a common practice for mp3 players (it is for consoles) AND there aren't expensive $60 games to make the loss back. Then he goes off on a tangent about how a next-gen gaming system is louder and bigger than its competiton... Which is related to the Zune how? He acts like a completely Microsoft-controlled system from the player to the music store is a bad idea, except has cited that as the main reason Apple's system works so well in the past. My point is the article is a drawn-out way of saying Gruber thinks the Zune sucks, even though we really don't know much about it yet.

Honestly, though, I'm just a member of the lowest common denominator, so disregard this message.

That was very entertaining - I don't think you have to specifically be a mac geek to enjoy that quality of the article.

Gruber offers insight few people in the tech world do. From the scobleizer to mossberg, to dvorak, it seems like tech bloggers write mostly boring and moronic drivel pandered to the lowest common denominator: the average consumer.

daring fireball is entertaining, informative, and well written; by a mac geek, for mac geeks. If you don't get it, no problem.

You're just not one.

3rd gen was a nice desing (besides the crazed fanatics who said it was inferior due to the buttons on top, puhleeeze!), but the new 5th gen i think are the best so far, much sleaker and stylized, but the buttons don't lite up....

I dunno, I thought that article was dumb, but I've always thought Gruber was overrated anyway. As a Mac user, I don't care about Zune. At all.