Zune Thoughts: The Misunderstood Zune Upgrade Ability & Why I'm Still Excited...

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Friday, October 27, 2006

The Misunderstood Zune Upgrade Ability & Why I'm Still Excited...

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Zune Talk" @ 12:00 PM

The June 6th update in particular had a massive number of updates and improvements. When my Xbox 360 was upgraded to have the ability to queue up six downloads at a time, it was a huge boost to my satisfaction with the console. The Zune group is under the management of J. Allard, the guy behind the Xbox 360. Some members of the Zune team are from the Xbox 360 team. To me, that says that the Zune team is going to place a high value on upgrading the software on the Zune, and delivering new value to their customers. To date, there hasn't been a detailed screen by screen walkthrough of the software on the Zune. Why not? I believe it's because the Zune team members who have been showing the product off in person are running a newer firmware update and don't want to reveal what's new. The Zune software was probably locked down and sent off to manufacturing in the July timeframe, so by the time the devices ship in November, I'm willing to bet there will be a new update for the player upon first connection. Many aspects of the Zune seem quite rushed to me, which further underscores my belief that the Zune team wanted to deliver more features around WiFi (look at how one feature was in the FCC-submitted manual, then cut) but simply didn't have the time.

A key factor in the ease of updates is the fact that Microsoft controls the whole platform from end to end. In the Windows Mobile world of Pocket PCs and Smartphones, I've seen the same scenario play out over and over: the Windows Mobile team creates a software update with bug fixes and completely new features, and all they can do is hand it off to the device manufacturers and mobile phone carriers and hope that they release it to their customers. Quite often, that software is never released to the customers because the device manufacturers either don't want to put the time and money into customizing it for their particular devices (which is necessary due to low-level hardware issues), or they want to offer those new software features in a new hardware device they can sell. I've seen first hand the frustration this causes the Microsoft team members who work on this software - they can't deliver the update directly to the customer, and the customer is the one that suffers with a buggy device.

There are no such limits with the Zune, and my hope is that 12 months after release the Zune will have had a series of software upgrades that make it seem more like a v2 device than anything else - the included WiFi offers tremendous potential for the Zune to evolve into delivering some killer scenarios, and Microsoft has a clear path to deliver them to Zune owners. I believe they will do exactly that.


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