big surprise

I was thinking about maybe buying it if it acually does prove better than the ipod to me. but i guess not now. and besides it's colors are not too good. i like shiney electronicsa not earth colors

If only there was some well supported Audio Player player that was Mac compatible. When will we Mac users be given the luxury of listening to these so called "MP3's"? WHEN!?

what bad news.

That's unfortunate. When I first heard of the lack of PlayForSure I thought it was because they were going to try and do Mac support too (since all P4S is done thru XP only MTP).

that was so clever, imsoclever. :)

Typo there in your headline (I'll save you the smartass yet poorly executed remark on my part).

comaptible..compatible - fix the headline ed.

:-)

Great minds thinking alike at exactly the same time, Roggin - lol

Now go to msn search and type in Zune:

"Were you looking for Zone ?"

Ah, the fit and finnish I'd expect from Microsoft..

I'm a Mac user and on my 2nd iPod and until it has a built in FM radio and recording capabilities, I won't buy another one. Don't point to the stoopid inline radio thingey as that is an insult to the nice iPod design. I want live NPR sometimes as they don't podcast shows like All Things Considered or Morning Edition. My GF's B-Day is coming up and I won't be buying her an iPod for those same reasons.

It just keeps getting worse and worse for the Zune. At first I was pretty excited that a potential iPod competitor was going to debut with a great featureset. Now it's just another in a long line of kinda OK players that don't really amount to much.

Who would buy this knowing a much better one will be released in a year?

discount bob: you could say the same of ipod's.

Also, wasn't the ipod Windows only when it launched? I am pretty sure I remember that being a big deal, and people hacked together software to get it to work until Apple released itunes for Windows.

yes the iPod was Apple only when it launched, but it was not because of DRM, it was more because they where testing the waters. It wasnt long before they released a Windows version of it and eventually the whole design was changed to suit the windows crowd (I still say the death of the Firewire sync ability was a poor move, as it still shows to be faster than USB2 for syncing between my 1st gen iPod and 1st Gen Nano) The iTunes Music Store didnt even exist when the iPod was launched.

dbob...same as ipod purchasers...did'nt Steve say as much? You have to buy one each year.

Eleazar...Yes, iPod was Apple only until they realized that they were limiting themselves to only 10% of the market.

JimK ... APPLE is the one preventing their FairPlay from being licensed..not MS's problem. Does iPod play WMA? Exactly. (Though if they do start losing share a firmware update will fix that on an iPod.)

I hope Zune NEVER goes compatible with OSX. If they keep it Windows only I would expect a much tighter integration, and therefore better experience for the 90% of the market not using a Mac, than if they had to service both operating systems.

Don't you mean the Ipod was Mac only? And yes it was for a long time, as Apple refused to port the iTunes software to the PC. So you used to have to use hacked software. Apple later decided to officially release the iPod for the PC but it used some 3rd party Windows software, rather then iTunes.

I don't see the big deal about not supporting Mac at launch. I mean it is only ignoring a small percentage of potential non-iPod buyers.

"I was thinking about maybe buying it if it acually does prove better than the ipod to me. but i guess not now. and besides it's colors are not too good. i like shiney electronicsa not earth colors"

so black and white are 'shiney electronicsa' earth colors? i assume you mean the nanos.

*gasp*

i'd buy one if it came with moleskin.

@mrhammerstein well idk about you but i dont own a nano. for that reason. i have not seen a white zune therew may be one but all i have seen showcased were a flat black one and the brown color. and fyi nanos are 5 colors currently.

"I hope Zune NEVER goes compatible with OSX. If they keep it Windows only I would expect a much tighter integration, and therefore better experience for the 90% of the market not using a Mac"

And funny its the tight intigration that the two have thats the #1 reason people buy the thing, the fact that unlike a lot of players out there, it just works out of the box.

Now granted I have seen it not work on a PC like that, but thats Windows fault for allowing everyone under the sun to muck around with its code whenever people want, including making drivers that use bugs as loopholes to proper coding. IF your a smart user who buys good hardware and knows how to properly set up your box, then it works. Its the 89% of poor computer users who shouldnt be using a computer at all that make simple things difficult. I still find it amazing that people think its a good thing your computer bitches at you that you "added new hardware"

I mean christ give me a break, are PC users that stupid as to need their computer to tell them they plugged in thier printer?

> But seriously, how many Mac users were going
> to buy Zunes instead of iPods anyway?

What is this "instead" thing you mention?

Wait . . . I think I remember it from something I recently did--something that was possibly a mistake.

I can't settle on one computer platform (I use both Mac OS X and Windows XP regularly and I tinker with various GNU/Linux distributions now and then) or one game console and now I kind of wish I had kept my video iPod *and* bought a smaller one instead (there is the "instead"!) of selling it and buying a smaller one, so I can definitely see myself having both an iPod and a Zune at some point.

Even as a kid, there were a lot of competing brands in my toy collection. Did you have G.I. Joe instead of Star Wars? Did you have Hot Wheels instead of Matchhbox? Did you have Transformers instead of GoBots? OK, so if the old people who bought you gifts actually applied much thought about what you would like best, you probably did have Transformers instead of GoBots, but you probably still had Transformers made by both Takara and Ban Dai and if you really liked robot toys, you probably also had some Voltron or Robotech or some other types of robot toys.

@Ryanraven:

no white zune?

No mass storage support? That's a deal breaker! Who cares about the Zune software? What if I want to use my Zune hardware as a hard drive to store data as well as to listen to music? How am I supposed to break the DRM without mass storage support? M$ morons...

Well, I guess I'd better sell my Mac, then! There just isn't a player like the Zune that'll serve my needs!

</sarcasm>

marco- i still don't see the point why anyone would need an FM tuner in their mp3 player when they have thousands of their favorite songs at their fingertips. it's a waste of time and effort for apple, IMO... it doesn't seem like a feature that would really be used by too too many people, and it seems like a dumb feature to hold out on a purchase over.

RB...

I would guess that the majority of iPod users that 'have thousands' of songs are getting alot of that content illegally. Those that actually don't steal music are likely to have alot less. For the legal among us, a built in FM reciever is a nice addition.

If FM tuner or Voice recorder or [other feature] was really a deal breaker, no one would be buying iPods and would be buying [one of the other thousands of audio players out there]. The market share numbers show what's happened.

I've got around 6000 songs, all legally owned on my iPod. The last time I listened to FM radio was when I was in an earthquake. (And probably will be the next time too.)

ksprayDad, your avatar always gives me the creeps.

I'd rather have an AM radio for talk radio and sports than an FM radio...I already have the music covered.

I must admit that the Zune almost has the right combination of features to let me relinquish my trusty 3G iPod. The 5.5G iPod still lacks an FM tuner- Apple said its market didn't want that, but then again I didn't realise how much it would be appreciated until I got a phone with an FM tuner built in.

The sharing thing is going to turn into a bloody mess as people are disappointed with the crippled 3x3 interpretation of 'sharing'. The best thing they could have done was use Bluetooth for file transfers- uses less power and the speed would inhibit large-scale transfers of more than a few songs. MS could then say to the RIAA that they only intended file transfer abilities to be used between the owner's laptop and Zune, hence no DRM.

I'm convinced that Apple is up to something though. We've been saying that for years, but now that the infrastructure is up it is only a matter of time before the stagnant iPod is replaced with more than a bigger HDD. I might have considered a Zune as a stop-gap, but no OS X compatibility is a deal-breaker and the 30GB HDD is only 10GB more than my current DAP.

Why is this a surprise to anyone?

Like it has been said by others above: iTunes/iPod wasn't PC-compatible on launch; not a big deal, since the # of Mac users is a small segment of the market; etc.

Mac-only users, for the most part, wouldn't buy it anyway, since they're so brand-conscious and myopic.

ksprayDad: I agree with E.Garcia - that avatar is perfectly creepy... which is probably why it makes me laugh.

"ksprayDad: I agree with E.Garcia - that avatar is perfectly creepy... which is probably why it makes me laugh."

Ditto to both ksprayDad and Scott. What's with the freaky avatars? Why can't you have something normal like a Sesame Street character on the crapper?

Oh yea, back on topic... I have to agree with the general sentiments so far and say
1.) Big surprise
2.) Most people familiar with the iPod's evolution will probably sit and wait on the next gen anyway
3.) No mass storage capability? WTF?

I think this is more of a marketing mistake than a business one. Not competing with the iPod on its home turf from launch makes it look like that don't have the resources or the knowledge to effectively compete. Not necessarily the best starting point IMO.

I'd so much prefer that they hone the zune to perfection on the PC, and then make the move over to Mac.

The thing that made me buy the iPod was iTunes. It's a tight, well made application. A year later I regretted my iPod, and will never buy another one...but iTunes is still nice.

MS should perfect it's software and hardware, and then port it. I'd rather they focus on functionality of the native app than cross functionality of OS's.

Why does your the headline say incompatible with Macs? Incompatible with Mac OS X is what it should say. I can run the said software on my iMac using Parallels Desktop, and so can any other Intel based Mac.

I can boot my iMac into XP and use Zune if I wanted to, but I seriously doubt I would want to.

Well, just because the first-gen iPod was Mac only didn't prevent PC users from using it via some very nifty ingenuity. (There were two reasons - one was nothing had iPod database support, and secondly, PCs can't read Mac HFS+ filesystems natively).

Some very enterprising people created a program that with the aid of MacDrive (adds HFS support to Windows) made the iPod accessible to Windows. It was the 2nd gen iPod that introduced separate Mac and PC models, while the 3rd gen (buttons below screen) had a combined unit with 3rd party software. I have a 3G iPod and while I use iTunes now, I tended to use EphPod rather than MusicMatch (which is what Apple shipped).

And Windows Media DRM is incompatible with mass storage class - you'll find on most "PlaysForSure" (??? Doesn't on the Zune...) devices, to support WM DRM, they either have to partition the storage to have a mass storage class portion and an MTP portion, or just use it all as MTP.

Funny how FairPlay works just fine with mass storage class...

RB: you missed the part in my post that talks about NPR - National Public Radio. It's mostly news and info - not music. I want one device for music/radio and am looking to the Sony/ericson W810i to replace my aging Nokia 3650 AND my iPod.

I would consider a Zune device if it were Mac compatible, and I know other Mac users who would also.

Zabaz: I have almost 39GB on my 4th gen iPod - 99% of it legally acquired. I've been doing the MP3 boogie since 1998. I just like to listen to the news sometimes - at the gym usally.

The remote radio works just fine. Not just fine, really well. Keep the price down and integrate a product fewer people want into an accessory (the iPod is 250, the Zune will be 280 or more for the same size).
So does audio recording - plug in a mic/line in adapter for the iPod, and the screen immediately switches to the record screen. No difficult to decipher/navigate menus. All the things you are asking about are there Marco, and really nicely integrated. It is not like the radio in a Zune or any other device work without an antenna - the remote is the required antenna on the iPod, while the headphones are the required one on any other device. Have you seen the recording interface? Have you seen the Radio interface? They are both great.
Lastly, all anyone is bitching about is that it is not compatible with the Mac right out of the gate. Of more importance is that for the 1st time ever, Microsoft is making their DRM scheme compatible with the Mac AT ALL - should that not be the big thing here? Once Windows DRM is ported to the Mac, you will see competition and availability of players for the Mac increase, and you may eventually see the iPod support additional DRM schema. Is this not the more interesting news to take out of this?

Oh No! Zune won't be compatible with Mac?!? Hopefully apple will come out with some sort of online STORE that will allow Mac users to access music and TV shows on their player which has only 80+% of the world-wide marketshare.

Microsoft doesn't care about mac people...those computerist bastards...

i want to share mp3's any which way i can and ipods are making it harder and harder to to that. this zune thingy might make it easier to share using wifi. i'd really like to see how that works.