Zune Thoughts: Robert Scoble Weighs in on Zune

"So, you’ve seen the Zune video. Here’s my thoughts about whether Microsoft is going to be successful. I’ll come at it from a number of different angles: THE FUNDAMENTALS: Box design: good. As good as iPod. Look and feel and overall hardware quality: good. As good as iPod. I actually even liked the brown one a lot. Screen: better than iPod. Hard drive size: worse than iPod. Features: mixed bag, we’ll get into that below. Price: in the right neighborhood..."

After watching the video (which I posted about a few days ago), I felt like Robert let Matt Jubelirer off a little too easy. After reading Scoble's blog posting about it though, I think he understands the holes in the current Zune offering and probably knew Jubelirer wasn't going to give him straight answers even if he pressed for them. I also took the time this morning to read through all 81 (at the time) comments on Scoble's post, and the reactions were quite interesting. Some of his readers fall into the irrational Microsot-bashing camp, which is to be expected, but some had some interesting insights into the challenges that the Zune faces against the iPod. The reality is that, out of the box, the Zune offers zero features that make it more compelling than an iPod for the mass market. The music sharing feature is great in theory, but as I detailed earlier, unless you and your friends all go out and buy Zunes together at the same time, there's no one to share content with. Robert got excited about the upgradeability of the Zune, which is something I want to delve into in a future post, because I think it's been misunderstood greatly.