Think the Zune was a flop? Well, Microsoft
One thing that seems to be missing: ombudsman. As I've written several times, the Zune is a good device. (This despite my own experience with out-of-the-box, busted headphones and the now-infamous skipping problem -- which has yet to be fixed.)
But Zune has more important failings and only a slim feature advantage over Apple's
A ruthless ombudsman might have been able to shake Mr. Softy out of some of its dumber mistakes with the Zune, like the now-ridiculous-looking file-sharing scheme that, in my experience, can't share squat. Oh, and how is it that SanDisk
A hard-nosed consumer advocate might also have slapped the Zune engineers upside the head to get the Zune device and software to support a wider variety of video types -- say, the avi video files produced by every consumer camera out there -- rather than forcing users to convert everything to Windows Media format.
How about it, Mr. Softy? Got the guts to work with some real people on the Zune as you did with Vista? Give me a jingle. I know a two-Zune family that would like to have a word with you.
Comments? Bring them here.
At the time of publication, Seth Jayson was long Microsoft common and calls but had no position in any other company mentioned here. See his latest blog commentary here. View his stock holdings and Fool profile here. Microsoft is a Motley Fool Inside Value recommendation. Fool rules are here.