The Zune had a "streaming service" before it was cool. It was $15 a month and you got to listen to all the music you wanted. Plus you got 10 credits to keep songs you loved!! It was a better service and product, but Apple was better at marketing. I loved my Zune.
Also I'm not sure the video is totally correct about the unique format. Zunes could play MP3s just fine regardless of their source, so it's not as if you were completely "locked in" to the zune marketplace.
Shame the Zune did not see good marketing at all in Europe...if it really could be said to have been marketed! Tho to be fair why would I want a streaming service when Limewire, Ares, Bearshare, Kazar, etc all got that sorted out for me? I could pick up a better model mp3 player at a low spec with solid storage at less of a cost, and unlike the ipod user that had to recharge their device, I just replaced a AAA battery..
"Quick, what's a verb that describes motion" "...Come?" "Perfect. And how about we misspell it to make it seem cool. Cuz kids these days love to misspell things"
I love my Zune and I think you missed some of the best features: - wireless syncing - between computer and device not to a cloud (which I don't think anyone else ever really got) - social network - where you can see and try music from your friends - with the stand, you could plug into a TV and suddenly you had a way to watch those wireless sync videos from the PC to the living room. (try doing that now with a phone) - And last and most important is that they kept support for their devices. The first generation kept getting the features of each new release as much as it could support. Very few devices can claim that. One of the best devices I ever had, too bad their marketing department sucks
I am pretty sure that Samsung has wireless Dex allowing you to have a desktop like experience from your Smasung phone(at least the flagships) to your TV(if the TV supports Miracast).
On Black Friday 2007, we scored a Nintendo Wii, one of the “Hot” items of that season waiting outside in the cold with my 8 year old son in front of a Gamestop at 3am (fortunately there was Dunkin Donuts next door open so he could wait inside). We did buy our Wii at 7am. Later that day I went to ToysRUs and they price matched a Zune against Best Buy’s ad at $79.99. I bought two and gave one to my 13 year old daughter for Christmas. She wanted an iPod, but she used this one to the fullest, putting her music and videos on it. We used the sharing function a lot. I still have mine, and it still has 300 songs and 100 podcasts on it, along with a copy of the Star Wars holiday special on it... reminds me to change the battery, since it only holds a charge for 10 minutes now...
The Zune HD was honestly so ahead of its time. Zune Pass was more or less what Spotify currently is, the build quality was better than nearly any portable device of the time, all metal with a glass OLED screen with gorgeous colors, it was a great device. The original Zunes were just worse ipods but the Zune HD was genuinely something different and it deserved more attention than it got. Its main problem was that the iPod touch began focusing on the App Store at the time, which the Zune HD didn’t have a true answer to, and also more and more teenagers were just getting iPhones and android phones that doubled as their MP3 players so a dedicated MP3 player no matter how advanced and convenient wasn’t an easy sell to people. I would honestly still use a Zune HD on my jogs instead of my phone if there was an easy way to sync and manage the music library on Mac.
I had a Zune HD. It was THE BEST music player I’ve ever used even to this day. Although the App Store support was lacking, the device itself was so great. I still use the HD every now and then. It still holds up today. The OLED screen, design, and minimalistic Interface was so far ahead of its time.
I bought the zune because: 1. larger screen 2. Streaming service plus you can keep 10 songs a month 3. Brand loyalty (windows user for eons) 4. Better sound quality 5. Customizable 6. I like the hefty weight, didn’t feel cheap or I could break it by sneezing while holding it 7. Didn’t like Apples os at the time 8. Cleaner design on the market place and device 9. seeing the album art when you looked down at the device was awesome 10. You can look at pictures, listen to podcasts etc I don’t regret my decision, I would make the same decision. I still have my zune and had an adapter to play it in my car. Lol Kind of cool to know my beloved is somewhat “rare”.
I bought zune too. My biggest issue with ipod was it reworked your music library or will make a duplicate copy. I had a lot of music and that was a no no for me, I hated it. Plus my ipod broke within a year whereas my zune lasted 10 years. I think it needs a new battery now
I don't know how the hell you'd miss this, but Zune did in 2006 have Zune Pass that allowed unlimited downloads of albums based on a subscription service YEARS before Spotify did. The biggest reason me and several of my friends bought them, also it tracked how much you listened to everything and had MASSIVE storage capacity for the time. But forgetting Zune pass when it's such a different and before it's time model is kinda a big miss for the channel.
@@forzazzurri20 If i remember correctly, you could stream unlimited songs as long as you were a paying subscriber. However, each month you got to keep/own 10 or so songs. It's a strange concept now, but at the time people were so used to ownership of their media that they were very skeptical about streaming. They were not keen to the idea of "renting" music for a paid fee that you didn't even get to keep. Obviously things have changed!
Well he did say this was an older video from when I first started the channel so he probably wasn’t as good or motivated to make sure he got every detail
When I was in high school my parents generously bought me an iPod. I hated it! So I returned it and bought a Zune. I used that thing for 6-7 years! I love it so much. The colors and background was way more advanced than the original iPod and the shuffle and song list display was easier to navigate. I miss my old Zune
I feel a lot of people would have preferred the Zune back then if they had given it a chance. Pretty much everything about it was better at the time it released.
Not really late they just didn't so anything with it. They made the zune and were like ok let's go take a nap. It was far superior to the iPod and iPod video. Until the iPhone came out it pretty much beat everything else.
The Zune is incredibly important for another reason. The Zune HD was one of the first applications of a flat GUI, which eventually carried over into Windows Phone, Windows 8, Windows 10 and the rest of the industry.
If Steve Jobs had his way back in the early 2000s, the Zune might have succeeded! Steve did NOT want the iTunes Store on Windows XP, but Apple employees below him voiced their concerns that this would alienate a large portion of their potential market, since Windows DOMINATED the computer market back then. If Apple didn’t give Windows users access to iTunes, that might have pushed way more Zune sales since Windows users would have been more limited!
I agree. iPods would have never became as popular as they where if they weren't compatible with Windows computers. Most people back then used Microsoft computers and they would've had to buy an expensive Mac computer just to use their iPods. Far less people would've bought iPods if that was the case.
I don’t think so, there were plenty of other affordable mp3 players on the market that didn’t restrict you to a marketplace. Many of which had sd cards, so you could just drag songs on like a flash drive.
I decided to go with the Zune HD because: 1)I had broken my old Zune and was vested in the marketplace 2) The screen was much higher quality and was the best portable display of that era 3) Probably the biggest one..interfacing with windows PC's was a snap. I could seamlessly upload songs or any files to my zune (FROM THIRD PARTIES). Movies, pictures, etc. I've heard that can be possible on itunes, but very difficult and requires some jailbreaking 4)I couldn't afford the Iphone, and the Zune HD was about half the price. I had a old $20 samsung flip phone for calls and texts, and used my Zune for movies, songs and picture storage. Being active duty military at the time this was huge for me. 5) I'm a Microsoft fanboy (just kidding). But I had always been turned off from iTunes because file transfers were difficult or non-existent with third party content. In aesthetics, the Zune was way ahead of its time. I remember after this first time I synced it with my PC for some files, it also automatically downloaded and synced awesome band photos and cover art that had been professionally touched up. When a mainstream artist would play it would do a cool little graphic show on your Zune of the artist playing.
ipod... i was in japan and my father buy one for me since i buy cd player. and laptop... so i never like the price of just mp3... the reason zune fail is easy... microsoft only made hardware.... while apple control everything and deilvered.... i just broken my orignial one like last year...
And you didn’t even mention zunes best feature and the reason most people got one: $10 a month for all the songs you want just like Spotify. Years ahead of its time. And you could own 10 songs a month permanently
@@nnjjee1 yep. this was the killer feature! not to mention the metro UI, I felt was way better than anything apple had going at the time. You could pin albums to the menu that you frequently listened to, which was really cool. I still love my zuneHD more than any other apple ipod I ever had. And I had both devices at one point. It's really tragic that it never picked up steam. :(
10x yes. My father had a Zune 80GB and a Zune HD. He first tried the iPod but hated that you couldn't just drag and drop your music. Music from his CD collection or downloaded from limewire, it had no problems. The Zune software was easy enough for him to use and load album art to his content. Not only that it was cheaper. iPods were definitely not cheap back then. I rocked all sorts of iRivers back in the day due to the superior sound quality. Good times.
You could easily put on any pirated/ripped videos/music with iTunes, it just had to be in the correct format. iTunes notably didn't support FLAC or WMA (or ATRAC if you'd gotten stuck in Sony's ecosystem), but it did support MP3 just fine, as well as its darling AAC. Conversion from FLAC to ALAC was fine, both were lossless, though ALAC had marginally less compression I think. Video was only MOV/AVC/H264, but I synced up a bunch of homemade video with iTunes. You just had to drag it into the iTunes window to import it into the "library".
Back in high school, I remember that we had a game-within-a-game, where we would try to outsmart the IT department's blocks in order to play Halo on the school computers. I probably had more fun playing that game than I did playing Halo itself. (I almost always lost at Halo but almost always won at installing it on some obscure network drive or with some odd settings that they hadn't thought of yet...)
Bought both the Zune and the Zune HD over iPods, here's why: 1. Felt the sound quality was better. 2. Easier to transfer music and upload album art. 3. More 3rd party software would work to transfer onto the Zune vs the iPod at that time. 4. I used my mp3 players a lot and the Zune could easily be disassembled to install a new internal battery. 5. I prefer buttons over the wheel. 6. The cost with harddrive size favored Zune. 7. I viewed Apple's upcharge on the devices as a barrier to "exclusivity" rather than quality of the device. I did realize Zune's software wasn't as good but figured that Zune would turn into a phone like the iPod turned into the iPhone. Ultimately, MS mismanaged the brand, and didn't have the vision that Apple did during that era. MS was winning big in the video game world and still dominated the PC market so it's understandable the suffered from their own success.
Yeah when you transfer music really it should be always drag & drop. Been that way for a lot of stuff for a long time too. Apple just always sells you something pretty, over priced, and underpowered. And of course make it as hard to use as possible with being locked down big time.
I bought a Zune mainly because I disliked Apple and because the battery could be more easily replaced. And I also agree that the sound quality was better. However, despite being tech-savvy (I had already built a zombie-PC with components I got from friends/family before the Zune was released and knew a decent amount of programming by that point), I was unable to figure out how to transfer music to it using Windows Media Player (which, if I recall correctly, they disabled early on to get people to use the Zune software) or Windows Explorer. And I really disliked the Zune software, so I actually ended up returning it because of that to buy a generic MP3 player. If transferring music via Windows Media Player/Windows Explorer was possible when I had it, I would have definitely kept it and really liked it, though.
The Zune DAC and it's preamp were fricken quality hardware for when it released. I had the brown one and it sounded fantastic compared to everything else on the market at the time. Agree with all your points, MS more or less bungled it and was late to the game.
I bought a Zune and returned it for an iPod within a week. One of the things people forget to mention is battery life. IIRC, the Zune only lasted 2-3 hours on a charge, compared to iPod’s 5-6. Spending 1 hour recharging my music device for every 2 hours I used it was a deal killer
One big feature of the Zune that you didn't acknowledge was the incredible DAC on board compared to the Ipod. The sound quality was honestly unmatched on any Zune compared to the Ipod in 2006. I still own my original Zune HD and it still works great in 2020. Personally I feel it was ahead of it's time and that they catered towards the music, interface, and design more than they did towards the appstore and music store like Apple did. The Zune HD had little to no Apps that were specific towards the Zune and the apps that it did have were just inferior versions of Ipod apps. I truly feel that if Microsoft worked on their Zune music store more and their app development, the Zune could have been a better alternative than the Ipod touch. I still love its design, interface, and sound quality compared to any apple product out there. It's just a shame that the music store has been shut down and app development has been completely abandoned.
And just think, if they had made a competent iPod touch alternative, maybe they could have applied that to the Windows phone and it would still be around today
@@TheShitSmith around this time we had what was called the pocket PC Iran Windows embedded and it was way better than Windows phone because it could practically run regular Windows apps with some tweaks.
I can say the same about my Zen Micro. I bought a Zen Micro because I was scared of having my iPod stolen in high school since nobody cares about stealing a Zen Micro (I was right.) I was amazed at how well the Zen Micro sounded compared to the iPod.
I absolutely loved the Zune Marketplace. I don't know what he's talking about when he says that they didn't have a wide selection of music, because from what i remember, they had 95 percent of the stuff i listened to....
What I remember being the “fall” of the Zune was that they were a monthly subscription service where the iPod was a purchase service. I remember people giving me a hard time for “renting” music. Ironically...look where we are now. Most people have Spotify or Apple Music and “rent” their music without a thought
The best part is that even though you were "renting" music. You still got select several songs each month that you got to keep even if you cancel the service. It was basically the same as if you had purchased those songs and then gotten to listen to the rest of their library for free.
I buy physical CDs and rip them to Microsoft Media Player first, and then to my Sony Walkman MP3 player. No issues with songs disappearing due to contractual disputes, if the files get corrupted I can just rip it from the CD again, and above all, it's not an Apple product.
@@charismatic9904 I wonder the same thing - how do any of these devices or services make any money? Unless it was a CD I bought directly from an artist at a concert, I haven't paid for music in 20 years when Napster came out and spawned a ton of imitators. And now like you pointed out, everything is available for free on the internet these days even without violating copyright laws. Who is still willing to plunk down a dollar per song?
6:17 I was an employee of MicroSoft when the Zune came out though I was a dev, not a marketeer. The MS marketing dept had been mocked for years internally, because their ads were so crude and neolithic. I always figured the bizarro-world campaign for the Zune was a misguided attempt to strike back against those complaints. Of course I owned a Zune, because we got them super-cheap internally. I gave mine to my kid though.
I remember wanting a iPod when I was in middle school, and my dad legitimately said, "Just wait until Microsoft releases theirs. It will be so much better." 😂 😂 😂
@@tgatt5759 I had them both, and the iPod was just a better fit for me. the Zune was great, but I couldn't use it to its full potential. Maybe if I had had the money to subscribe to that streaming service and whatnot. The built in FM radio was the only feature that set it apart from the iPod in my use-case. Though an AM radio would have made it even better. The Zune was great, but I liked my iPod better. Apple isn't mediocre, it's just different strokes for different folks. There is no one size fits all product.
Lol dont know why but the zune advertising matches more of todays era its so colorful and even the logo its gradient form something that IG has popularized now.
I loved my Zune HD at the time. The streaming service was the best thing out there at the time, but eventually, they started taking features and categories away until it was worthless.
I’m the one that bought a Zune HD over the iPod, for one simple reason: HD radio. Back in 2009 I really thought HD radio was gonna be a big thing (I also bought the Sony HD radio receiver). To be fair the quality of HD radio is great, but People like me are just too few so it’s not surprising the sale of Zune is abysmal. I also like the simple menu of the Zune. I was just in need of a song player, nothing else. Also the design of Zune HD, frankly, is sleek and handsome.
HD radio is alive and well in Pittsburgh,PA (Then again Pittsburgh IS kind of a big thing in the history of radio,LOL) There are more than 30 HD stations here.
@@MrFantastic23 same here. I still have my zune 80. Got it for Christmas in 07. Such a good device and now a a massive dose of nostalgia when I fire it up.
My dad bought several zunes when I was kid. Me and my sisters loved watching TV shows on it, it's one of the most nostalgic pieces of tech I have. Still work well! It was ahead of its time.
I had an original Zune I got for Christmas in 2006 after asking my father for one. I liked it because it was something different, I liked the bigger screen, radio, and I preferred interface. I was that single kid in my high school with one which most people either made fun of me for or were very curious about it. I didn't like the Zune Marketplace either but I did like that you actually owned the MP3 file when you bought a song from Microsoft versus Apple where you could use the stuff you bought with their products only.
I owned both an iPod and a Zune. The reason I personally preferred the Zune: you remember how much fun you had syncing songs to your iPod? You remember how slow and buggy iTunes was? You remember how restrictive Apple was about what kind of files could be played? Probably not, but I do. Zune was so much easier to use. I literally just dragged the files over like it was a USB stick and, voila, there were my songs. Itunes was such a chore to use. I was something of a Zune zealot at the time, so take what I said with a grain of salt. I'm sure there are others out there that didn't have all the problems I had with Apple products, but that was my experience.
I think Apple's success was due to they're, "it just works" approach to everything. I never had to teach any of my older relatives how to use their iPod, but I did have an uncle buy and return a Zune after using an iPod. I've used a friend's Zune and there was nothing wrong with it, Apple just had the advantage of being first, flashy and when all your friends have iPods it's kind of difficult to justify getting anything other than that
The Zune HD was amazing though. That operating system was easy to navigate and understand. The software that came with it and the Zune Marketplace were good too. It's true there wasn't as many songs as Apple. No getting around that one. But, the software itself also didn't have proprietary file-types or workarounds needed for you to throw mp3s, flacs, mp4s, whatever on it. You just put the music in the directory the software was pointed to and it would detect and update it to your Zune. If you had CDs and a burner drive, you could add your cds to the music library using a built in ripper in the software. The games and movie/tv show content was weak but as a music player it was so damn nice. I still have one sitting on my desk at work loaded with MP3s for when I don't want to deal with streaming or work cracks down on web stuff. I can totally understand why it was never going to surpass Apple's marketing and recognition and why smart phones killed everything but it's a pretty great device.
Zune didnt have an "inferior" marketplace. It had the best of the present - at that time- and the future of how we enjoy music: all you can eat subscription + free tracks to keep for life for one monthly fee. That made me decide to go Zune. The Zune HD UI was better than anything on the market and it pioneered Microsofts design language for years to come. And the Zune HD next to an iTouch? Night & day: pocketable music player to complement your phone, not a phone sized MP3 player without the phone bits. Finally although "squirting" was an awful marketing term, it is the most effective way to share music digitally. The three plays was due to DRM not Microsofts agreements. It has been the only successful digital equivalent of sharing a mix tape given how nice the fine folks at RIAA are. Plus squirting was augmented when you have Zune Pass. For this and more, the Zune has cult following for a device launched way too late in the game. It looked toward the future like few digital devices ever have.
I think I would like the Zune more if the timing of it coming out didn't suck and if I didn't have a grudge due to the development of the Zune being partially responsible for the Red Ring of Death.
I had a Zune, I either had used or owned every version of the device. I listened to a lot of EDM/Dance music at the time, still do, and the Zune Marketplace seemed to always have a wider selection of niche titles than iTunes. The little square/circle touchpad still, to this day, feels so smooth and natural to use and nothing non-touchscreen has come close. The software at the time felt different, but beautiful. It felt professional without feeling stuffy. Why did I buy a Zune HD? One, already in the Zune ecosystem, but also the screen was gorgeous. I don't know why, but the screen on the Zune HD to this day is still beautiful and could pass as a modern device, and absolutely put Apple's iPod touch and iPhone offerings to shame _at the time_. I had a lot of friends at the time in university who had zunes of different models and music sharing worked all the way from the Zune HD down to the original Zune 30. Plus, I don't remember the ear buds being terrible like Apple's were for a long time. They felt comfortable and something about the Zune sounded really good, where my iPod previously had tinny upper ranges, the Zune never did. But the BIGGEST reason for using Zune: Zune Pass. It was like Spotify except you got to keep like a song a month or something. Part of my collection still traces its lineage back to my Zune Pass. The biggest con was actually that I used a Mac and the Zune Marketplace required me to install Parallels to use Windows.
Zune HD had one of the first colour OLED screens on a mobile device, that's why it looked so good. Samsung likes people to think it was the first Galaxy S. There was a Nokia phone, maybe the N96?, which had one before the Zune too. OLEDs are great
"the ITunes store where you bought songs for the iPhone"... Meanwhile i had about 10000 tracks on my IPod and never bought anything on ITunes. Aahhh Limewire how i loved you.
@@parthchauhan38 hah i actually only one's cached something serious... Had to trow out my hard-drive. Got me into learning about Computers.. Best thing was downloading a song and hearing: "i did not have sexual relations with this woman". Even better because i am not American soo i had to research what it ment
While it's funny considering who said it, they really were rebelling since the mainstream was the iPods meaning Zune owners were in a far more exclusive thus cooler club.
I never owned a zune but they still hold a special place in my heart, my older brother had a zune and on that zune he introduced to me some music and artists that I still listen to today and definitely introduced the type of music that I’m into now it really brought me close to my brother I remember on road trips he let me listen to a band called avi buffalo and I still listen to and love them it’s good memories for me
Why I went with a zune: I was mugged twice for my ipod and in total at 4 stolen. The zune I could leave on a table at a mall and no one would even swipe it. After using it and the apple market place, I thought the zune software was actually better, it wasn't as laggy and I didn't have as many issues putting CDs onto it at higher quality than I did with apple. Also it was far easier to run zune on linux.
Why in the hell would you leave any device of yours on a mall table?! How would you know that your Zune wouldn't be swiped unless you actually made that mistake? Jesus.
I remember those days, it went like this: iPod = exclusively works with iTunes and the sync "feature" that deletes all your data is just stupid. Zune = better, still way too expensive. $20 Knock-off MP3 players = better than iPod because you can use your own mp3s, cheaper than Zune, win win.
Gorky D doesn’t sound like you ever owned a zune or iPod really you can’t say anything at all a cheap mp3 doesn’t compare no matter how much your mom and dad told you
@@ParzivalKings I'd say it doesn't sound like you know what you are talking about. Scroll through these comments you will see many that are similar to Gorky D's. Apple is no different than Nike or any other brand that is at the top of their industry. Yeah the product is good but it isn't perfect and your paying more because of that brand name not because it is superior to the others. Sometimes the others are even a little better.
Correction: it was the first *Zune* to have an OLED screen. As far as I know, the first portable device to use OLED technology was the Sony Clie PEG-VZ90. That was all the way back in 2004!
I went with the Zune because of a couple of reasons: 1: You could connect multiple zunes to the Zune Software and did not need to do a factory reset like you did with the Ipod if you tried to sync music at another computer. My sister along with some friends who had it, would use it to sync music others had that we liked and had no issues with it. 2. At the time when finding and downloading stuff was easy, I would download anime and watch it on the zune since it was able to read more video files than the ipod. Sure I had to go through different conversion software, but man was it great having anime to watch on the go whenever I went on a trip somewhere or just in school. 3. The Zune pass for $15 a month and you could get 10 free songs was fucking amazing at the time, before things like Spotify caught on. 4. Having radio was amazing and worked great! 5. I had all of the models at one point. My dad currently uses my Zune HD instead of his phone, because he likes having all of his music easily accessible and its easier to use for him. Even if the Zune was a failure commercially, It was a major Success and a great MP3 and Video Player for me. So many great memories with it!
I only ever had ipods, and was really sad when I could no longer buy and use the ipod classics. I never wanted an ipod touch, I had a phone for that. But it sounds like you're saying the Zune still works? I had to let go of my ipod only a couple years after I bought my last one. It was a sad time.
The design language for later Zune were basically the basis or current flat trend. M$ HID which is now Surface is secret skunk-works of M$ that is only getting is appreciation now.
The thing that’s most hilarious to me is that in 2006, a radio on your MP3 was amazing. I remember I found a random MP3 on the ground in my high school and I used that for the radio and my iPod for the music I downloaded. When we got to the iPod touch and there were radio apps, mind blown. However the whole thing was pretty specific to 2006-08
The ultimate reason Zune failed was because Steve Balmer was a fairly garbage CEO. Everything he did was reactionary and riding off of Bill Gates success. Microsoft did a complete 180 as soon as Steve stepped down and Satya took over. Xbox slowed their nose dive and is saving face. They are now posed to have a potential leg up over Sony during this next generation. They realized cloud gaming is going to be on the horizon as people start getting better internet connections, so they are investing early in building that platform so that they have a foothold early on with a "Netflix of Videogames" style approach with game pass and no console needed. They managed to steal back the lead that Apple had in the business market with Surfaces over iPads. Literally at one point, the NFL were all issued Surfaces and people were still calling them iPads on TV since it was so engrained that a tablet was an iPad. They managed to get ahead of the curve and jump into public cloud and unlock loads of cash flow with subscription based services like O365. If you look at Microsoft's stock price, it tells basically the story of Satya's overwhelming recovery of a stagnant company. Probably worth it to do a Rise/Fall/Rise of Microsoft in the next couple years.
O365 is great, but Microsoft's biggest money maker has got to be Azure. Cloud computing has really taken over and as a result Microsoft is in a much better position than they've ever been before.
Basically, Microsoft is the story of 3 CEOs: The Blatantly Evil One Who Stole Other's Free Work, The Useless One Who Stagnated The Entire Company, and The One Who Gave Up And Focused On Games For Some Reason
I have 2 points. Cloud gaming is on shaky grounds currently because Google did it as a pet project and doesn't actually care but MS does care about gaming so I do have faith in them; although most peoples internet still isn't up to par. As for xbox making a gaming comeback, I think it's a coin toss. I see Phil Spencer really loving the xbox brand and feeling betrayed by that guy who sank the whole generation for them. I think with innovation and fierce competition they have a strong chance against Sony this upcoming gen.
I remember my friend trying to sell me on a Zune. He took a knife and scratched the screen as hard as he could and it didn't leave a mark. That was back when Gorilla Glass made screens to LAST. Not planned obsolescence as we know of today. I guess some actually were better back then.
Remembering my experience at the time, there seemed to be 2 categories of consumers: 1) Those that wanted to spend more money would go for the iPod, since it was trendy and "cool". 2) Those who just wanted a portable MP3 player, could choose from many other brands that would play their music just fine at a much cheaper price. I fit into category 2 at the time and quite enjoyed having a tiny little mp3 player that just played my music. Also, the smaller offbrand MP3 players could typically go for HOURS beyond the iPod on a single charge. Personally I couldn't have cared less about the Zune or the iPod.
I got my first smart phone in 2012 and rarely upgrade unless I have to. I wait a few months and spend way less than the people that bought whatever on day one.
I wouldn't describe as Sony an "offbrand". Perhaps Sony isn't as strong in the MP3 as Apple in the U.S., but Sony has a dominating market in other regions, and unlike Zune, Sony Walkman MP3 players are still being produced.
@@anythinggggg I had the brown one. Lol... I liked the green undertone and thought the transparent colors were cool. But if I have to be totally honest, it was a gift. Saw no reason to go and buy an iPod after that. Lol. Can't say I would have gone out and chosen it...
@@victorgonzalez6200 Yes, it was pretty ugly. I bought it on amazon because it might've been marked down to $80. The other colors were quite a bit more. My old ipod was dead, so it did the job for a couple of years or so.
Supposedly Microsoft was EXTREMELY upset over that bit in the movie. Of course they would be! Cause.... what should they do? Use the increased interest in the Zune to sell old stock of it as collectors items? Release really dumb Windows Phones with cases slightly looking like the Zune (again, selling as collectors items)? Do anything to make use of the situation that their product is all of a sudden in people's minds, because a major blockbuster movie brought it up? NAH, let's just pout that they dared to do it!
I honestly think that we are missing out on why so many companies have failed to overcome Apple. While people may insist that the product are superior, I truly believe that apple guaranteed profits to other companies. I will start off with the music. They were sinking fast because of piracy. LimeWire was really putting the music industry out of business. Apple on the other hand came up with iTunes, which made it a lot more difficult to pirate music. That is what made Apple Superior. A lot of record companies shift their intention to Apple. Marketing became tremendous, not to say that a lot of label companies started to promote Apple.
I had a 3 Zunes and I loved them. The first one I got for Christmas. I downloaded so much stuff I burned out my 1st one. I downloaded movies and entire albums. Limewire was a God send. Lord, when life was simple. Still a Microsoft girl 'till this day.
There were a whole host of third party MP3 players back in those days that would do anything the ipod could do, sometimes more and sometimes better, for cheaper. It was branding that really won the mp3 player war.
I had a Sansa SanDisk. That thing was amazing. Eventually my parents had to cancel the Rhapsody subscription, but I was able to find my brother's old CDs and put the music on there.
aha lol, that investment went well, the failure and discontinuation of Windows Phone and a couple billions of dollars down the drain, they actually were selling zunes til 2018. Sad to see that the mp3 market is more or less dead and a niche from the naughties.
It's a typical Microsoft problem. They develop a good product or something that has great potential and then they can't get out of their own way and do something dumb like holding a product back because they can't decide to sell it as a device or accessory for instance.
Fool, you foolish fool. Everyone with a good BRAIN knows Minecrafsoft has purchased Nokia Corporation; a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics company, founded in 1865 for ONE REASON! And that was to develop indestructibly indestructible military technology to sell to the United States Government. Any refutes are incontestably wrong and a grave reflection of your personality, it perhaps indicates you are a reptilian cloud person. Anyway, remember that time when there was a bunch of people in the YouTobe comments section saying hiss? Yeah, that was a government conspiracy to allow microsoftic holes to be drilled in heads of newborn babies. I'm on to you, Bill Gatez.
I think Zune HD was one of the earliest devices to come with an OLED screen. The UI of Zune HD was so intuitive that even to this day it doesn't feel outdated. But they were too late to the party.
Yes, the Zune HD screen was beautiful and the interface was quite unique. However, the product was quite late to a market that, by that point, was transitioning to using phones for everything. Simply put, the Zune HD had already lost before it was ever released.
I still have my Zune HD... And, it still, after all these years, gets around the same 30 hours of battery life. Plus, the OLED screen is still gorgeous... How many Ipod Touch owners of the same generation can say the same? =I
I loved my Zune! I was attracted by the artistic marketing and the way the interface of the Zune allowed for custom wallpapers and a greater emphasis on album art. By comparison, the iPod is a very sterile, bland looking device. The Zune just felt more warm and human to me.
Even though the video was made a few years ago, the Utah Jazz/Chicago Bulls reference works perfectly with "The Last Dance" being released recently! Nice one
Fun fact, but still related to current times Back in 2008, when we got our stimulus check. I purchased a Zune. I did it because of the bigger screen. I genuinely loved it back then. I will say that it was the best sounding audio device I had heard (at the time). I'm not sure if it was the pack in headphones, or the DAC.
You’re comment really took me back! We used our stimulus to put a down payment on a Leo Diamond ring at Kay’s Jewelry. I just had a tiny diamond when we got married, and I wanted a big shiny rock! I still have my Leo and love it. That was before we had kids. Now, with this current stimulus, we’ll probably spend most of it on them! Anyway, I know this is completely unrelated to Zune. I just wanted to share.
Lol, I've had people who own iPhones tell me the same thing about Android. "EvEn If It WaS cHeApEr AnD bEtTeR i WoUlD sTiLl GeT aN iPhOnE". Sheep iPhone users blind loyalty knows no limits. Then you ask em why and they're like "it's just better" and I'm like "Yeah no I know but why though?" And they never have an answer.
The audio quality was superior. The software sucked as bad as iTunes though. I had several of them and wish I still had a working one. Problem is they were way late to the game and decided to enter the market straight into an uphill battle. The average consumer doesn't know or care about audio quality which is how crap like BEATS from Dre has risen to the top, even though cheaper Sennheisers sound way better.
I’ll tell you why I like my iPhone. I’ve had Samsung and lg. Both my Samsung’s broke in a year and the functions on the lg quit working after 4 months. I’ve had friends still using the iPhone 8. And so I decided to make the switch. I’d never go back. Personally I think the quality is better but that’s just my opinion and my experience.
Never bought an iPod because I didn't grow up with Apples, and I never really liked their over-dedication to simplicity at the expense of versatility (ex: the MAC's one button mouse vs. a much more useful PC mouse). I had friends with the Touch, and when I tried finding songs on them, it was always a pain in the neck. I think the only reason why people said it was easy to use was because they'd started on the iPod ecosystem. I hadn't, and when I picked up a Zune HD, it was far more intuitive to get around and find what I needed. On top of that, by the time of the HD Zune had a subscription service similar Spotify. The service even let you keep an album's worth of songs a month. Add in integration with X-Box and it just seemed far more reasonable to go with Zune. I still have my Zune HD and use it to play music when traveling. It just sucks that one day the device will probably die and I'll have to figure out something else.
I had a 16gig Zune HD loved that thing. The interface was ahead of it's time. I see things in Android and iOS that took features the ZUNE/Windows Phone had.
I remember wanting to get the Zune HD so much. The UI as just soo cool to me at the time. Edit: I disagree about the UI part of the video, but I do get that big icons are probably more appealing to people than text on the hom screen. But in my opinion the Ui was superior on the Zune HD
Great video. I worked at Circuit City in 2004-2009 and sold mp3 players. One thing that always stuck out to me was on Black Friday I was at a table selling mp3 players, and we had two giant stacks of iPods and Zunes. Nearly every person in our line was there for an iPod, and I watched throughout the day the stack of iPods got smaller while the stack of Zunes remained largely the same. Having owned a Zune and thinking it was a capable mp3 player, I recommended it all the time, only to get rebuffed by customers who "had to have an iPod, not an mp3 player". Finally, by the end of the day on Black Friday we were completely out of iPods. I managed to sell one Zune to a woman at the end of the day who was there to buy an iPod for her daughter but had to settle for the Zune. The next day I was working and I watched as the woman came back into the store and returned the Zune. Her daughter had to have the iPod. RIP Zune.
I bought a Zune when the brown ones were being practically given away for $50 per. I loved it, still consider it to be the best MP3 player I had, and I had an iPod. The bigger screen rendered movies better, and when I got my first car with a USB plug in it, the onboard system had no problem interfacing with it. I'd still have it to this day if I hadn't lost it in an airport.
This basically was Microsoft's equivalent to the time they tried to cash in on the wii with the Kinect , making their own version of their competitors product and failing miserably .
Kinect for the Xbox One Was pretty good, imo. Was very responsive with voice and it was pretty cool coming home and just commanding your tv with the Kinect, taking screenshots, recordings, stream, etc. Although the Cortana implementation was horrible.
Microsoft has a tendency of being way too early or laughably late. Windows Mobile was available on phones for years before iOS and Android. On the other hand, Windows Phone was way too late to the party.
I never liked the kinect but it was far from a miserable failure. It was a commercial success as Kinect Adventures! is the best selling Xbox 360 game of all times.
@kyoki86 "While announcing Kinect's discontinuation in an interview with Fast Co. Design on October 25, 2017, Microsoft stated that 35 million units had been sold since its release. 24 million units of Kinect had been shipped by February 2013. Having sold 8 million units in its first 60 days on the market, Kinect claimed the Guinness World Record of being the 'fastest selling consumer electronics device'." I agree it never got close to surpassing the Wii, but people definitely bought it. The Playstation Move, on the other hand...
at the time the zune came out there wasnt anyone that came remotely close to portable music players. Apple and iTunes were synonymous with portable music at this point. Everyone else was dead in the water. Wasn't really a matter of being an iSheep or not- there was just no competition.
@@Chris-dy1cbFinally, Thank you. I see everyone in the comments calling people who preferred iPods “sheep”, but there wasn’t competition. iTunes was and is trash, but there wasn’t much appeal for anything else.
Still rocking a 128GB Zune Video to this day! Was cheaper than the iPod equivalent at the time, and that's something people forget (Apple was pushing to have lower capacity for a higher cost, but Microsoft ran with better pricing for the space). When I first saw Guardians of the Galaxy with the Zune scene, it was nostalgic haha! I liked the touch version styling, and it got me pumped for a Surface phone (which still has yet to come to fruition). All in all, I was glad to be free from the iTunes tether (even if the Zune sync software wasn't great, it at least let you manually push/pull media with the device in a much better way).
Tyler Zellers - did you come from the Clownfish TV video? The Pratt's went there.... Even before watching the video it is not difficult to see it was DOA. How many would pay for a sub to stuff YT has had FOR FREE SINCE THE MID AUGHTS? Even Curiosity Stream is an IFFY PROPOSITION for docs at U$2.99 / month (they had to both include Nebula and drop the annual rate to U$12 / year for BOTH and it's STILL IFFY...
I had a 2nd generation Zune. I chose it over an iPod because I didn't like the iTunes software or Apple's products. Most of my friend group also got Zunes so we were able to send songs to each other. Your video is the first time I've heard it referred to as squirting though.
HD radio was the reason I got a Zune HD. I lived in a market that had quite a few HD radio stations and this was one of the earliest HD radio receivers.
Everyone I have ever spoken to has proclaimed that the Zune HDs operating system was vastly superior to and easier to use than the iPod touch's The HD also had a better quality screen using OLED technology, and better battery life.
Their headphones were amazing *I liked Zune cause it was easy to rip songs off Limewire for free and play. Apple made it hard to have any music not from a CD or their store*
I had an iPod touch in 2009. I have never bought an audio or video file. I never had a problem syncing my own files to the device. I have no idea why people think Apple made it difficult to use your own files.
That is not true. You could rip CDs with iTunes and the interface for iTunes was the most convenient way of managing the tag information on your music files. No other system worked better.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
The Zune had a "streaming service" before it was cool. It was $15 a month and you got to listen to all the music you wanted. Plus you got 10 credits to keep songs you loved!! It was a better service and product, but Apple was better at marketing. I loved my Zune.
Also I'm not sure the video is totally correct about the unique format. Zunes could play MP3s just fine regardless of their source, so it's not as if you were completely "locked in" to the zune marketplace.
Facts
Bender
Shame the Zune did not see good marketing at all in Europe...if it really could be said to have been marketed!
Tho to be fair why would I want a streaming service when Limewire, Ares, Bearshare, Kazar, etc all got that sorted out for me?
I could pick up a better model mp3 player at a low spec with solid storage at less of a cost, and unlike the ipod user that had to recharge their device, I just replaced a AAA battery..
I had my zone customized and love it. You could watch videos, podcasts and you can keep the songs you love.
"Squirt" is by far the worst verb they could have chosen
"It's just pee" doesn't have the same ring to it.
69th like
Hey yo squirt me with that Christina Aguilera, bro!
Yeah...that's pretty...something...
They were actually going to go with "fist" originally.
"Quick, what's a verb that describes motion"
"...Come?"
"Perfect. And how about we misspell it to make it seem cool. Cuz kids these days love to misspell things"
I love my Zune and I think you missed some of the best features:
- wireless syncing - between computer and device not to a cloud (which I don't think anyone else ever really got)
- social network - where you can see and try music from your friends
- with the stand, you could plug into a TV and suddenly you had a way to watch those wireless sync videos from the PC to the living room. (try doing that now with a phone)
- And last and most important is that they kept support for their devices. The first generation kept getting the features of each new release as much as it could support. Very few devices can claim that.
One of the best devices I ever had, too bad their marketing department sucks
I am pretty sure that Samsung has wireless Dex allowing you to have a desktop like experience from your Smasung phone(at least the flagships) to your TV(if the TV supports Miracast).
there is an alternate universe where everyone is squirting
aaaaand NASA just confirmed it
User Names That would be a nice Universe lol.
@Pretty Princess P P missed the chance for Earth 69
Hahahahahahh
Most people I knew with a zune had one because they specifically didn't like apple.
apple is for lemmings...
I never owned a Zune, but my deep-seated dislike for iTunes kept me away from the iPod and that dislike translated to the iPhone and the App Store.
So android users 😂🤭
That was exactly why I got mine.
j y no need to name call because you can’t afford one
On Black Friday 2007, we scored a Nintendo Wii, one of the “Hot” items of that season waiting outside in the cold with my 8 year old son in front of a Gamestop at 3am (fortunately there was Dunkin Donuts next door open so he could wait inside). We did buy our Wii at 7am. Later that day I went to ToysRUs and they price matched a Zune against Best Buy’s ad at $79.99. I bought two and gave one to my 13 year old daughter for Christmas. She wanted an iPod, but she used this one to the fullest, putting her music and videos on it. We used the sharing function a lot. I still have mine, and it still has 300 songs and 100 podcasts on it, along with a copy of the Star Wars holiday special on it... reminds me to change the battery, since it only holds a charge for 10 minutes now...
The Zune HD was honestly so ahead of its time. Zune Pass was more or less what Spotify currently is, the build quality was better than nearly any portable device of the time, all metal with a glass OLED screen with gorgeous colors, it was a great device.
The original Zunes were just worse ipods but the Zune HD was genuinely something different and it deserved more attention than it got.
Its main problem was that the iPod touch began focusing on the App Store at the time, which the Zune HD didn’t have a true answer to, and also more and more teenagers were just getting iPhones and android phones that doubled as their MP3 players so a dedicated MP3 player no matter how advanced and convenient wasn’t an easy sell to people. I would honestly still use a Zune HD on my jogs instead of my phone if there was an easy way to sync and manage the music library on Mac.
I had a Zune HD. It was THE BEST music player I’ve ever used even to this day. Although the App Store support was lacking, the device itself was so great. I still use the HD every now and then. It still holds up today. The OLED screen, design, and minimalistic Interface was so far ahead of its time.
@@hunterjayfilm The zune software worked way better at synching then itunes tbh. It was also less bloated.
It's*, Android phones or Android Phones*
@@CreeperPookie Can you not
Agree, Zune HD was awesome. Metal Build quality felt good.
Still have my Zune, still use it. Just did a nerve wrecking battery replacement and plan to keep it going for as long as I can.
Yeah, that's my next concern because my battery life isn't lasting as long.
I am still getting close to the old 30 hour battery life, somehow. Blows my mind.
May I ask, where/how/what kind of battery? I've still got mine, but battery went dead a while ago.
I bought the zune because:
1. larger screen
2. Streaming service plus you can keep 10 songs a month
3. Brand loyalty (windows user for eons)
4. Better sound quality
5. Customizable
6. I like the hefty weight, didn’t feel cheap or I could break it by sneezing while holding it
7. Didn’t like Apples os at the time
8. Cleaner design on the market place and device
9. seeing the album art when you looked down at the device was awesome
10. You can look at pictures, listen to podcasts etc
I don’t regret my decision, I would make the same decision. I still have my zune and had an adapter to play it in my car. Lol
Kind of cool to know my beloved is somewhat “rare”.
Yep you are definitely one of the few
I bought zune too. My biggest issue with ipod was it reworked your music library or will make a duplicate copy. I had a lot of music and that was a no no for me, I hated it. Plus my ipod broke within a year whereas my zune lasted 10 years. I think it needs a new battery now
I don't know how the hell you'd miss this, but Zune did in 2006 have Zune Pass that allowed unlimited downloads of albums based on a subscription service YEARS before Spotify did. The biggest reason me and several of my friends bought them, also it tracked how much you listened to everything and had MASSIVE storage capacity for the time. But forgetting Zune pass when it's such a different and before it's time model is kinda a big miss for the channel.
Karl Alden my understanding of this was that you could get 10 songs per month for a fee of $15 dollars per month, was that correct?
@@forzazzurri20 If i remember correctly, you could stream unlimited songs as long as you were a paying subscriber. However, each month you got to keep/own 10 or so songs. It's a strange concept now, but at the time people were so used to ownership of their media that they were very skeptical about streaming. They were not keen to the idea of "renting" music for a paid fee that you didn't even get to keep. Obviously things have changed!
I do love how later in the 3.0 software update you can stream the marketplace right from the player over WiFi and WiFi sync!
@@timmunroe8001 I believe you could also download songs, but those would expire at the end of the month unless you kept your service active.
Well he did say this was an older video from when I first started the channel so he probably wasn’t as good or motivated to make sure he got every detail
When I was in high school my parents generously bought me an iPod. I hated it! So I returned it and bought a Zune. I used that thing for 6-7 years! I love it so much. The colors and background was way more advanced than the original iPod and the shuffle and song list display was easier to navigate. I miss my old Zune
What did your parents do when they found out you switched your ipod for a zune
blobydude420 productions I’m under the impression that he asked his parents to return the iPod and buy him a zune.
Vijay Kolla yea they knew. Kind of shocked with me but really the investment turned out better because I used the heck out of the zune.
I feel a lot of people would have preferred the Zune back then if they had given it a chance. Pretty much everything about it was better at the time it released.
Same! I loved my Zune and would have kept it for years had it not been stolen 🙄
I bought a refurbed Zune in 2007. It's now sitting on my Mother's kitchen counter in a dock and works perfectly.
"Half an inch is pretty significant."
-Company Man, 2018
I've always found that to be true
that's what she said
Technically incorrect, as he first said this three years or so ago
That's not what I have been told.
I hope she didn't lie to me.
@@ninjabreadman8166 Shit, you're right. Editing my oof now lol
I got a Zune because i could put all my disgusting limewire songs on it.
you could do that on ipods too, importing songs from outside sources into itunes
Lol listening to all those 128kbps or less songs 😆
Vic H those swishy-ass cymbals killed me
Yup. It was way easier to get non Apple content on zunes. Like all you did was drag and drop it was so easy.
@@patxs that would take so long and was an arduous process in itunes. On zune it was drag and drop and done. Even with movies.
I know it's dumb, but I HATED the Zune colors when launched. Those 1970s style orange and browns just did not appeal to me at all.
Same here
Similar can be said today with those apple watches, the brown straps just look like they're for older people. Cool for them, but not for me.
No, it's not dumb, lol. Microsoft gave you two choices: Dog Poo Brown, or Mushy Peas Green
@@StevenWauford -dankpods
yeah it's pretty ugly
Used a zune for a long time never had an issue. But Microsoft was late to the game.
Same
I still use one
I got one for my 16th birthday in 2006, and I loved it. It was a neat device and I even convinced a few of my friends to get one too.
Not really late they just didn't so anything with it. They made the zune and were like ok let's go take a nap. It was far superior to the iPod and iPod video. Until the iPhone came out it pretty much beat everything else.
@@Karmy. frfr
The Zune is incredibly important for another reason. The Zune HD was one of the first applications of a flat GUI, which eventually carried over into Windows Phone, Windows 8, Windows 10 and the rest of the industry.
@@collagen1738 In 2009?
There's electronics even know that don't have OLED.
@@devonwilliams5738 yep, it was one of the first devices with an OLED.
This x100. Its super ironic how the "uncool" company of the '00s ended up being the one to set the trend for the next decade.
@@EndOfTheW0rld It just wasn't as flashy as Apple, maybe, it was quietly building itself up in the background.
....Which by itself failed,right?...
If Steve Jobs had his way back in the early 2000s, the Zune might have succeeded! Steve did NOT want the iTunes Store on Windows XP, but Apple employees below him voiced their concerns that this would alienate a large portion of their potential market, since Windows DOMINATED the computer market back then. If Apple didn’t give Windows users access to iTunes, that might have pushed way more Zune sales since Windows users would have been more limited!
i agree!
Windows still dominates the computer market today.
But zune was released in 2006... not early 2000s
I agree. iPods would have never became as popular as they where if they weren't compatible with Windows computers. Most people back then used Microsoft computers and they would've had to buy an expensive Mac computer just to use their iPods. Far less people would've bought iPods if that was the case.
I don’t think so, there were plenty of other affordable mp3 players on the market that didn’t restrict you to a marketplace. Many of which had sd cards, so you could just drag songs on like a flash drive.
I decided to go with the Zune HD because:
1)I had broken my old Zune and was vested in the marketplace
2) The screen was much higher quality and was the best portable display of that era
3) Probably the biggest one..interfacing with windows PC's was a snap. I could seamlessly upload songs or any files to my zune (FROM THIRD PARTIES). Movies, pictures, etc. I've heard that can be possible on itunes, but very difficult and requires some jailbreaking
4)I couldn't afford the Iphone, and the Zune HD was about half the price. I had a old $20 samsung flip phone for calls and texts, and used my Zune for movies, songs and picture storage. Being active duty military at the time this was huge for me.
5) I'm a Microsoft fanboy (just kidding). But I had always been turned off from iTunes because file transfers were difficult or non-existent with third party content.
In aesthetics, the Zune was way ahead of its time. I remember after this first time I synced it with my PC for some files, it also automatically downloaded and synced awesome band photos and cover art that had been professionally touched up. When a mainstream artist would play it would do a cool little graphic show on your Zune of the artist playing.
ipod... i was in japan and my father buy one for me since i buy cd player. and laptop... so i never like the price of just mp3... the reason zune fail is easy... microsoft only made hardware.... while apple control everything and deilvered.... i just broken my orignial one like last year...
And you didn’t even mention zunes best feature and the reason most people got one: $10 a month for all the songs you want just like Spotify. Years ahead of its time. And you could own 10 songs a month permanently
@@nnjjee1 yep. this was the killer feature! not to mention the metro UI, I felt was way better than anything apple had going at the time. You could pin albums to the menu that you frequently listened to, which was really cool.
I still love my zuneHD more than any other apple ipod I ever had. And I had both devices at one point.
It's really tragic that it never picked up steam. :(
10x yes.
My father had a Zune 80GB and a Zune HD. He first tried the iPod but hated that you couldn't just drag and drop your music. Music from his CD collection or downloaded from limewire, it had no problems. The Zune software was easy enough for him to use and load album art to his content. Not only that it was cheaper.
iPods were definitely not cheap back then. I rocked all sorts of iRivers back in the day due to the superior sound quality. Good times.
You could easily put on any pirated/ripped videos/music with iTunes, it just had to be in the correct format. iTunes notably didn't support FLAC or WMA (or ATRAC if you'd gotten stuck in Sony's ecosystem), but it did support MP3 just fine, as well as its darling AAC. Conversion from FLAC to ALAC was fine, both were lossless, though ALAC had marginally less compression I think. Video was only MOV/AVC/H264, but I synced up a bunch of homemade video with iTunes. You just had to drag it into the iTunes window to import it into the "library".
I had a Zune. Never had an iPod. My Zune was a Halo collectors edition.
Halo \m/
Back in high school, I remember that we had a game-within-a-game, where we would try to outsmart the IT department's blocks in order to play Halo on the school computers. I probably had more fun playing that game than I did playing Halo itself. (I almost always lost at Halo but almost always won at installing it on some obscure network drive or with some odd settings that they hadn't thought of yet...)
I had a rip off zune
That's a horrible thing to say. And I hate apple.
I had a Motorola rokr
Congrats on the 3 years, the LJS video came as a recommendation and now after looking at your other videos I'm subscribed and going on a binge lol.
Fisha695 Yeah the same thing happened to me and I was curious about LJS so I watched and also subscribed. I’ve watched 6 or 7 other ones so far.
Bought both the Zune and the Zune HD over iPods, here's why:
1. Felt the sound quality was better.
2. Easier to transfer music and upload album art.
3. More 3rd party software would work to transfer onto the Zune vs the iPod at that time.
4. I used my mp3 players a lot and the Zune could easily be disassembled to install a new internal battery.
5. I prefer buttons over the wheel.
6. The cost with harddrive size favored Zune.
7. I viewed Apple's upcharge on the devices as a barrier to "exclusivity" rather than quality of the device.
I did realize Zune's software wasn't as good but figured that Zune would turn into a phone like the iPod turned into the iPhone. Ultimately, MS mismanaged the brand, and didn't have the vision that Apple did during that era. MS was winning big in the video game world and still dominated the PC market so it's understandable the suffered from their own success.
Yeah when you transfer music really it should be always drag & drop. Been that way for a lot of stuff for a long time too. Apple just always sells you something pretty, over priced, and underpowered. And of course make it as hard to use as possible with being locked down big time.
I bought a Zune mainly because I disliked Apple and because the battery could be more easily replaced. And I also agree that the sound quality was better.
However, despite being tech-savvy (I had already built a zombie-PC with components I got from friends/family before the Zune was released and knew a decent amount of programming by that point), I was unable to figure out how to transfer music to it using Windows Media Player (which, if I recall correctly, they disabled early on to get people to use the Zune software) or Windows Explorer. And I really disliked the Zune software, so I actually ended up returning it because of that to buy a generic MP3 player.
If transferring music via Windows Media Player/Windows Explorer was possible when I had it, I would have definitely kept it and really liked it, though.
Bender
The Zune DAC and it's preamp were fricken quality hardware for when it released. I had the brown one and it sounded fantastic compared to everything else on the market at the time. Agree with all your points, MS more or less bungled it and was late to the game.
I bought a Zune and returned it for an iPod within a week. One of the things people forget to mention is battery life. IIRC, the Zune only lasted 2-3 hours on a charge, compared to iPod’s 5-6. Spending 1 hour recharging my music device for every 2 hours I used it was a deal killer
One big feature of the Zune that you didn't acknowledge was the incredible DAC on board compared to the Ipod. The sound quality was honestly unmatched on any Zune compared to the Ipod in 2006. I still own my original Zune HD and it still works great in 2020. Personally I feel it was ahead of it's time and that they catered towards the music, interface, and design more than they did towards the appstore and music store like Apple did. The Zune HD had little to no Apps that were specific towards the Zune and the apps that it did have were just inferior versions of Ipod apps. I truly feel that if Microsoft worked on their Zune music store more and their app development, the Zune could have been a better alternative than the Ipod touch. I still love its design, interface, and sound quality compared to any apple product out there. It's just a shame that the music store has been shut down and app development has been completely abandoned.
And just think, if they had made a competent iPod touch alternative, maybe they could have applied that to the Windows phone and it would still be around today
Also have my original Zune HD, and the Zune Software is still the best music software on PC
Yeah people still mess with the Zune - it has a cult following in the "retro" tech crowd
@@TheShitSmith around this time we had what was called the pocket PC Iran Windows embedded and it was way better than Windows phone because it could practically run regular Windows apps with some tweaks.
I can say the same about my Zen Micro. I bought a Zen Micro because I was scared of having my iPod stolen in high school since nobody cares about stealing a Zen Micro (I was right.) I was amazed at how well the Zen Micro sounded compared to the iPod.
I absolutely loved the Zune Marketplace. I don't know what he's talking about when he says that they didn't have a wide selection of music, because from what i remember, they had 95 percent of the stuff i listened to....
What I remember being the “fall” of the Zune was that they were a monthly subscription service where the iPod was a purchase service. I remember people giving me a hard time for “renting” music. Ironically...look where we are now. Most people have Spotify or Apple Music and “rent” their music without a thought
The best part is that even though you were "renting" music. You still got select several songs each month that you got to keep even if you cancel the service. It was basically the same as if you had purchased those songs and then gotten to listen to the rest of their library for free.
The problem with Microsoft especially back then, was being too early "Zune Pass" or being too late " the ZUNE its self." Loved my Zune HD though.
When you can just download off youtube for free and keep it lol
I buy physical CDs and rip them to Microsoft Media Player first, and then to my Sony Walkman MP3 player. No issues with songs disappearing due to contractual disputes, if the files get corrupted I can just rip it from the CD again, and above all, it's not an Apple product.
@@charismatic9904 I wonder the same thing - how do any of these devices or services make any money? Unless it was a CD I bought directly from an artist at a concert, I haven't paid for music in 20 years when Napster came out and spawned a ton of imitators. And now like you pointed out, everything is available for free on the internet these days even without violating copyright laws. Who is still willing to plunk down a dollar per song?
6:17 I was an employee of MicroSoft when the Zune came out though I was a dev, not a marketeer. The MS marketing dept had been mocked for years internally, because their ads were so crude and neolithic. I always figured the bizarro-world campaign for the Zune was a misguided attempt to strike back against those complaints. Of course I owned a Zune, because we got them super-cheap internally. I gave mine to my kid though.
The Zune software felt considerably more sleeker and modern compared to the iPod, so that's an instant win for me.
Even now it still holds up.
"Half an inch is pretty significant "
Finally a worthy opponent!
Thor:
乇乂ㄒ尺卂 ㄒ卄丨匚匚
Mighta been on the losing side, still not convinced it was the wrong one
Apple is always the wrong side, Zune users have my support.
Hey drac! Still haven’t had a review on the fortnite bolt sniper?
I still have and use a Zune, i even have a working version of the software so i can still put music on it.
Had 2 ipods, all broke the same way. A small dent on the back fucked them.
Had 3 zunes, all broke in different ways. Zune was made better.
LordDraconical - They were just way too late to the party. They could have had a good chance if they were released a couple of years earlier.
I remember wanting a iPod when I was in middle school, and my dad legitimately said, "Just wait until Microsoft releases theirs. It will be so much better." 😂 😂 😂
I mean he wasn’t wrong. It just didn’t catch on.
I get it but it was so much better. It just never caught on in pop culture. I loved mine as a teenager.
Even after decades, people still don't realize how mediocre apple is
@@tgatt5759 I had them both, and the iPod was just a better fit for me. the Zune was great, but I couldn't use it to its full potential. Maybe if I had had the money to subscribe to that streaming service and whatnot. The built in FM radio was the only feature that set it apart from the iPod in my use-case. Though an AM radio would have made it even better. The Zune was great, but I liked my iPod better. Apple isn't mediocre, it's just different strokes for different folks. There is no one size fits all product.
Lol dont know why but the zune advertising matches more of todays era its so colorful and even the logo its gradient form something that IG has popularized now.
The zune could drag and drop files, u didnt need to zune store and i had never used it despite owning 2 zunes
I loved my Zune HD at the time. The streaming service was the best thing out there at the time, but eventually, they started taking features and categories away until it was worthless.
I’m the one that bought a Zune HD over the iPod, for one simple reason: HD radio. Back in 2009 I really thought HD radio was gonna be a big thing (I also bought the Sony HD radio receiver). To be fair the quality of HD radio is great, but People like me are just too few so it’s not surprising the sale of Zune is abysmal.
I also like the simple menu of the Zune. I was just in need of a song player, nothing else. Also the design of Zune HD, frankly, is sleek and handsome.
Zune was definitely the most gorgeous design MS has probably _ever_ done, IMHO
I love my Zune HD!
interesting... not bad points tbh
HD radio is alive and well in Pittsburgh,PA (Then again Pittsburgh IS kind of a big thing in the history of radio,LOL) There are more than 30 HD stations here.
I had the 3 models loved each one of them ..
"I knew a couple people that had one. Which, now that I see their sales numbers, I realize, is a miracle" lol
I had one and will defend to this day that it was a superior experience to an ipod from the same time generation.
@@TechZACH16 I had one as well and I thought it was superior to the ipod and will also defend it to this day!
@@MrFantastic23 same here. I still have my zune 80. Got it for Christmas in 07. Such a good device and now a a massive dose of nostalgia when I fire it up.
The couple of people you mentioned have commented your comment.
@@tomjoad8272 Much like my Windows Phone compared to the iPhone, the Zune was superior to the iPod.
Wow...this brings me back to my middle school days when I had the small green Zune. It was given to me as a Christmas present.
My dad bought several zunes when I was kid. Me and my sisters loved watching TV shows on it, it's one of the most nostalgic pieces of tech I have. Still work well! It was ahead of its time.
Zune is the embodiement of *"If you're not first, you're last"*
First
Again
*glass leaves chat*
*stadia enters chat*
Your channel is wack
@@cmdraftbrn Zune is still better than Stadia, IMO. That's a device that deserves its own video someday.
I had an original Zune I got for Christmas in 2006 after asking my father for one. I liked it because it was something different, I liked the bigger screen, radio, and I preferred interface. I was that single kid in my high school with one which most people either made fun of me for or were very curious about it. I didn't like the Zune Marketplace either but I did like that you actually owned the MP3 file when you bought a song from Microsoft versus Apple where you could use the stuff you bought with their products only.
The entire Zune aesthetic is still my jam. I owned one of the early models for the longest time and I loved it. I miss that stuff :(
I owned both an iPod and a Zune. The reason I personally preferred the Zune: you remember how much fun you had syncing songs to your iPod? You remember how slow and buggy iTunes was? You remember how restrictive Apple was about what kind of files could be played? Probably not, but I do. Zune was so much easier to use. I literally just dragged the files over like it was a USB stick and, voila, there were my songs. Itunes was such a chore to use. I was something of a Zune zealot at the time, so take what I said with a grain of salt. I'm sure there are others out there that didn't have all the problems I had with Apple products, but that was my experience.
I think Apple's success was due to they're, "it just works" approach to everything. I never had to teach any of my older relatives how to use their iPod, but I did have an uncle buy and return a Zune after using an iPod. I've used a friend's Zune and there was nothing wrong with it, Apple just had the advantage of being first, flashy and when all your friends have iPods it's kind of difficult to justify getting anything other than that
Last time I heard from the Zune was the funny little appearance it had Guardians of the galaxy Vol 2 .
The Zune HD was amazing though. That operating system was easy to navigate and understand. The software that came with it and the Zune Marketplace were good too. It's true there wasn't as many songs as Apple. No getting around that one. But, the software itself also didn't have proprietary file-types or workarounds needed for you to throw mp3s, flacs, mp4s, whatever on it. You just put the music in the directory the software was pointed to and it would detect and update it to your Zune. If you had CDs and a burner drive, you could add your cds to the music library using a built in ripper in the software. The games and movie/tv show content was weak but as a music player it was so damn nice. I still have one sitting on my desk at work loaded with MP3s for when I don't want to deal with streaming or work cracks down on web stuff. I can totally understand why it was never going to surpass Apple's marketing and recognition and why smart phones killed everything but it's a pretty great device.
Zune didnt have an "inferior" marketplace. It had the best of the present - at that time- and the future of how we enjoy music: all you can eat subscription + free tracks to keep for life for one monthly fee. That made me decide to go Zune.
The Zune HD UI was better than anything on the market and it pioneered Microsofts design language for years to come.
And the Zune HD next to an iTouch? Night & day: pocketable music player to complement your phone, not a phone sized MP3 player without the phone bits.
Finally although "squirting" was an awful marketing term, it is the most effective way to share music digitally. The three plays was due to DRM not Microsofts agreements. It has been the only successful digital equivalent of sharing a mix tape given how nice the fine folks at RIAA are. Plus squirting was augmented when you have Zune Pass.
For this and more, the Zune has cult following for a device launched way too late in the game. It looked toward the future like few digital devices ever have.
I think I would like the Zune more if the timing of it coming out didn't suck and if I didn't have a grudge due to the development of the Zune being partially responsible for the Red Ring of Death.
I had a Zune, I either had used or owned every version of the device. I listened to a lot of EDM/Dance music at the time, still do, and the Zune Marketplace seemed to always have a wider selection of niche titles than iTunes. The little square/circle touchpad still, to this day, feels so smooth and natural to use and nothing non-touchscreen has come close. The software at the time felt different, but beautiful. It felt professional without feeling stuffy. Why did I buy a Zune HD? One, already in the Zune ecosystem, but also the screen was gorgeous. I don't know why, but the screen on the Zune HD to this day is still beautiful and could pass as a modern device, and absolutely put Apple's iPod touch and iPhone offerings to shame _at the time_. I had a lot of friends at the time in university who had zunes of different models and music sharing worked all the way from the Zune HD down to the original Zune 30. Plus, I don't remember the ear buds being terrible like Apple's were for a long time. They felt comfortable and something about the Zune sounded really good, where my iPod previously had tinny upper ranges, the Zune never did.
But the BIGGEST reason for using Zune: Zune Pass. It was like Spotify except you got to keep like a song a month or something. Part of my collection still traces its lineage back to my Zune Pass.
The biggest con was actually that I used a Mac and the Zune Marketplace required me to install Parallels to use Windows.
Zune HD had one of the first colour OLED screens on a mobile device, that's why it looked so good. Samsung likes people to think it was the first Galaxy S. There was a Nokia phone, maybe the N96?, which had one before the Zune too. OLEDs are great
"the ITunes store where you bought songs for the iPhone"... Meanwhile i had about 10000 tracks on my IPod and never bought anything on ITunes. Aahhh Limewire how i loved you.
Limewire
Did you love those viruses also?
@@parthchauhan38 hah i actually only one's cached something serious... Had to trow out my hard-drive. Got me into learning about Computers..
Best thing was downloading a song and hearing: "i did not have sexual relations with this woman". Even better because i am not American soo i had to research what it ment
RIP CPU
Dude... Literally no one has anything bad to say about the Zune.
All these years and tbh.. I still kinda want one. 😂
Your “old” video is flawless high quality for all the years ur channel has been around (minus the youtube 5 ads per sentence)
Salut
The ad for the Zune HD : "Rebel against the mainstream" we're speaking of Microsoft 😂
While it's funny considering who said it, they really were rebelling since the mainstream was the iPods meaning Zune owners were in a far more exclusive thus cooler club.
@@DarkLordDiablos Zunes were just plain better, too. I still have my Zune HD.
At the time it's true, majority went for the iPod. The iPod was the mainstream. Going for a Zune means you're technically a rebel.
Yep definitely Microsoft
I never owned a zune but they still hold a special place in my heart, my older brother had a zune and on that zune he introduced to me some music and artists that I still listen to today and definitely introduced the type of music that I’m into now it really brought me close to my brother I remember on road trips he let me listen to a band called avi buffalo and I still listen to and love them it’s good memories for me
Why I went with a zune: I was mugged twice for my ipod and in total at 4 stolen. The zune I could leave on a table at a mall and no one would even swipe it. After using it and the apple market place, I thought the zune software was actually better, it wasn't as laggy and I didn't have as many issues putting CDs onto it at higher quality than I did with apple. Also it was far easier to run zune on linux.
Thats some tough luck right there..
KysimKreb idiot
Need to move from there
Running zune on Linux. A man of the highest culture.
Why in the hell would you leave any device of yours on a mall table?! How would you know that your Zune wouldn't be swiped unless you actually made that mistake? Jesus.
“If the Zune was 10x better and half the cost- I’d still buy the iPod”- spoken like a true apple user.
I remember those days, it went like this: iPod = exclusively works with iTunes and the sync "feature" that deletes all your data is just stupid. Zune = better, still way too expensive. $20 Knock-off MP3 players = better than iPod because you can use your own mp3s, cheaper than Zune, win win.
Bravo
Gorky D doesn’t sound like you ever owned a zune or iPod really you can’t say anything at all a cheap mp3 doesn’t compare no matter how much your mom and dad told you
Same attitude they apply to everything in life.
@@ParzivalKings I'd say it doesn't sound like you know what you are talking about. Scroll through these comments you will see many that are similar to Gorky D's. Apple is no different than Nike or any other brand that is at the top of their industry. Yeah the product is good but it isn't perfect and your paying more because of that brand name not because it is superior to the others. Sometimes the others are even a little better.
I think the Zune HD was the first to have an O-LED screen.
It Was 🙃 .
It wasn't o-led just 720p
I just chocked on my Hawaiian BBQ laughing because I read your username 👍🏻
Correction: it was the first *Zune* to have an OLED screen. As far as I know, the first portable device to use OLED technology was the Sony Clie PEG-VZ90. That was all the way back in 2004!
@@keemo5418 Other way around, zune hd referred to the hd radio, it had a 480p resolution.
I went with the Zune because of a couple of reasons:
1: You could connect multiple zunes to the Zune Software and did not need to do a factory reset like you did with the Ipod if you tried to sync music at another computer. My sister along with some friends who had it, would use it to sync music others had that we liked and had no issues with it.
2. At the time when finding and downloading stuff was easy, I would download anime and watch it on the zune since it was able to read more video files than the ipod. Sure I had to go through different conversion software, but man was it great having anime to watch on the go whenever I went on a trip somewhere or just in school.
3. The Zune pass for $15 a month and you could get 10 free songs was fucking amazing at the time, before things like Spotify caught on.
4. Having radio was amazing and worked great!
5. I had all of the models at one point. My dad currently uses my Zune HD instead of his phone, because he likes having all of his music easily accessible and its easier to use for him. Even if the Zune was a failure commercially, It was a major Success and a great MP3 and Video Player for me. So many great memories with it!
exar44 I’d still get a zune hd.
god you just reminded me of how frustrated I got at the syncing process with my old iPod touch, far out
The first reason was my number one reason for having it. I had a 200GB one and had over 20,000 songs. I loved it!
I only ever had ipods, and was really sad when I could no longer buy and use the ipod classics. I never wanted an ipod touch, I had a phone for that. But it sounds like you're saying the Zune still works? I had to let go of my ipod only a couple years after I bought my last one. It was a sad time.
The Zune HD looks like it was made in 2019 or something
It also has an OLED screen I believe
It has aged reasonably well in appearance.
The design language for later Zune were basically the basis or current flat trend. M$ HID which is now Surface is secret skunk-works of M$ that is only getting is appreciation now.
I had one of those and it was great. It looks and sounds amazing and was way cheaper than the iPod.
@aKickisAKick except for LG's V series phones!!! My LG V60 has the BEST DAC ever put into a handheld device!!! It sounds fucking incredible....
The thing that’s most hilarious to me is that in 2006, a radio on your MP3 was amazing. I remember I found a random MP3 on the ground in my high school and I used that for the radio and my iPod for the music I downloaded. When we got to the iPod touch and there were radio apps, mind blown. However the whole thing was pretty specific to 2006-08
I still have my Zune 120gb and still listen to music in 2020 with it..
can they still compete with current gen daps like fiio in terms of sound quality
The ultimate reason Zune failed was because Steve Balmer was a fairly garbage CEO. Everything he did was reactionary and riding off of Bill Gates success.
Microsoft did a complete 180 as soon as Steve stepped down and Satya took over. Xbox slowed their nose dive and is saving face. They are now posed to have a potential leg up over Sony during this next generation. They realized cloud gaming is going to be on the horizon as people start getting better internet connections, so they are investing early in building that platform so that they have a foothold early on with a "Netflix of Videogames" style approach with game pass and no console needed.
They managed to steal back the lead that Apple had in the business market with Surfaces over iPads. Literally at one point, the NFL were all issued Surfaces and people were still calling them iPads on TV since it was so engrained that a tablet was an iPad.
They managed to get ahead of the curve and jump into public cloud and unlock loads of cash flow with subscription based services like O365.
If you look at Microsoft's stock price, it tells basically the story of Satya's overwhelming recovery of a stagnant company.
Probably worth it to do a Rise/Fall/Rise of Microsoft in the next couple years.
O365 is great, but Microsoft's biggest money maker has got to be Azure. Cloud computing has really taken over and as a result Microsoft is in a much better position than they've ever been before.
Basically, Microsoft is the story of 3 CEOs:
The Blatantly Evil One Who Stole Other's Free Work,
The Useless One Who Stagnated The Entire Company, and
The One Who Gave Up And Focused On Games For Some Reason
Yeah, Vista-Win8 era Microsoft was pretty bad...
@@macgeek2004 hey windows 7 was a good OS and the xbox 360 did really well. But yeah
I have 2 points. Cloud gaming is on shaky grounds currently because Google did it as a pet project and doesn't actually care but MS does care about gaming so I do have faith in them; although most peoples internet still isn't up to par. As for xbox making a gaming comeback, I think it's a coin toss. I see Phil Spencer really loving the xbox brand and feeling betrayed by that guy who sank the whole generation for them. I think with innovation and fierce competition they have a strong chance against Sony this upcoming gen.
I remember my friend trying to sell me on a Zune. He took a knife and scratched the screen as hard as he could and it didn't leave a mark. That was back when Gorilla Glass made screens to LAST. Not planned obsolescence as we know of today.
I guess some actually were better back then.
Remembering my experience at the time, there seemed to be 2 categories of consumers:
1) Those that wanted to spend more money would go for the iPod, since it was trendy and "cool".
2) Those who just wanted a portable MP3 player, could choose from many other brands that would play their music just fine at a much cheaper price.
I fit into category 2 at the time and quite enjoyed having a tiny little mp3 player that just played my music. Also, the smaller offbrand MP3 players could typically go for HOURS beyond the iPod on a single charge. Personally I couldn't have cared less about the Zune or the iPod.
I had a Sansa View and loaded it with songs from Amazon MP3. I still have it, in fact.
I got my first smart phone in 2012 and rarely upgrade unless I have to. I wait a few months and spend way less than the people that bought whatever on day one.
Have fun browsing thru songs
I wouldn't describe as Sony an "offbrand". Perhaps Sony isn't as strong in the MP3 as Apple in the U.S., but Sony has a dominating market in other regions, and unlike Zune, Sony Walkman MP3 players are still being produced.
Christopher Noel Sony has always been one of the top brand names with everything they make.
That is why Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 is so funny
It's sad that this is Zunes legacy now.
And they chose a brown Zune, even in 2006 that didn't look good. Kinda kitsch now though.
@@anythinggggg I had the brown one. Lol... I liked the green undertone and thought the transparent colors were cool. But if I have to be totally honest, it was a gift. Saw no reason to go and buy an iPod after that. Lol. Can't say I would have gone out and chosen it...
@@victorgonzalez6200 Yes, it was pretty ugly. I bought it on amazon because it might've been marked down to $80. The other colors were quite a bit more. My old ipod was dead, so it did the job for a couple of years or so.
Supposedly Microsoft was EXTREMELY upset over that bit in the movie. Of course they would be! Cause.... what should they do? Use the increased interest in the Zune to sell old stock of it as collectors items? Release really dumb Windows Phones with cases slightly looking like the Zune (again, selling as collectors items)? Do anything to make use of the situation that their product is all of a sudden in people's minds, because a major blockbuster movie brought it up? NAH, let's just pout that they dared to do it!
Three years? I’ve been watching you forever, great channel.
I honestly think that we are missing out on why so many companies have failed to overcome Apple. While people may insist that the product are superior, I truly believe that apple guaranteed profits to other companies. I will start off with the music. They were sinking fast because of piracy. LimeWire was really putting the music industry out of business. Apple on the other hand came up with iTunes, which made it a lot more difficult to pirate music. That is what made Apple Superior. A lot of record companies shift their intention to Apple. Marketing became tremendous, not to say that a lot of label companies started to promote Apple.
Martin Go finally some sensible comments rather than brainless zune loving apple hating speeches
I haven't heard the word "zune" since I had my T-Mobile sidekick
Lmao, you’ve never seen guardians of the galaxy?!
@@irl8796 isn't that a Walkman?
I had a 3 Zunes and I loved them. The first one I got for Christmas. I downloaded so much stuff I burned out my 1st one. I downloaded movies and entire albums. Limewire was a God send. Lord, when life was simple. Still a Microsoft girl 'till this day.
There were a whole host of third party MP3 players back in those days that would do anything the ipod could do, sometimes more and sometimes better, for cheaper. It was branding that really won the mp3 player war.
I had a Sansa SanDisk. That thing was amazing. Eventually my parents had to cancel the Rhapsody subscription, but I was able to find my brother's old CDs and put the music on there.
My first MP3 player was a Creative Zen Micro. Had to get music from Walmart's website. It was great until I got my first iPhone and got replaced.
Didn't have a choice, got the Zune and Zune HD as birthday and christmas gifts
Is your father named Steve B?
Congratulations on 3 years! I love your channel!!! 😍🎉🤗👏🏼
Microsoft bringing back the Zune would still be a better investment than when they bought Nokia, Just saying...
aha lol, that investment went well, the failure and discontinuation of Windows Phone and a couple billions of dollars down the drain, they actually were selling zunes til 2018. Sad to see that the mp3 market is more or less dead and a niche from the naughties.
@@matthewstevens2960 they're still making portable CD players though. Who's laughing now!!! 🤣
It's a typical Microsoft problem. They develop a good product or something that has great potential and then they can't get out of their own way and do something dumb like holding a product back because they can't decide to sell it as a device or accessory for instance.
Fool, you foolish fool. Everyone with a good BRAIN knows Minecrafsoft has purchased Nokia Corporation; a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics company, founded in 1865 for ONE REASON! And that was to develop indestructibly indestructible military technology to sell to the United States Government. Any refutes are incontestably wrong and a grave reflection of your personality, it perhaps indicates you are a reptilian cloud person. Anyway, remember that time when there was a bunch of people in the YouTobe comments section saying hiss? Yeah, that was a government conspiracy to allow microsoftic holes to be drilled in heads of newborn babies. I'm on to you, Bill Gatez.
I think Zune HD was one of the earliest devices to come with an OLED screen. The UI of Zune HD was so intuitive that even to this day it doesn't feel outdated. But they were too late to the party.
Yes, the Zune HD screen was beautiful and the interface was quite unique. However, the product was quite late to a market that, by that point, was transitioning to using phones for everything. Simply put, the Zune HD had already lost before it was ever released.
Yes, I believe it was the first OLED of that size on the market. (Were those made by LG?) And the DAC was second to none.
I still have my Zune HD... And, it still, after all these years, gets around the same 30 hours of battery life. Plus, the OLED screen is still gorgeous... How many Ipod Touch owners of the same generation can say the same? =I
Y’all r the sega fans of MP3 players 🎉😊
10:36 “The wait is over.”
Bold of them to assume that people were waiting for it.
I loved my Zune! I was attracted by the artistic marketing and the way the interface of the Zune allowed for custom wallpapers and a greater emphasis on album art. By comparison, the iPod is a very sterile, bland looking device. The Zune just felt more warm and human to me.
Even though the video was made a few years ago, the Utah Jazz/Chicago Bulls reference works perfectly with "The Last Dance" being released recently! Nice one
Fun fact, but still related to current times
Back in 2008, when we got our stimulus check. I purchased a Zune. I did it because of the bigger screen. I genuinely loved it back then. I will say that it was the best sounding audio device I had heard (at the time). I'm not sure if it was the pack in headphones, or the DAC.
You’re comment really took me back! We used our stimulus to put a down payment on a Leo Diamond ring at Kay’s Jewelry. I just had a tiny diamond when we got married, and I wanted a big shiny rock! I still have my Leo and love it. That was before we had kids. Now, with this current stimulus, we’ll probably spend most of it on them! Anyway, I know this is completely unrelated to Zune. I just wanted to share.
"If it were 10 times better and cost half as much, I'd still go with the iPod"
Uh well that's kinda dumb bro
Lol, I've had people who own iPhones tell me the same thing about Android. "EvEn If It WaS cHeApEr AnD bEtTeR i WoUlD sTiLl GeT aN iPhOnE". Sheep iPhone users blind loyalty knows no limits. Then you ask em why and they're like "it's just better" and I'm like "Yeah no I know but why though?" And they never have an answer.
The audio quality was superior. The software sucked as bad as iTunes though. I had several of them and wish I still had a working one. Problem is they were way late to the game and decided to enter the market straight into an uphill battle. The average consumer doesn't know or care about audio quality which is how crap like BEATS from Dre has risen to the top, even though cheaper Sennheisers sound way better.
People buy brands, not products. What he said was a testament to how Microsoft jumping in 5 years too late was not a good idea
I’ll tell you why I like my iPhone. I’ve had Samsung and lg. Both my Samsung’s broke in a year and the functions on the lg quit working after 4 months. I’ve had friends still using the iPhone 8. And so I decided to make the switch. I’d never go back. Personally I think the quality is better but that’s just my opinion and my experience.
@@vich8810 I have an android and still think Iphone is better. They look better, more simple layout. Having an iPhone just feels superior.
Never bought an iPod because I didn't grow up with Apples, and I never really liked their over-dedication to simplicity at the expense of versatility (ex: the MAC's one button mouse vs. a much more useful PC mouse). I had friends with the Touch, and when I tried finding songs on them, it was always a pain in the neck. I think the only reason why people said it was easy to use was because they'd started on the iPod ecosystem. I hadn't, and when I picked up a Zune HD, it was far more intuitive to get around and find what I needed. On top of that, by the time of the HD Zune had a subscription service similar Spotify. The service even let you keep an album's worth of songs a month. Add in integration with X-Box and it just seemed far more reasonable to go with Zune.
I still have my Zune HD and use it to play music when traveling. It just sucks that one day the device will probably die and I'll have to figure out something else.
I had a 16gig Zune HD loved that thing. The interface was ahead of it's time. I see things in Android and iOS that took features the ZUNE/Windows Phone had.
Yeah. Metro design back in 2006. iPod touch had, now anicent 3d anamorphic iOS design
I remember wanting to get the Zune HD so much. The UI as just soo cool to me at the time.
Edit: I disagree about the UI part of the video, but I do get that big icons are probably more appealing to people than text on the hom screen. But in my opinion the Ui was superior on the Zune HD
Great video. I worked at Circuit City in 2004-2009 and sold mp3 players. One thing that always stuck out to me was on Black Friday I was at a table selling mp3 players, and we had two giant stacks of iPods and Zunes. Nearly every person in our line was there for an iPod, and I watched throughout the day the stack of iPods got smaller while the stack of Zunes remained largely the same. Having owned a Zune and thinking it was a capable mp3 player, I recommended it all the time, only to get rebuffed by customers who "had to have an iPod, not an mp3 player". Finally, by the end of the day on Black Friday we were completely out of iPods. I managed to sell one Zune to a woman at the end of the day who was there to buy an iPod for her daughter but had to settle for the Zune. The next day I was working and I watched as the woman came back into the store and returned the Zune. Her daughter had to have the iPod. RIP Zune.
Omg haha Daniel Powters “Had a Bad Day” that’s so 2006. I miss being 18 😭
I started singing it in my head when he said that lol
I miss being eight
i miss being 6
I bought a Zune when the brown ones were being practically given away for $50 per. I loved it, still consider it to be the best MP3 player I had, and I had an iPod. The bigger screen rendered movies better, and when I got my first car with a USB plug in it, the onboard system had no problem interfacing with it. I'd still have it to this day if I hadn't lost it in an airport.
I found your Zune at the airport...
I still have my Zune HD that I got back in 2010! It STILL works. F iTunes
This basically was Microsoft's equivalent to the time they tried to cash in on the wii with the Kinect , making their own version of their competitors product and failing miserably .
Kinect for the Xbox One Was pretty good, imo. Was very responsive with voice and it was pretty cool coming home and just commanding your tv with the Kinect, taking screenshots, recordings, stream, etc. Although the Cortana implementation was horrible.
I liked my kinect but not a ton of games.
Microsoft has a tendency of being way too early or laughably late. Windows Mobile was available on phones for years before iOS and Android. On the other hand, Windows Phone was way too late to the party.
I never liked the kinect but it was far from a miserable failure. It was a commercial success as Kinect Adventures! is the best selling Xbox 360 game of all times.
@kyoki86 "While announcing Kinect's discontinuation in an interview with Fast Co. Design on October 25, 2017, Microsoft stated that 35 million units had been sold since its release. 24 million units of Kinect had been shipped by February 2013. Having sold 8 million units in its first 60 days on the market, Kinect claimed the Guinness World Record of being the 'fastest selling consumer electronics device'."
I agree it never got close to surpassing the Wii, but people definitely bought it. The Playstation Move, on the other hand...
"If it was 10 times better and half the price I still wouldnt have gotten it" *This* right here, is whats called an iSheep.
Pretty much. I was in high school though so I'm gonna use that as my excuse.
at the time the zune came out there wasnt anyone that came remotely close to portable music players. Apple and iTunes were synonymous with portable music at this point. Everyone else was dead in the water. Wasn't really a matter of being an iSheep or not- there was just no competition.
@@Chris-dy1cbFinally, Thank you. I see everyone in the comments calling people who preferred iPods “sheep”, but there wasn’t competition. iTunes was and is trash, but there wasn’t much appeal for anything else.
Still rocking a 128GB Zune Video to this day! Was cheaper than the iPod equivalent at the time, and that's something people forget (Apple was pushing to have lower capacity for a higher cost, but Microsoft ran with better pricing for the space). When I first saw Guardians of the Galaxy with the Zune scene, it was nostalgic haha! I liked the touch version styling, and it got me pumped for a Surface phone (which still has yet to come to fruition). All in all, I was glad to be free from the iTunes tether (even if the Zune sync software wasn't great, it at least let you manually push/pull media with the device in a much better way).
Coming soon:
Quibi - why it failed
Oh goodness, I wait for that day with bated breath.
Tyler Zellers - did you come from the Clownfish TV video? The Pratt's went there....
Even before watching the video it is not difficult to see it was DOA. How many would pay for a sub to stuff YT has had FOR FREE SINCE THE MID AUGHTS?
Even Curiosity Stream is an IFFY PROPOSITION for docs at U$2.99 / month (they had to both include Nebula and drop the annual rate to U$12 / year for BOTH and it's STILL IFFY...
what is Quibi?
it'll be dead in a quibi.
@@etekweb I know nothing about the company, but I do know Jeffrey Katzenberg is the one spearheading it. He is one of the founders of Dreamworks.
I remember buying a zune. It was actually really nice. I loved their software, as a huge cd nerd, it made things very easy to organize
I had a 2nd generation Zune. I chose it over an iPod because I didn't like the iTunes software or Apple's products. Most of my friend group also got Zunes so we were able to send songs to each other. Your video is the first time I've heard it referred to as squirting though.
Happy 3 year anniversary dude 😄👌
HD radio was the reason I got a Zune HD. I lived in a market that had quite a few HD radio stations and this was one of the earliest HD radio receivers.
Congrats on 3 years Holmes!
I absolutely loved my Zune. Was really let down when Microsoft ended it. Was a lot better than IPod.
Personally I disagree about it being better than the iPod, but I had both and really enjoyed using both.
My school gave these away to lower-income students, I forgot all about them.
It’s sounds like Microsoft lost it when they couldn’t figure out advertising. Marketing is key in business.
Everyone I have ever spoken to has proclaimed that the Zune HDs operating system was vastly superior to and easier to use than the iPod touch's
The HD also had a better quality screen using OLED technology, and better battery life.
Darn thing had an OLED display too.
Coffeebeard the first comment cool
ok joker
The reason why I bought a Zune is because it had pictures of the artists in the background while you played a song of that artist.
Their headphones were amazing
*I liked Zune cause it was easy to rip songs off Limewire for free and play. Apple made it hard to have any music not from a CD or their store*
Yeah this.
Ahhh.......limewire. I can picture that little lime icon rn. Good ole days
I had an iPod touch in 2009. I have never bought an audio or video file. I never had a problem syncing my own files to the device. I have no idea why people think Apple made it difficult to use your own files.
@I OFFER YOU THIS You do realize you're doing the exact same thing, right? Lol! Choosing camps.
That is not true. You could rip CDs with iTunes and the interface for iTunes was the most convenient way of managing the tag information on your music files. No other system worked better.