Talking to Paul Thurrott
Many folks will know Paul Thurrott's work. Recently I had the opportunity to spend some time chatting about Zune with him, and they turned into a couple of articles (http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/zunestory.asp) and a podcast discussion (http://www.twit.tv/ww).
Paul's a great guy who's been skeptical of our first market entry, but we'll turn him around eventually....
8 Comments:
I hope you do turn him around. A guy that writes about MS all day should have loved the idea of a Microsoft mp3 player.
Atually he should be questioning MS moves. thats what I like about MS blogging. Its employees and others can question its move.
This is here updating...I wonder if MS will care to throw us a ballpark time frame on when it will happen. Q1, Q2, ...December 31st 2007.
I just hope that microsoft adds additional language support to their product. Many of us have songs that aren't in english...
I really wish somebody would explain to me the decision to leave DVR-MS video format out. I was sincerely mystified as to why I could not watch my recorded TV shows on that beautiful screen.
The comment in the linked article that video is a 'niche' is hilarious. Why do you think people buy Media Center PCs? I mean, if NPD is to be believed, Media Center PCs accounted for almost 30% of desktop sales at retail in 2005--Microsoft knows this, and yet my fancy new Zune player can't do a damn thing with the 600GB or so of recorded TV I currently have.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Zune. I find the UI to be far superior to the iPod (and when's the last time you heard *that* about a Microsoft product), I greatly prefer the feel of the device, the screen is absolutely knockout, and I think I may be one of the 2.5 people who actually enjoy the wireless feature, even in its current incarnation.
But for the love of Pete, would you please get me my DVR-MS fix? I know, I know, there are untold millions of pieces of software out there that will do it, but I am sorry, this is just something the device and the software should just *do*.
Amen Brian ... They've gotten Paul to back off a bit with the harshness. But, those silly ommissions (no hard drive support, no dvr-ms, no games, no contacts) won't be forgiven until they're fixed. I'm actually pretty freakin tired of hearing what people don't use and how few people use certain features. If no one uses video, why make that screen so large. Truth is, there's a large screen, and a lot of dvr-ms files waiting to be played on it... make it happen MS. The whining about "niche" features and having to "check" off features that aren't important is getting old. Paul may have been brainwashed a bit but the fact remains that the device is incomplete. It's good, better than the ipod in many ways, but incomplete nonetheless. For crying out loud, increase the size of the team so we can get prompt updates. We're going on a month since retail and I'm still dealing with this buggy XP app they confusingly call zune as well. To top it off, I'm relegated to dragging and dropping podcasts into my zune software instead of dealing with a nice client. I know, I know...updates are coming in 07.
In other words, deal with all your nagging issues like a man until we are serious enough about the Zune platform to fix these issues and provide you with a solid experience. Sincerely, MS...
Let me guess, there will be some huge mega update in May of 07 that will fix loads of features. Or in other words, the features that "they" decide are important. Meanwhile, the "niche" features that we still crave for will be still on a white board somewhere. Somwhere, Stevie boy is grinning. For the forseeable future, his ipod has nothing to worry about.
re: DVR-MS. Yes, tons of media center PCs are selling. 90% of them look like the ones at:
http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/dimen?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
What do they all have in common? No tuner card! Thus, no DVR-MS.
Don't get me wrong, we will get to it, but don't overestimate the amount of actual DVRMS that's out there.
I also think there's a confusion in one of the above posts; there's a difference between "missing features" (which we have) and a solid experience (which I'd argue we also have, at least on par with iTunes). One definitely came at the expense of the other.
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