[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.