What I learned this year shipping Zune 2
I owe you guys some more posts, but I'll start with my lessons learned from Year 2 of Zune:
- Shipping is good. Shipping is learning.
- We really can execute on an innovative end to end experience.
- The Zune software is amazingly nice. It's also taught me that Burl Ives did some of the tracks on AC/DC's back in black album. See here if this is a mystery to you.
- The team can really rock n roll and get updates out rapidly.
- It takes a whole lot of usability testing to get a Zune pad juuuuuust riiiiiiight.
- Interaction designers look really funny with false long fingernails on so they can test the Zune Pad.
- Ditto me re the long fingernails.
- You can eat too much Yummi Teriyaki.
- Strategy is nice, but it's possible to overdo it. But it's ok as long as it doesn't get in the way of executing. Sort of like Yummi Teriyaki, come to think of it...
- Zune cards are much cooler than I would have thought.
- Accessories can be fun.
- Shipping the new features and clients to our best/early adopter customers through their v1 devices was the right thing to do.
- Three managers in a year? No problem.
- The cake is a lie. There is no cake.
Congrats to the whole team. And thanks to everyone in the community that's enjoying the new features and/or products!
posted by David Caulton at 4:52 PM
10 Comments:
You will be baked, and then there will be cake.
Thanks for shipping the Zune too, by the way. I'm an iPod user and will probably continue to be, but I've tried the Zune and I like what I see (and hear). Competition is good. :)
First things first, congratulations to you and the Zune team on shipping a wonderful product.
The team shipped too little update last year, now I know why. There are so many changes (for the better) in the new product that I am still trying to get everything in.
Having said that will we see a lot more updates this time around?
Thanks,
Vaibhav
It's good to see that you still have a enough humor to joke about it. It's always very funny to remove the best features of the previous version in the current one.
Though I truly understand the hard work that went into the Zuneware v.2, I have to agree with what appears to be hundreds of Zune30 owners- the new software feels like 100 steps back from the level of control that one had in the Zune/WMP environment.
Not every user wants to only have one or two choices in how they use their portable media player- and that's what the Zune team has given us. This appears to be a 'use it our way or don't use it' situation. And for all the complaints (most valid IMHO) across the Zune forums there doesn't seem to be anyone from the development team willing to at least acknowledge these disgruntled users.
For many users like myself who were reasonably happy with the previous software this could all be solved if the Zune team would allow Zune access in WMP11. Again I understand the DRM issues and the need to filter users to the Marketplace site but it seems ridiculous for two Microsoft products such as Zune and WMP to be purposely cut off from each other. I predict a virtual immediate cessation of v.2 complaint if WMP11 would be opened up for the Zune.
The cake is a lie. There is no cake.
I can't concur with the sentiments regarding the new software. Actually, I didn't like the old one either, principally because I'm strongly opposed to free-form user interfaces that throw most GUI conventions and idioms that have entered the public subconscious over more than a decade out the window in favor of psychedelic and experimental new designs that require discovery of previously known idioms. Now you have to start clicking around to figure out what's a widget and what's just static eye candy, or how to change modes in the application, etc.
But I digress. Basically, the new software has hosed my music collection. Thankfully not the actual music files themselves, which still appear intact, but rather its view of what music I have. After configuring the software with my music folders, it started a scan and progressively added the media as it discovered it. Then suddenly, at the end of the scan, it systematically removed all the media again, one track at a time, within a few seconds, until nothing was left and I was told that the collection was empty. This cycle repeats itself every time and shut down and restart the Zune software: it builds the collection and then promptly discards it again. During the initial player sync it was also kind enough to remove about 500 or so tracks of around 3500 from the player, for whatever reason. And since the desktop software now thinks that I have no media, I also cannot add any new music to the player. Uninstalls, registry and file cleanouts and any other tricks I can think of haven't made a difference so far. My theory is that some of the media metadata is sending the new software into a self-destructive spiral, metadata which the previous software version had absolutely no problems with (or for that matter WMP, or Winamp, or Amarok).
The new device GUI looks nice and a lot smoother than the old one, except for the excessively large fonts on the main menu that require scrolling of a pretty short list--what's up with that?! There are features I wish it had, as posted in an earlier comment a few weeks back, but all in all it's quite nice. However, since I can't add new tracks to the device, it will be of diminishing usefulness until the problem gets fixed.
Sorry to ask as I am sure you get this about once a week, but why, still, no FLAC support. Is it a business thing, or same as last year, an "engineering focus" issue. I just want a strait answer.
Hate to be cynical, Simon, but it's probably for the same reason Apple doesn't support FLAC: not enough demand, and there's already a lossless format onboard (WMA Lossless for the Zune).
Nonetheless, I would love to see formats like FLAC and OGG supported, if just to accommodate those artists that offer their tracks (for free or otherwise) in those formats.
I thought that the world was waiting for a suitable format to which to migrate their CD collections for the purpose of ubiquitous random access playback. Why would I want touch screen playback in a mobile only device when these devices, now with adequate capacities, can double as complete playback solutins for a lossless music collection? Or perhaps I am cheap, and simply want to use a ZUNE instead of a SONUS. I just don't see why it is so hard to get lossless random access playback into a ubiquitous playback device. I understand that Microsoft and Apple would like for me to do that in their own proprietary format, bless their souls, but why? I and hundreds of millions of people like me already own the content and simply wish to fully exploit it. So perhaps I should go to an ODM and ask them to build me a portable media player with a solid dock, nice interface and an optical out...plus flac support? Pardon the rant...thanks for the response J.
I'm still bummed that, even though I own a Zune, the Zune card doesn't work because I'm outside the U.S.
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