MP3 Player
First-Gen Zune Getting All The New Features: This is How You Treat Your Customers
The first generation 30GB Zune—which 1.2 million of you already purchased—is getting all the new Zune’s features
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.
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 Center 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.
