This is a bad product, and it's somehow 'news' that people do not want it?

Please, Gizmodo, stop reading your own press and come back to reality on this one.

Good commedy value. :)

If everyone would just stop the "microsoft-hating" rokusan, you'd realize that the Zune is NOT a bad product. That's comparable to being a Red Sox fan and yelling at Derek Jeter "you suck." You may be making yourself feel good, but he's one of the best.

And it's not really that surprising to find out that you're not coming into contact with 'Zune Socialites'. Me and my friends have them, and none of us are walking around with the wi-fi enabled. There's no point.

I wonder if Microsoft's offices are "social". Last I heard, they all had Ipods :)

Note: I have an ipod and a mac, but would love to get some zune action. amazon deals, please pick me!

Could it be that in Seattle, Bill and Melissa are doing the social? Now that Bill's retired he should have lots more time on his hands. Perhaps they invite Balmer over to their crib to join in. Would there be a social at the Microsoft Campus or maybe that would be a stretch ?

No, I don't "hate it" any more than I hate any lame product. And it's not an MS thing, either. The XBox 360 and MS Media Remote are good products. Bu the Zune is just a bad product, a solution to a problem nobody had. It may attract those who hate the Apple label, god bless 'em, but pretty much nobody else.

The fact that you say "there is no point" to the "feature" that the marketing is hinging on is evidence of that.

At best, it's a feature-bloated media player. A me-too product. Might MS have a cool product by version 2 or 9 of this thing? Yes. So report on it there. This is just a GigaBeat, and the press it receives on some blogs is way out of proportion to its quality, novelty or coolness.

For what it's worth, seven thousand articles raving about the "new" iPod would be just as annoying, as they're little new about them. Maybe next year's will be worth some ink.

(PS: Jeter doesn't suck, but he has pathetic range for a shortstop. That's a feature limitation. And the Red Sox have pitching held together by bandages and wishful thinking: an engineering and QA shortfall. So they're both bad products, too.)

I can see this as becoming popular if Apple puts wifi in the ipod.... or if MS expands in popularity. I already enjoy popping open my laptop in crowded airport and listening to music on other people's computers via iTunes. If I could do the same with my iPOD, it would be multitudes better.

FYI: Part of the problem isn't so much that no one has one, it's that no one has WiFi turned on.

I live in Fort Worth, Texas, not exactly a huge city. The day I bought my Zune I just out of curiosity looked around for other folks and found one in an odd spot... a stoplight.

At the Gym I keep it in it's little bag that it comes with so I don't get my sweaty hands all over it and just poke the buttons through the bag, I've had multiple people ask me about it and 2 folks that had one (wifi off) with them.

The recommended operation TELLS you to turn off the Wifi, I don't think the intent is to just drive around and randomly pick up songs from strangers. I think its so when you get together with friends and you all have one, you can share music.

ok, so 5 of the 6 locations you tried are nothing strange, but did you *really* expect to find someone with a Zune at THE APPLE STORE?

That's like pulling into a Wal-Mart parking lot and being surprised you don't see any Ferraris or Lamborghinis..

On my daily travels, I've seen a handful of people on NYC Subway toting Zunes. I don't have one, nor will I ever get one though (unless it begins to support more stores.)

In response to Medicating and the microsoft hating ?! Poeple are tired of MS forcing crap down their throats. They find a market and they BUY IT. They want a choice and Mr. Bill would rather you come to Big PAPA for everything that a buck can be made on. For those who think for themselves, find this very discouraging and a little scarey. They want choice and innovation. Not buying markets and force feeding. No clone here.

zune 1.n. A smooth brown turd which is launched with great fanfare, only to disappear rapidly around the U-bend; hence 2.v. To drop a zune, to unnecessarily publicize a bowel movement. e.g. "Wow, I really need a crap." "Go ahead and zune then, Bill, and next time don't bother to tell the entire dinner table."

The answer to your question is: "High school" I don't think meeting random strangers in the street is the point of the Zune. It's about groups of friends exchanging songs, and we all know that happens a LOT in high school or college.

In that respect, it's sort of like sex. If you were to solicit random free sex on the street, I think you'd ultimately conclude that the human species is bound for imminent extinction. Your aimless journey into Times Square misses the point. But then again, "Gizmo geeks" never did get any in high school either.

12 Galaxies! Like the insane hobo who walks around with a sign that says "12 galaxies"? I didn't know he had risen to the point of being an SF landmark. Also I thought he was more of a financial district hobo...

Is it really that bad a product? Have you tried it? I'm sure anything MS makes you cringe. In the same time you're OK with Apple's monopolist ways. Somehow when Apple does the same thing as MS, it's cool. Did you ever bother to know what's in your OSX? OSX is a biggest piece of bloated shite! I'm not just saying this. I actually know what's under the hood. Yes, there's a bit of FreeBSD kernel there, but what's on top of that is disturbing. Apple is every bit as bad as MS. They're all corporations and their goal is to get you to part with your money.

my god.

version 2 of the zune is the one to get jazzed up about if it's bad.

everyone knew six months ago this was going to be a rebranded "turd" ... enough with the bashing already.

The Zune is great, ipod fans are just mad that we have a prettier interface.

seriously the zune came out like a month ago. When the ipod came out they were not all over the place in one month. its not even AFTER christmas yet so all the zunes people bought as gifts are still under the tree, without wi-fi enabled.

seriously, macboys sound so dumb dissing another electronic gadget.

whatever happened to just buying the product you wanted. now you have to be all proud of your purchase choice, name calling and dissing other gadgets? for what ? gadget superiority?

if its main stream enough maybe some chick will actually date you now because you happened to be way ahead on that MP3 player trend?

get a life.

[blockquote]In response to Medicating and the microsoft hating ?! Poeple are tired of MS forcing crap down their throats. They find a market and they BUY IT. They want a choice and Mr. Bill would rather you come to Big PAPA for everything that a buck can be made on. For those who think for themselves, find this very discouraging and a little scarey. They want choice and innovation. Not buying markets and force feeding. No clone here.[/blockquote]

I very much agree. I don't think the Zune is a bad product. (Although I really don't get the brown color) it's that I don't want to support M$s business practices anymore than I have to.

Okay, if Gizmodo was born, say, 5 years ago (which you might be) what would you say about the iPod, selling for $5,000,000 when the market was littered with SmartMedia and CompactFlash players in 16MB to 64MB capacities?

It takes TIME, brothers and sisters - for the market to buy enough Zunes that the next time you go around squirting randome people on the subway, you'll find a lucky chica who wants to take it.

I'm honestly surprised that person came across a complete stranger randomly with a Zune after only walking down one street.

I own a zune and like it very much, but I don't expect tons people to have WiFi turned on in public for no reason only one month after release. I don't even expect any, really. Social networks take time and this one is based around friends, not strangers, anyway.

People looking for reasons to hate on inanimate objects are funny and sad. I bet they go around "digging down" zune stories on every site in some weird "crusade". Ha.

no, cello you missed the point, they and I do not hate an inanimate piece of garbage, we hate a corporation, M$, and they're shitty business tactics, and their me too attitude. Supporting them in my opinion is supporting a criminal.

You Microsoft/ Zune haters need to get a life, seriously, if your on a website posting about an mp3 player that you dont even own let alone have used then maybe you should shut your fucking mouth and let the big boys talk huh?? oh and you should try going outside sometime.

Zune 2.0 is a BREATHTAKER!!

I, and my supermodel girlfriend, stumbled over this really ugly brown thing called a zune while we were buying the kids that live in the next apartment Christmas presents. The sales person saw us laughing and thought that we were, perhaps, pleased with something we'd found in the dreariest corner of the gadget shop.

We explained that we were laughing at the idea of displaying a donkey turd. We thought it was funny to put a fake scroll wheel on a turd. It was more funny to put the turd in a display cabinet. The sales person apologized and said that he was sorry he couldn't tell us much about the turd. Apparently his boss had been really embarrassed when the turds had turned up. She'd told all the sales people to forget about the turds and get on with selling the things that kept the store going. Like iPods.

We liked the turd so much that we bought three of them (the total stock of the store) and took them home with us. The store manger was so thankful that we'd taken the smelly turds out of her shop that she shed tears as we held our stinky shopping bag at arms length and left the shop.

The neighbors' kids really loved the nanos that Sarah and I gave them.

On new year's eve we partied with good friends and at sometime after midnight we remembered our funny plastic turds and showed them about. Everyone laughed like we'd done when we'd first seen them. Soon everyone realized that these things were trying to look like music players so we stacked the three of them up and (after stoking the iPod fed music system with some Jimmy Hendrix) torched the dirty little cheap plastic turds.

As they burnt on their own little bonfire we all danced around them like Jimmy - knowing that they were not going to the same place ... and therefore could not offend him. At daybreak, with the iPod still pumping we looked at the filthy melted pile of cheap plastic and finally realized we'd done something magical... something important. We'd come-up with zune 2.0 way before Microsofton!!