[_zskd]

I went with the Zune / have avoided apple products for years because I find their advertising smarmy. So, I went with Zune and received ENDLESS RIDICULE.

BUT! Zune was great. I had the zune app with spotify-style music subscription before spotify was a thing.

The Zune software was really pretty and nice, and you could plug your zune into your computer and it would act as an external hard drive without fighting with it.

[peruvian]

Everyone always rallies around the Zune HD like it was unfairly treated by the market. I had one and no, it was overall not a good move by Microsoft.

The Zune HD was a decent music player, don't get me wrong. Well designed, easy to plug and play, good battery, etc. But it released at the same price point as the iPod Touch (iTouch as some called it) and looked like and was advertised as a competitor. Even had the same general design.

Yet MS did not have the foresight to make the Zune app friendly. Zune HD had app "support" (e.g. calculator app that took 5+ seconds to load, barren app store if it even had one). iPod Touch exploded (everyone in my high school got one for Christmas in 2008/2009!) because of the apps. For Apple, the music was a solved problem and not something worth talking about in length. Being able to have a music player that had Wi-Fi and could play games was a genius idea back when no one had smartphones or most people didn't want to spend the money on one. MS just felt like it was catching up and it showed all the way through the Windows Phones.

As I mentioned, both the original Zune and Zune HD lines are good devices but were hampered by MS' slow execution and lack of vision of what people wanted.

Can't comment on the actual Zune subscription service. Never used that.

[hakfoo]

The iPod Touch was basically taking an iPhone of the same vintage and cutting out the cellular modem. So a lively app ecosystem was ready to fall out of the box.

MS had nothing comparable to build the Zunes from. Windows CE/Mobile was a technically valid potential base, but it wouldn't easily convert to a sexy consumer-friendly system.

[elboru]

I really never understood the hate, I had the first version and it was amazing, the UI looked a lot better and futuristic than iPod’s (at least for my taste), it fell solid and well done, it had video output which replaced my dvd at the time.

[joezydeco]

Maybe because it was engineered by Toshiba?

[giancarlostoro]

A bunch of kids at my school had them I eventually got an iPod Nano cause it was an affordable option. After getting used to it I eventually convinced my parents to get me an iPod Classic. Years later I found out just how much cooler the Zune was.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

I suspect that WindowsPhone 8.1, the nicest phone software ever, was descended from that design effort.

I'd very much like to see a story or an interview with the designer(s), who deserve recognition for that work. If such a piece exists, a link would be appreciated.

[com2kid]

> I suspect that WindowsPhone 8.1, the nicest phone software ever, was descended from that design effort.

Windows Phone 7 was a direct decedent. WP 8.1 was an iteration on that design language.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Right, I had a WindowsPhone 6.5 device from HTC, and it was rather meh on nice hardware. But it could boot an Android from XDA on SD card with little fuss, and that was an improvement ;-)

Now I'm just hoping the incumbents copy enough of the good design to make the loss bearable.

[paulie_a]

I never understood the love for the iPod, it was pretty mediocre. It did have iTunes integration which had the ability to purchase music and sync, but it had and still has a shitty interface.

Edit: I get that we have to worship Steve jobs, but the iPod wasn't revolutionary. Others before and after did it better.

[biotech]

Not sure I understand the disagreement here; I think you're right on. I had an mp3 player before the iPod came out; it's not like iPod was the first mp3 player. The iPod had a nice external "look" and great marketing, but functionally it was much more difficult to use than other mp3 players that were available at that time. I was told iTunes worked better on the mac, but my experience using it on the PC was nothing short of painful. Other mp3 players had the capability of of using simple drag-and-drop functionality to move your mp3's over to the player, without the need to learn a new program and without forcing a different idea of music library management on the user.

[kungtotte]

The only thing I can remember it having was the smart playlist feature, where you could construct playlists using criteria like "Has at least 3 stars" and "Not played in five days" etc.

Though that was more of an iTunes feature, that I wouldn't mind seeing in Spotify!

It let you make auto-updating lists to keep your library fresh, and not rely on the shuffle feature.

[matthewmacleod]

“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.”

The market clearly values some attributes of devices differently from you. That’s fine, and it’s good that there are a variety of different decices out there to fulfill different needs. But “mediocre” or “shitty” are really not useful words in this context.

[paulie_a]

They absolutely are apt descriptions as an opinion. Clearly the iPod was wildly popular, I was questioning why and described my viewpoint of an "ok" device with plenty of competitors. That also had better interfaces.

[village-idiot]

The iPod got the first mover advantage when it comes to large MP3 players.

[rz2k]

I had a Creative Nomad before the first iPod came out, which also had about 4GB of storage.

1. The Creative Nomad had a slow-refresh screen with mushy buttons, vs a wheel on smooth ball-bearings and a quickly refreshing screen and intuitive hierarchy to navigate

2. The iPod took about a second per song to transfer music with Firewire, compared to the ridiculously slow USB on the Creative Nomad

3. The Creative Zomad was a little larger than a Discman, and fit in a very large pocket. The iPod fit into jean pockets

[paulie_a]

To be fair firewire wasn't used all be that much. It really was under deployed. Apple didn't have the clout to push back then. When you are 5-10 percent of a market for twenty years, maybe they are not the power house they are known as

The nomad was far superior to the iPod in my experience (you didn't have to use the garage iTunes software). Currently the Dell XPS line kicks the shit out of anything apple has made. A pure Android pixel surpasses an iPhone in every way possible.

[Technetium_Hat]

Not every way possible. The pixel is a great device, but in some small areas it can't even compete with the iPhone. For example, haptics. the current iPhone has haptics so much better than anyone else it's not even funny. And on the software side, they have the ridiculously user-friendly airDrop.

[paulie_a]

Sorry to say the iPhone might still be sorta competitive, but lost the war a while ago

And yes every way possible reason, its on my list "don't recommend unless I hate the person" if I could give a yelp review, it edge out Samsumng slightly

[nathanvanfleet]

You definitely ended up on the right side of history on that one

[dominotw]

me too man. I don't remember why zune was such a butt of the jokes back then, I think it had something to do with brick like form.