Zune Thoughts: Yeah, The Zune Firmware Update is Late. So What?

I'm a little stunned to see stories like this one, and this one, where sites are spreading the news that some Zune owners are ticked off that the firmware update didn't arrive as scheduled. I've been fortunate enough to not have had the problem with the Zune skipping when listening to Marketplace tracks, so perhaps I'm biased, but I think this is getting blown out of proportion. First off, we (the Zune community) have been urging (begging?) the Zune team to be more open with us about what they're working on, updates coming, etc. So they finally are: they give us a rough release date (mid-March) and a proposed list of fixes for the Zune. That's big progress! But when they're a bit late (we're now in the latter part of March) everyone is up in arms.

Should the Zune team have fixed this skipping problem months ago? Yes, absolutely: in fact, the product shouldn't have gotten out the door without this fix, but my hunch is no one saw it because they were testing the Zunes with their own ripped music. Even so, I have a hard time believing that a few days (or even a couple of weeks) makes that big of a difference to Zune owners that have put up with the problem for a few months. Irritating to even have the problem in the first place? Sure. Frustrating that the release isn't out yet? Yes. The end of the Zune world? Hardly. Let's keep things in perspective. Feel differently? Let me know...

[As a sidebar on this issue, I'm more concerned with the fact that the three firmware updates thus far have all been focused on bug fixing - do they have another team working in parallel on new features? Or are we months away from being able to do anything new with our Zune because the one and only Zune firmware team is still in bug-fixing mode?]