Zune with Touch Screen and Cover Flow? | The Coffeehouse

PocketXP
More Cowbell

It's safe to assume that the next gen iPod will be an iPhone without the Phone part.

If so, the next gen Zune will struggle if it doesn't have something like iPhone's Cover Flow with "finger flickable" Touch Screen.

jamie

hmm.. what if the next ipods were aimed at real real low end.. cheap (edit: oh ya steve jobs - ha - sorry)

perhaps there will be a high end touch screen ipod as you mention.. with no phone... but if your already leaning that way..why not get the phone one?

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Bas wrote:

It wouldn't even need touch screen/cover flow, if it just supported wireless synching, or purchasing and downloading music from the device itself. Better late than never...

I wonder if Apple left that feature out of the iPhone as a friendly gesture to Microsoft Wink

The Zune is dead, failed, doomed. Whilst MS's management might be foolhardy enough to try for a Zune 2.0, so long as they're the recording and cellnet industry's bítches, it will suck.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

It wouldn't even need touch screen/cover flow, if it just supported wireless synching, or purchasing and downloading music on the device itself. Better late than never...

Edit: This gives me an idea. To be able to purchase music, you need to have Microsoft points. What if you could use those points to wirelessly pay for other stuff? There are a couple of Coke machines around here where you can text some code to a number, and a Coke comes out of the machine. No money required, you pay by texting.

Imagine standing near a vending machine, whipping out your Zune, seeing that it recognizes the nearby machine, and selecting what you want on the Zune. Zune sends a message to the machine, the machine deducts a point from your account, and voila, Coke comes out. Sounds pretty good, to me.

You could apply this to music too. You walk into a store, or even just a supermarket or something, and pass the Live Music vending machine. You take out the Zune, which communicates wirelessly with the machine, and select some song that the machine then downloads from somewhere, and transmits to your Zune. Music on the go.

Massif
aim stupidly high, expect to fail often.

W3bbo wrote:
The Zune is dead, failed, doomed. Whilst MS's management might be foolhardy enough to try for a Zune 2.0, so long as they're the recording and cellnet industry's bítches, it will suck.

Far be it from me to contradict, but I think you may be failing to learn a lesson from the history of MS products. Which is that the first version nearly always sucks.

Seriously though, the original xbox sucked, it was too large, too noisey, too ugly, and didn't provide enough that was useful out of the box; xbox 2.0 kicks (I need to watch my language). Don't count the Zune out until at least generation 3.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

W3bbo wrote:

Bas wrote:
It wouldn't even need touch screen/cover flow, if it just supported wireless synching, or purchasing and downloading music from the device itself. Better late than never...

I wonder if Apple left that feature out of the iPhone as a friendly gesture to Microsoft

The Zune is dead, failed, doomed. Whilst MS's management might be foolhardy enough to try for a Zune 2.0, so long as they're the recording and cellnet industry's bítches, it will suck.

While I agree that stuff like the Zune (and Media Center Extenders: ripped DVD playing anyone?) suffers from the limitations imposed by the recording and movie industries, I don't see how the recording industry could possibly suddenly develop a problem with synching and purchasing music.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Bas wrote:
While I agree that stuff like the Zune (and Media Center Extenders: ripped DVD playing anyone?), I don't see how the recording industry could possibly suddenly develop a problem with synching and purchasing music.

The recording industry didn't agree with the song-sharing feature of the Zune, Microsoft crippled it to the point of uselessness, it's just an advertising tool now ("3 play/3 day"). To add insult to injury, they also prevented specially marked songs from being "squirted" to other Zune users.

As for the phone companies, you all saw the iPhone with a bunch of innovative features, but Apple had to bend-over for Cingular who were the only ones willing to compromise, and that was because of Apple's popular appeal. Microsoft simply can't do this.

Cellphone companies have the habit of crippling or disabling bluetooth and wifi on branded phones since it cuts into their revenue models (purchasable ringtones and VoIP respectivly). It's only on the high-end smartphones you don't see this, but that's only because they're so expensive you have to get them on contract, which covers losses from the use of wifi anyway.

Let's see something innovative from Microsoft, they've got more than enough power to make Visual Voicemail an industry standard, for example. The least they could do is improve Windows Mobile so it's more responsive, less clunky, and looks better. the UI remains practically unchanged since PocketPC 2000.

Oh, and Blowdart's got one, that's good enough reason for me. Wink

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

W3bbo wrote:

Bas wrote: While I agree that stuff like the Zune (and Media Center Extenders: ripped DVD playing anyone?), I don't see how the recording industry could possibly suddenly develop a problem with synching and purchasing music.

The recording industry didn't agree with the song-sharing feature of the Zune, Microsoft crippled it to the point of uselessness, it's just an advertising tool now ("3 play/3 day"). To add insult to injury, they also prevented specially marked songs from being "squirted" to other Zune users.

I know, but I'm not asking for sharing. I'm asking for syncing and downloading purchased music. Stuff that's already in the Zune (and sanctioned by the recording industry), only via a wire.

Ray6

PocketXP wrote:
It's safe to assume that the next gen iPod will be an iPhone without the Phone part.

Already in the works.

The next generation iPods will be running OSX

I don't think there is any chance of MS catching them now, but that doesn't mean they can't make money on the Zune (though obviously in its current state, it's a bit of a dog)

RandyRants
RandyRants.com

Ray6 wrote:

The next generation iPods will be running OSX

Does that matter? I mean, has anyone ever cared what OS the iPod line hus run?

Further, how often do you use CoverFlow in iTunes? I know I use it when I want to show it off to someone. I never use it to select an album, and that's on a 20" monitor. What are the odds of me using it on a 3.5" screen, touch or no?

Innovation is good, but not everything that is innovative is good. (tm)

Rossj

Massif wrote:
xbox 2.0 kicks (I need to watch my language).

..but is being outsold by a less hi-tech unit where the manufacturer is actually making money on every unit sold.

"I ran faster than last time" is of no use when everyone else is looking like lapping me.

Ray6

Mmmm ... I read your sig as 'RandyPants' and nearly didn't reply. I must get my eyes tested.

RandyRants wrote:

Ray6 wrote:

The next generation iPods will be running OSX

Does that matter? I mean, has anyone ever cared what OS the iPod line hus run?

No, they haven't, but they will now.
If they have OSX in an iPod, then we could be looking at some kind of Newton-ish device. At the very least it should be alot easier for them to program it.

RandyRants wrote:

Further, how often do you use CoverFlow in iTunes? I know I use it when I want to show it off to someone. I never use it to select an album, and that's on a 20" monitor. What are the odds of me using it on a 3.5" screen, touch or no?

Mmm ... I don't think I said anything about Coverflow, but you are right; it's a bit of a gimmick. And I remember seeing a WPF demo that used CoverFlow long before it showed up in iTunes (where I still don't use it).

RandyRants wrote:

Innovation is good, but not everything that is innovative is good. (tm)

Good one!

Rossj

Ray6 wrote:
And I remember seeing a WPF demo that used CoverFlow long before it showed up in iTunes (where I still don't use it).

Are you sure? Apple bought Coverflow off the developer who wrote it, it has been available for about a year before it appeared in iTunes.

Either way, is looks nice, but isn't *really* that usable.

PocketXP
More Cowbell

>> Further, how often do you use CoverFlow in iTunes?
>> I know I use it when I want to show it off to someone.
>> Innovation is good, but not everything that is innovative is good. (tm)

Stop thinking like an engineer and use the right side of the brain a bit.

CoverFlow is useful eye candy. It entices new users to the device.

More importantly, it's a cool social feature.
Zune is all about the social aspect.

It's a fun way to show friends what's in your iPod or Zune.

RandyRants
RandyRants.com

PocketXP wrote:
>> Further, how often do you use CoverFlow in iTunes?
>> I know I use it when I want to show it off to someone.
>> Innovation is good, but not everything that is innovative is good. (tm)

Stop thinking like an engineer and use the right side of the brain a bit.

CoverFlow is useful eye candy. It entices new users to the device.

More importantly, it's a cool social feature.
Zune is all about the social aspect.

It's a fun way to show friends what's in your iPod or Zune.

That's all just as much UX as it is Engineering. And I totally agree that it's eye candy and it's a draw - but I still don't find it as usefull as the current scrolling mechanism through 500 albums or 2000 sonds on a iPod.

More about usability than engineering or social implications.

PocketXP
More Cowbell

Yes, I agree. As you say, its really a usability issue.

I shouldn't be commenting much about it since I don't own an iPod or Zune yet.

But I am very interested in buying a 2nd gen Zune.

I trust that the secretive Zune Team is cooking up a good counter offering to the latest iPod/iPhone product line.

If not then I'll buy the next gen iPod.

Michael Griffiths
Fatalism.

Actually, I'd use Cover Flow to scroll through music.

That's because I generally listen to entire albums or artists instead of playlists.

Of course, you could take the "cover flow" metaphor quite far... flow through albums, artist "stacks," show playlists a mini-images indicating how many tracks they have... or perhaps album images tiled together, the size of each album image representative of the total length of songs from that album, creating a patchwork....

Interesting.

Of course, the current method is both good enough and doesn't drain battery life harder than a drunk __re_.

Ray6

Rossj wrote:

Ray6 wrote:And I remember seeing a WPF demo that used CoverFlow long before it showed up in iTunes (where I still don't use it).

Are you sure? Apple bought Coverflow off the developer who wrote it, it has been available for about a year before it appeared in iTunes.

Either way, is looks nice, but isn't *really* that usable.

You could be right

BlackTiger
If you stumbled and fell down, it doesn't mean yet, that you're going in the wrong direction.

Coverflow is like to dig through entire vinyls collection manually, disk by disk. Cool (bcoz it's cool! Smiley