Zuned

And with this posting I am entering a new verb into the vernacular: Zuned.

Definition: Reasonably good idea torpedoed by a million little compromises, as in "He zuned my project, so now it's dead" or "The Chevrolet Corvair was zuned from the beginning" or "Stop zuning me".

There are plenty of reviews of Microsoft's new player, some are lukewarm, some not so much.

The critical things to learn about the Zune is that there is a balance in control of content versus individual freedom to use technology and content as the owner sees fit. Zune simply has too many little compromises to be a success.

The hardware is not dreadful. It is a little bigger than an iPod, but has a bigger screen. The user interface on the player is decent enough. Toshiba hired away someone from the iPod design team that worked on the iPod's UI, and as this player is made by Toshiba, it shows.

It has wifi, an interesting addition. The assumption is that the wireless would allow people to connect to your zune, and thus you can share your content with others. You can't share content from a Zune with a friend that has a wifi equipped laptop, even if they have a Windows laptop. If you do manage to find another Zune user, and send them a audio track (including non-DRM'd music or podcasts) the player wraps DRM around it, so that it will self-distruct after three plays or three days.

To many people, it may feel like bait'n'switch. Things that they could do with other wireless devices don't work on this device. The expectation of a particular functionality is not fulfilled, even when that expectation is quite reasonable, being based on precedent.

To make matter worse for Microsoft, they now have a new Digital Rights scheme that they have to support for this device separate from the digital rights scheme they developed and licensed to other manufacturers. For customers, the bad news is that there previous "play for sure" content is not really "play for sure" since it won't work with this new player.

Wow. It is as if Microsoft was the bright kid in class, but only because they read the headlines in lots and lots of newspapers, without actually reading the stories.

Microsoft gets that social computing is becoming really important, and wants to be part of that. However, they don't get the details -- the parts that are so important.

YouTube is a success because of the freedom it gives users -- both authors/posters and viewers. It sometimes feels like the wild west -- exciting by it's controlled chaos. It's a breath of fresh air after 50 plus year diet of commercial television and film (okay enough for now on that).

Part of me thinks that Microsoft looked at the wrong model. Nintendo's DS has built in wifi, which allows it to do both near and far networking for gameplay (and soon, chat and voice) with other DS users. It doesn't let users send content, but some games do allow two players to play together, even if only one user has a cartridge. Furthermore, some games allow the owner to send a demo version of the game to another DS user.

There is a form of protection to be sure, but does it feel obtrusive? Absolutely not. The context of the way the system will be used, and the functionality that is desired is consistent with how wifi is implemented.

The dilemma for the Zune is that it has to play in an arena where it can't be just as good, it has to be heads and shoulders above it's nearest competitor. What could have been a half-way decent competitor to the iPod isn't, due to compromises that have nothing to do with technical limitations, but Microsoft creating a platform that caters not to the user, but to companies who want to have tight control over their content, allowing them to further shift rights of ownership of content away from the purchaser.

I will stop here, because while I have wanted to write about the Zune for a while now, I think it was important for me to reduce it to the critical issues that will likely prevent the Zune from being a success -- but more importantly -- what is the role of social computing in contexts outside of the web browser. What is happening with the Zune, it's success or failure, is an excellent lesson unfolding.

And please, use the verb "Zune" at least once today.

--hal