How Happy I Am That I Have No Microsoft Zune
12.31.08
I have had a good Christmas break; today is New Years’ Eve and I go back to school on Monday. I have been both busy and idle over the last few weeks, finally having some time to work on web design (more specifically, the successor to BetaTalk). And two days ago, I bought a new iPod nano. That’s right, I finally gave in to the massive Apple-ification movement. I was hoping to get a red one, but blue and silver were the only colors left. So I got the blue one. 8GB, 4th generation. And I love it.
This morning, my brother Alec sent me a few links that he found on reddit, about an issue with the Microsoft Zune 30GB. Curious, I turned to Engadget’s version of the story.
…we’re getting tons of reports—tons—about failing Zune 30s. Apparently, the players began freezing at about midnight last night, becoming totally unresponsive and practically useless.
Suddenly I felt a whole lot of sympathy for the Zune owners, most of whom will probably not get their money back if their players cannot be fixed (a risky and criticizable assumption, I know, but that’s me). And I felt a whole lot better about purchasing the iPod rather than some other “comparable” portable music players.
At Least You Tried, Microsoft.
I think Microsoft did an excellent job of creating the Zune to try chew out a chunk of the iPod’s massive market share and success. It’s just too bad that this attempt’s failure has been continued by the sudden death of so many 30GB Zunes last night.
Many users reported the glitch happening at the same time, around midnight last night, which indicates it’s something that was triggered by the internal clock. So to anyone who still has their 30GB Zune still working, try to set the date back a few years. Maybe that’ll work. I don’t know. I’ve never used one (and am now glad I didn’t).
UPDATE: The Post-Disaster/Miracle Story
I opened up my social news feeds this morning to find that the crisis had righted itself. As in, completely fixed itself and every player is back to working. Turns out it was a leap-year bug, which caused the Zune30s to lock up when they discovered 2008 had 366 days, not 365. As soon as 2009 was heralded in, the problem didn’t matter anymore.
Except, of course, if any of the Zune30 owners keep their players until the end of 2012, when undoubtedly the same thing will happen again. If this occurs, I will LOL. Very hard.