Zune Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Here are the first shots of the Zune 2 and Zune Flash. The images reveal an 80GB version and a 4GB and 8GB flash model. Not sure what's going on with that interesting controller, but it looks like a real button, but is just wide enough that it may have touch-sensitive properties. These photos came from a source who cites marketing materials, likely from the retail channel, but were confirmed by a second source as well. Does that mean they're final? I don't know. If I were Microsoft, I might seed the internet with mockups as to confuse. Oh, how I love counterintelligence measures. So take them with a grain of salt, confirmed as something, but still unofficial."



Just like the nice man at Gizmodo says, this could be nothing more than a ruse - but it's by far the most realistic one I've seen so far. You'll notice I never posted any of that "Draco" or "Scorpio" junk - it takes more than "I heard this thing from this guy who knows a guy" for me to call that "news". Even a rumour needs to have some specifics or be substantiated in some way in order for it to be taken seriously. At any rate, this is looking quite interesting - based on the image above, I can glean the following details:

• The new Flash-based Zune will be available in 8 GB and 4 GB capacities
• Colours for the new Flash-based Zune will be black, red, pink and green
• The new Flash-based Zune has a bigger control pad and the buttons are up higher
  
• It looks like the current chunky Zune will stick around, but be offered with an 80 GB hard drive and be available only in black

My analysis? While 4 GB might seem "small" to us, the average person in North America still doesn't have 4 GB worth of digital music - so they need to have that "small" size. But topping out at 8 GB? A big mistake in my opinion - with the new Zen Vision offering up to 16 GB of storage [affiliate], and an SD card slot to expand it even more, I think Microsoft is making a mistake by not offering a Zune that at least matches what the competition does. 4 GB and 8 GB storage capacities match the previous generation of MP3 players, not the next generation - and the Zune desperately needs a "wow" product.

Regarding the hard-drive based player - I'm a bit puzzled. 80 GB is a capacity they should have offered right out of the gate last year, to at least match what Apple has on the high end. They didn't, and I believe they missed out on a great opportunity. So here we have the next generation and they're releasing a product that matches what Apple had last year. Seeing a pattern here? I think 80 GB is a good capacity mind you, but if that's the only change that has been made, then I'll be disappointed. If it was a 640 x 480 screen with 16.7 million colours, the device was thinner, and more codecs were supported on the device (h.264, Divx, DVR-MS, etc.) then maybe this would be a compelling device.

That's my take on this - what's yours?

"The chances of a Zune Scene editor running into a Microsoft Zune employee in the wild are pretty slim, but recently the stars were aligned and I got the inside scoop on the Zune 2.0 and also the flash based Zune coming out in 2007. I will attempt to preserve the identity of the Microsoft employee, he had no idea I write for Zune Scene, no idea at all. The whole conversation occurred on a business trip, you see, we Zune Scene editors have day jobs and are hard to spot in the wild also. When I asked the guy where he worked he said Microsoft. That got my attention so I asked what he did, the answer was: "Zune". He gave his name and title which I will withhold. So I gave him a barrage of questions and here's what I found out..."

I have to get this out of the way up front: I think it's quite dishonest to not disclose that you write for a Web site covering a product the person is telling you about, but by the same token this Microsoft employee should know that we live in an era of citizen journalism where almost nothing is off the record, and anything you say can end up on some blog somewhere. It's sad that you can't have a conversation about a piece of technology with someone without worrying it will end up online, but that's the world we live in for better or worse.

Moralizing aside, what you really care about is what's coming next for the Zune right? A few key pieces of information were gleaned from this conversation (along with my speculation):

• The second generation Zune product, along with a flash memory-based Zune, will be sold later this year
• The 2nd gen Zune will look similar to the first generation Zune, but it will be thinner (if you recall reading our Zune Deep Dive article, there's not much space to be had - so they must have gone to integrated components or else switched to smaller versions of the current components)
• The flash-based Zune will be 3" tall by 1.25" wide and 0.25" thick (only the dimensions were given, not the orientation, so that's my speculation that it will be a tall, narrow, thin Nano-like device)
  
• The flash-based Zune will be video-capable and the screen will cover 75% of the front. I'm not sure what kind of video you'd be able to view on a screen that would be 2.25 inches tall and perhaps 1 inch wide (figure a loss of 0.125 inches on either side). That's an aspect ratio of 2.25:1, which is screwy. Some detail here, or my interpretation, is wrong.
• The flash-based Zune will have WiFi and have a double-shot colour in the moulding like the current Zune does
• The flash-based Zune will "beat the competition" which to mean means 12 GB or 16 GB worth of storage
• In the 2007 holiday season, 2.4 million next-generation Zunes will be fabricated, with about 66% of them being flash-based units (1.59 million units)
• A new building in Dao Min, China, is being built for Zune assembly, right next to the Xbox 360 building

And there you have it - reactions? Are you excited or underwhelmed by what you've read?