We’ve heard how things won’t change much. We’ve seen video renders of happy go lucky music listeners enjoying Chiddy Bang and life in general. The countdown clock on Zune is ticking, and we would like you to join us for the long goodbye.
All weekend long, you will hear from the journalists who covered the service from it’s inception. You’ll hear from people who thought the Zune Software was –and still is the best music software of all time. No matter what their place in the ecosystem, you’ll hear from Zuners, who thought that enjoying music shouldn’t have been a solitary experience. The festivities will begin shortly, –and we decided we’d break out an “orangenta” logo for old time’s sake as well. What can we say, a little nostalgia never hurt anyone.
The Long Goodbye: Neville Williams
The Long Goodbye: Michael Collado
The Long Goodbye: Patrick Hefner
The Long Goodbye: William Devereux
The Long Goodbye: Darren Barlow
The Long Goodbye: Mary Jo Foley
I have had a Zune 30 (brown thank you very much) from almost the inception of the service and devices. This was always the superior music player. Not PMP, music player. Yep, the games were next to nothing. But the music experience was the best hands down. The Zune software was fantastic. The social was perfect, but marketed terribly. They had social before anyone. The Zune HD was a fantastic device – again terribly marketed. I have had people walk by my desk and see the Zune HD with the cool graphics flying across the screen and remark “what is that? Looks awesome!”. And now when I frequent the MSFT store in my area, I will hear someone ask “do you have an iPod like device?’. Oh the Zune was before its time! Here’s to hoping Xbox music will carry on the tradition and Windows Phone will en-capture the Zune music experience.
Before I got my Windows Phone, I ran across a gal in the elevator with the Fujitsu phone here in Japan. I asked her how she liked it and she said she loved it. She saw me working with my Zune HD and she asked if she could take a photo of it.
She had never seen it. Microsoft’s biggest mistake was not releasing this Worldwide and pushing to grow the Marketplace internationally. I know the reality of these things, but NO ONE who sees this device is not impressed with the build, the sound, the UI…. There is no better music player out there. There may be more successful, more popular, brighter colors (though few that have original artwork) but device to device none beat the combo of services and hardware that made up Zune.