Sorry, I keep reading roughlydrafted, and it keeps getting funnier and
funnier. Here's some more:
<Quote>
.When the iPod becomes a multifunction device with a large display, it
will stop being a music player and convert to being a PDA that also
happens to play music...
In Microsoft's world, that's what a music player has always been. The
Zune, just like its cousin PlaysForSure devices, isn't an embedded
device designed primarily to play music, like the iPod is. Instead,
it's just a WinCE based PDA that plays music.
More precisely, it's a recycled WinCE device that failed as a PDA,
failed as a music player for Toshiba, and is now hoping to not fail in
its third incarnation as an clunky, oversized music player running a
slimmed down, general purpose operating system with all the stability
and performance of Microsoft's desktop OS....
In an apparent effort to further handicap the Zune, Microsoft equipped
it with a radio transmitter that ensures the device will burn through
battery life faster than any music player in recent history.
Paired with a larger screen that is designed to be lit up more often
than not to display wallpaper photos, the Zune is in many ways the
opposite of the iPod, which is optimized to shut off the screen and
coast along in low power mode through aggressive RAM caching of its
hard drive.
No doubt some early reviewers will be fooled by Microsoft's advertised
battery life figures, but consumers are much harder to keep happy. The
most grievous complaints about the iPod were from users who assumed
its battery would last longer and never wear out....
A major part of effective engineering involves tough decisions on what
not to include; Microsoft is not good at this. The result is a device
that does everything, but poorly. The Zune will introduce users to a
new experience: music players that frequently crash.
</Quote>
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