As Steve Jobs introduces more improvements to its iPod line, Microsoft counters with its own service, Zune.
June 15, 2007 (Press Release) --
When I spoke to Steve Jobs about what I called the “new fall line” of iPods—including an eye-popping reworking of the most popular pod, the nano, and a Houdini-like shrinking act on the stripped down shuffle-he resisted the term. “It’s not even a fall line,” he told me. “It’s great we’re producing these in time for the holidays, but these will last a long time. We enjoy a really good market share, and yet even with that, we’re completely revamping the whole line. We’re not standing still. If anybody’s going to obsolete our products, it’s going to be us.”
That last statement is timely because, as Jobs well knows, this autumn his archrival Microsoft is launching its most ambitious assault yet on the iPod with a set of media devices and services known as Zune. Putting aside the ridiculous name (which sounds like an evil villain in a Star Trek fan fiction tale) Zune has to be taken more seriously than previous efforts from the Redmond, Wash., software giant.
Don’t expect this to threaten Apple too much this year, though. Once again, the company has managed to drive up the got-to-have-it level so high that even people who are perfectly happy with their iPods are hungrily eyeing the new nano and the diminutive shuffle. The latter, a $79 aluminum clip-on, is as much fashion item as player, the ultimate in wearable technology. Millions of people will be delighted to receive them as holiday gifts. And a big population of music fans and tiny-TV watchers will be considering the ample storage of the top of the line iPod, the video-enabled model that holds 80 gigabytes, enough for 20,000 songs or 10 hours of video. That’s just about enough for an entire season of “24” episodes.
I haven’t handled the Zune device, but from its description and pictures it doesn’t have the heart-stopping appeal of the iPod. But though Microsoft is woefully behind in fashion, and is way behind in building something like the iTunes store, the company is preparing for a long-term struggle. Zune is specifically designed as a platform for future development, the would-be center of an ecosystem. While Apple has done a tremendous job in cultivating thousands of third-party add-ons, one has to remember that no ecosystem in the computer world is as vast as that of Microsoft, which supports tens of thousands of software developers writing for various versions of Windows. Microsoft also plans to build on its recent push in “social” software (like blogs and collaborative applications) to make a system that, according to a statement from Zune pointman J Allard, “helps bring artists closer to their audience and helps people find new music and develop social connections.”
Source: http://yahoo.com.cn
That last statement is timely because, as Jobs well knows, this autumn his archrival Microsoft is launching its most ambitious assault yet on the iPod with a set of media devices and services known as Zune. Putting aside the ridiculous name (which sounds like an evil villain in a Star Trek fan fiction tale) Zune has to be taken more seriously than previous efforts from the Redmond, Wash., software giant.
Don’t expect this to threaten Apple too much this year, though. Once again, the company has managed to drive up the got-to-have-it level so high that even people who are perfectly happy with their iPods are hungrily eyeing the new nano and the diminutive shuffle. The latter, a $79 aluminum clip-on, is as much fashion item as player, the ultimate in wearable technology. Millions of people will be delighted to receive them as holiday gifts. And a big population of music fans and tiny-TV watchers will be considering the ample storage of the top of the line iPod, the video-enabled model that holds 80 gigabytes, enough for 20,000 songs or 10 hours of video. That’s just about enough for an entire season of “24” episodes.
I haven’t handled the Zune device, but from its description and pictures it doesn’t have the heart-stopping appeal of the iPod. But though Microsoft is woefully behind in fashion, and is way behind in building something like the iTunes store, the company is preparing for a long-term struggle. Zune is specifically designed as a platform for future development, the would-be center of an ecosystem. While Apple has done a tremendous job in cultivating thousands of third-party add-ons, one has to remember that no ecosystem in the computer world is as vast as that of Microsoft, which supports tens of thousands of software developers writing for various versions of Windows. Microsoft also plans to build on its recent push in “social” software (like blogs and collaborative applications) to make a system that, according to a statement from Zune pointman J Allard, “helps bring artists closer to their audience and helps people find new music and develop social connections.”
Source: http://yahoo.com.cn
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