Actually, from the two people I know who actually owned a Zune (and from Jerry Holkins: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/5/15/), Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways.

Microsoft just has shitty marketing. But maybe that's what you meant.

> Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways.

Microsoft was over 5 years (1848 days) later than Apple to "get" what an MP3 player was. During that five years, Microsoft had a total R&D budget of over $25 billion, or $13,698,630/calendar day.

Of course we don't know how much of that budget was allocated for the Zune, but one could easily imagine it being in the hundreds of millions.

You say they got the MP3 player, I say if you throw enough money at a problem, eventually, no matter how hard you try to ignore it, the solution will present itself. And in this case, it was simply to copy their competitors.

edit: typo

Hardly. They offered a very solid competing vision for what an MP3 player should be. It was a risky vision, involving a subscription and the innovative ability to share songs you haven't bought legally, wirelessly with the person standing next to you.

I really think the failure was purely marketing, judging by the accounts of people who used the service, that and people's assumption that anything from Microsoft cannot be innovative or interesting - it's a self-fulfilling prophecy in a lot of ways. Microsoft could have released the iPad, and it probably would have been a total flop, even if it had all the hallmarks of the iPad ecosystem. (There are a few things that could stand-in for the iPhone's app store like Flash and WinMO apps.)

I see your point, but subscription-based music services had been around for five+ years before the Zune came out - and even so, all iTunes evidence pointed to a trend that users wanted to own their music.

And the beaming feature may have been nice in theory, it was widely considered to be hobbled with DRM.

Lastly, let's not forget the seemingly inane decision to bypass what little music people had from PlaysForSure campaign and re-implement a completely incompatible new format.

Marketing? Maybe, maybe not. To me it sounds like a severe lack of execution. They made consumers re-purchase music, didn't offer much differentiation from their competitors, and were five years late to the party.

In comparison, it's reported that the entire iPod development process, from the form factor, to the scrollwheel, FireWire, OS, and iTunes integration only took 18 months.

>They made consumers re-purchase music

How many people actually bought PlaysForSure music? I don't really see how that's a huge deal. You could still use all of your existing MP3s, DRM-free AAC music from iTunes, and WMA files from Windows.

>it was widely considered to be hobbled with DRM.

Here I definitely think that's the anti-Microsoft spin machine at work. The problem with the beaming feature is that no one owned a Zune, so it was useless. If it had more market penetration, it could get really interesting. But people don't want to believe that anything coming out of Microsoft can get better, so the reviews said it sucked.

>it's reported that the entire iPod development process ... only took 18 months

Pro-Apple spin machine at work.

>Microsoft did in fact 'get' the iPod, and outdid it in a lot of ways.

Do you own one? I've never met anyone that did. I see the Zune HD has a web browser... How does that experience compare with browsing on the iPod touch? How does battery life compare watching youtube video?