Zune: congratulations and condolences
September 16th, 2009
Back in the day, I had myself a very nice time watching and writing about the release of Microsoft’s first Zune device:
- Zune: welcome to the gamble
- Zune’s CNN Train Wreck
- Zune: this pretty much sums it up
- Ceci n’est pas une Zune post
- Zune: when will the hurting stop?
- Zune: words fail me
After reading a bit about the latest Zune HD, I find myself wearing a wistful, bittersweet little smile. Alas, gone are the days where you could expect a full on, wild eyed, ‘roid-ragey product design, media, or marketing fuckup from the Zune group pretty much every week.
In fact, it sounds like with this version Microsoft has quietly released a very solid–perhaps even elegant–portable music player. My congratulations.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, however, they have released that portable music player into a world where it’s being compared to devices for which playing music is fast becoming a “well yeah, of course it can do that…” feature; they brought a music player to a portable computing device fight. My condolences.
