The “Break it Down” Blog

Wait for version 2.0 unless you are dying to have a mobile media device. While I’m actually a bit more impressed with the launch then I thought I would be however many months ago it was when the information was leaked, in my gut I think there will be a lot of usabililty issues to rub out before the device is as slick as a Apple iPod or something from Creative’s player family.

When you look at the XBox 360, even given all that MS learned from the original XBox, there were and still are some *glaring* usability issues that would really drive you nuts… if you had any other alternative. Thankfully we don’t, so Microsoft doesn’t have to do much to compete. How about that “please select your storage device” prompt that every single game and XBL give you when you want to do anything? How about the fact that 99.5% of users either have a hard drive or don’t, and the remaining 0.5% might have a USB key drive attached? Maybe someone over at Microsoft could add this code to XBox Live:

if(storageDevices.getCount() > 1)
  askUserToSelectDevice();
else if(storageDevices.getCount() == 1)
  useStorageDevice(storageDevices.getDevice(0));
else
  warnNoStorageDevice();

or something similar, you get the idea.

It’s because of this type of stuff that I think the Zune is going to have usability issues like:

• Quick navigation
• Battery life
• Connectivity/Comatability
• Software/Games/Media availability

And yes, I realize these are all things that a first generation device would suffer from, but that is also my reasoning for saying “wait for version 2.0″. As a lot of people have mentioned, Microsoft is a “3.0″ company, meaning they get it, it just takes a few trys and then they can really nail something (I don’t think this applies to operating systems though).

So if the Zune is infact a good player and has 70% of it’s features done right, then version 2.0 is going to be smoking. Similar to how XBox was “hey, this isn’t too bad” but had a lot of glaring issues like design, heat, crashes, etc. But when the 360 came out, it got a lot more things right, not everything, but a lot.

Anyway I’m personally glad to see people competing more readily with Apple. I became considerably disenchanted with Apple when I tried to use my iPod on Linux. All the sudden the steel gates of vendor lockin became VERY apparent to me and I was realizing in one swift motion that my $250 device wasn’t worth 3 cents to me if I couldn’t use it. And aparently Apple tells me when, how and where I will use it. No thanks.