flash zune
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Zune 2 Roundup
10:10AM Jason Chen | Asleep when all the Zune news was announced last night? Here’s your chance to catch up. From Zune details to UI videos, it’s all here: • More Zune 2 Details: Lossless Support, Glass Screens, Green is the New Brown • Gates Talks Zune 2 • First Video of Zune 2 and Flash Zune • First-Gen Zune Getting All The New Features: This is How You Treat Your Customers • Sizemodo: Zunes vs. iPods • Zune 2 and Flash Zune Official • First Official Zune 2 and Zune Flash Photos AU: Microsoft is yet to release official details about the new Zunes’ presence in Australia but we’ll be sure to keep you posted if we so much as hear a murmur. -AK More »
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Zune US Release Date Confirmed: 13 November
7:31AM Jason Chen | Microsoft’s just confirmed with us the November 13 US release date of the new Zunes—previously stated by Amazon. Whether or not the firmware for the old Zune is coming on 13/11 is still unconfirmed. More »
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J Allard Finally Photographed In Public With Zune
6:00AM Jason Chen | We’re not sure why this was a policy, but J Allard famously avoided being photographed with a Zune starting from the launch last year up until this week. Seriously, go try and find a picture of him with a Zune. It’s impossible! Apparently his shame for the generation 1 product is over, since he proudly held up a Zune at the Microsoft event Tuesday. Welcome to the Social, J. More »
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Microsoft Aims Zune at #2 Spot
5:00AM Jason Chen | Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Devision President Robbie Bach suffers no delusions about unseating the iPod this year. He says that the new Zune Updates can put the company into the solid #2 spot for the overall portable music player market by the end of the next fiscal year (which ends June 2008) now that the Zunes are “where they probably should have been last year, when they launched”. Bill Gates says that the Zune is part of a 10-year plan to build a digital entertainment business, of which the Xbox 360 is definitely a big part of. Whether they’ll tie the Zune and the 360 (just like the Zune got some Media Center integration) is unknown, but probably coming. Robbie Bach also wants everyone to know that “this is going to be an Apple-Microsoft” thing, reiterating that not just are they aiming for #2, eventually they want to be #1. [Seattle PI] [Financial Times] More »
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More Zune 2 Details: Lossless Support, Glass Screens, Green is the New Brown
2:55AM Jason Chen | Going beyond the Zune 2 and Flash Zune launch details, we just got off a conference call with Microsoft and got new details on the Zune and Zune platform. • The Zune and Zune Software now supports lossless audio. Windows Media Lossless. • Microsoft claims that the Zune is now a much superior option compared to the iPod. • US launch date, according to Amazon, is November 13. More »
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First Video of Zune 2 and Flash Zune
4:15PM Brian Lam | Giz wasn’t invited to the launch of the Zune, but the folks at Edelman working late into the night supplied us with a promotional video of the event. Check out the UI; it looks amazing. On the other hand, the act of scrolling on the Zunepad looks very constrained and awkward (see the hand in video). I stripped out the parts that were “lifestyle” and left mostly the closeup shots of the Zune. I also swapped out the aggro Seattle rocker track for a Hall and Oates song. (”Out of Touch,” fitting as it were on more than one level.) More »
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First-Gen Zune Getting All The New Features: This is How You Treat Your Customers
2:21PM Jason Chen | The first generation 30GB Zune—which 1.2 million of you already purchased—is getting all the new Zune’s features. All. Sure, the new Zune is more of a half step forward than a completely new design. But Microsoft’s done something fantastic here by rewarding first gen buyers with cool new stuff that also happens to be free by software upgrade. And talk about spin— Microsoft just took a middling jump in hardware and turned it into a genuinely good move for loyalists (as well as a PR miracle). Are you paying attention Apple? Contrast this to what Apple did between the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The iPod Touch is running the same OS as the iPhone, but it’s artificially gimped. There’s no email. There’s no weather or stocks. No notes. No adding events to the Calendar. When old hardware can’t support new features, that’s not anyone’s fault. But all this stuff that’s right there in the software and costs nothing for Apple to put in, and they leave it out to artificially differentiate the product line. Back to Zune. Not only is the old 30GB getting the new Wi-Fi syncing, it’s getting the updated sharing features, the new codecs, the podcasts, and the new Windows Media Centre TV on the go. It’s essentially the new Zune, except thicker and with less storage space…which makes us ask why Microsoft would be so generous as to kill half the reasons why you’d ever upgrade to a new Zune. But as buyers, we’ll just say thanks. If you’re now interested in what Microsoft’s throwing your way, you have the option of picking either the 4GB, the 8GB, 30GB or the 80GB, which only differ on size and storage space (plus the 80GB comes with premium headphones). You get to decide what you want. We appreciate the gesture of supporting your old hardware to the end, when it makes sense from a customer’s point of view, and when technically feasible. (Keep ignoring the marketers, thanks.) No artificially gimped players here. More »
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Zune 2 and Flash Zune Official
12:48PM Jason Chen | The next-generation Zune has just been announced, coming at you with a price tag which we already saw of $US249 for the 80GB hard drive model and $US149/$199 for the 4GB and 8GB flash-based models respectively. The new features in all models, which were leaked early, are wireless syncing with your computer automatically when you’re in Wi-Fi range—something users have been clamouring for since even before the first Zune—as well as videos in the Zune Marketplace and new music, some of which are DRM-free. The Zune Pad is actually touch sensitive, much like the iPod’s Click Wheel. We’re live-updating as we find out more after the jump. More »
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