Zune Thoughts: Vista Compatibility Coming on January 30th

"To the surprise of many, Microsoft’s hoped-for iPod killer didn’t work with Vista upon launch. But as expected, compatibility is coming – on Jan 30. Jason Reindorp, the Director of Marketing at Microsoft for their own branded digital mp3/media player, the Zune, has finally put Vista owners with a Zune out of their misery and has announced that Vista compatibility is coming on June 30. Apparently this was ‘always the plan’, with an update to be made available to enable Vista compatibility. Why it can’t be made available now, in calendar year 2006, is still unclear. Surely it must already work? Why the wait – there are plenty of people who can legally get access to Vista, with the millions all subscribing to Microsoft ‘MSDN’ program able to download Vista today. There are also still millions of copies of RC1 and RC2 out there."

See how that quote says June 30th in it? I read that date first, and my blood pressure rose rapidly - I started to write an email to a Microsoft contact I have to ask them if this was really the case, because it seemed even more insane than not having Vista compatibility right at launch (which should be a sad embarrassment for the Zune team). I paused and read the whole article again - and saw that the first date mentioned was actually January 30th...which is more in line with what I've heard and have been expecting. So it looks like we have a final confirmation of a new version of the Zune software that will be compatible with Vista. In the meantime, there's always the hack of course. I'm cautiously optimistic that the new software will also have the ability to transcode DVR-MS files, which an inside source told me was coming. We'll see - but it will be a long two month wait.