The last couple of months for Microsoft—or more specifically Zune—has been quite the chore: rumors have been growing rampant that the company was planning to kill the Zune hardware but keep the software, then there was talk that the company would dissolve Zune into its Live services, and for as many times as the “Zune is dead” cry was uttered there was a rebuttal. Specifically, Zune took to its Twitter and Facebook profiles to assure fans that the service was here to stay. In one Facebook status update the company specifically stated that Zune was “committed to providing the best” experience through a multitude of hardware like “Xbox, the PC, [and] Windows Phone 7.”
But in an exclusive interview today with ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Joe Belfiore has finally admitted to what the public has known for quite some time. He tells Foley that Microsoft has been thinking about killing off Zune for a while now and decided that they would eventually faze out the Zune branding from any of its products. “It’s one of our bigger failures,” Belfiore stated.
So why exactly continue to lie to the hardcore fans? Belfiore said that it was strictly the catalyst to see if they should, in fact, kill off Zune. “When we saw that there wasn’t enough fan support—well, we actually didn’t see any support. That’s why Zune is no more.”
“Why do you think we labeled Zune on Windows Phone as ‘Music + Video’? Otherwise we would have titled it ‘Zune.’ This idea has been plaguing Microsoft since the inception of Windows Phone.” He went on to say that the Windows Phone live tile name was just a surefire way to ensure their safety if they did ever decide to discontinue Zune, which has sadly happened.
When asked about the MIX 2011 blurb that many claimed proved he was still working on future Zune hardware generations, Belfiore said that it’s “just [his] job title” and “doesn’t mean anything”; besides, the MIX ’11 verbiage was “written months ago.”
Microsoft will continue to run the Zune Marketplace for at least another year to honor Zune Pass subscriptions, but after that the company will reportedly shut down the brand and find retroactive alternatives for media.
Update: Okay, we have seen that people are still falling for this and some people have linked to this article as fact. So we’ll say it once again, as we have on Facebook and Twitter but not on this actual post, this is an April Fools’ Day joke. April Fools’ Day posts are a Zunited staple so we decided to do another this year. And we’re glad it worked a little, even if some people were mad at us, but that’s what it’s all about! The “interview” links to “Friday” by Rebecca Black. Tomorrow is Saturday, guys. We love you.
Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, says that Bill Gates conspired in decreasing the amount of stake Allen had in the company. He states that he learned of the plan when he eavesdropped on a conversation between Gates and Steve Ballmer in 1982.
In his new book, Idea Man: A Memoir Of the Co-Founder of Microsoft to be released on April 19th, Allen goes into detail as to how he knew of the plan and what he did when he found out. Vanity Fair has released an excerpt from the book.
“One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve speaking heatedly in Bill’s office and paused outside to listen in. It was easy to get the gist of the conversation,” he writes. “They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time.”
Allen, who most probably didn’t care for the conversation, claimed to have “bursted” in the office and yell “This is unbelievable! It shows your true character, once and for all,” then turned around and left the office.
Afterwards, he writes, Steve Ballmer called him to apologize about the incident to which Allen responded that the conversation “had left a bad taste in [his] mouth.” Bill Gates, however, sent Allen a six-page document explaining exactly why the conversation took place and apologizing for it. It read: “During the last 14 years we have had numerous disagreements. However, I doubt any two partners have ever agreed on as much both in terms of specific decisions and their general idea of how to view things.”
Allen says it was a “last-ditch effort” to get him to stay at the company, but he knew what Gates wrote was spot on. His mind was made up to leave the company—especially factoring in his diagnoses of Hodgkin’s disease.
When Allen resigned, he writes, that Gates offered him $5 a share for his ownership stake in the company; Allen wasn’t willing to go lower than $10.
“As it turned out, Bill’s conservatism worked to my advantage. If he’d been willing to offer something close to my asking price, I would have sold way too soon,” he writes.
Microsoft officially released its real first update to the new Windows Phone platform early this week, but the rollout didn’t go as smoothly as anyone had hoped. In a video with Channel 9 as part of MIX11, via WinRumors, Microsoft’s own Joe Belfiore was tasked with explaining all of the NoDo update woes that seemingly has been plaguing a percentage of WP7 users.
Belfiore states that during their original update, pre-NoDo in February, which reportedly was to assist future updates, Microsoft “found some situations where, um, we hadn’t anticipated the way the OEM phones would be configured” and says that they wanted to be prepared for that when they pushed out NoDo. But then he goes on to say that the February update is “on most phones now.”
In explaining how exactly they’re going to handle NoDo, Belfiore says that they will throttle the update to select randomly chosen phones to see how they do with the update. He says seeing the NoDo update will depend on if you were selected as a throttled consumer and where your mobile provider is with their testing phase of the update.
The NoDo app brings the long-awaited copy and paste features that consumers covet and plenty of performance enhancements.
One of the better features for Windows Phone 7—or any Zune device for that matter—is the Zune Pass. It allows you to download as many songs as you want and keep 10 (yes, forever) for a monthly fee of $15. But a new application for WP7 may prove to be a bit of competition for the subscription service.
Rhapsody has released an application for the Windows Phone platform that streams music for $10 a month. Of course it’s not the same deal as the Zune Pass, which actually lets you download music and listen offline while also letting you keep the aforementioned 10 a month, but no one ever said competition was a bad thing, right?
Beisdes, Rhapsody also offers a 60-day trial. That’s plenty of time to decide whether or not you’d rather use their service than Zune’s.
Image credit: DownloadSquad
Microsoft has released its latest ad for Windows Phone 7, and it doesn’t involve anyone running into walls or falling down on moving walkways–regardless of how funny those were. The new ad actually seems to incorporate actual testimonials from users of the new operating system that highlights its best qualities. The spot makes use of its Microsoft Office features, live tiles, and Xbox LIVE itself.
Source: WPCentral
We at Zunited love Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 ads, but we think that the guy who made this–We Love Windows Phone–deserves to be hired. If not only for how cool the above ad looks!
Thanks to WPCentral, where we first saw the ad.
2Play Mobile, the same company that released Penalty! Flick Soccer for the Zune HD, is apparently gearing up to release three new games for the Zune Marketplace. Though, it’s still not clear whether it will be for the Zune HD or Windows Phone 7. The company has three games listed as coming soon on their website with a Zune logo.
The three games in question are Tuginator, Splatter Bug, and Young Ninja. On the website’s home page, the Tuginator slide says it’s already available in the Apple App Store but when going to read the description of the game it says to “test your strength with this tap app for for iPhone, Zune HD, and Android”; while the slide for Splatter Bug and Young Ninja have “Coming Soon” and a Zune logo displayed (as pictured above). So it stands that Tuginator will be available for the Zune HD but the other two are still questionable.
As for why we’re a little skeptical, the company’s “About” page says they develop for smartphone devices even listing Windows Phone 7 explicitly.
Thanks to Cole, admin of TheZuneHD on Facebook.
Also thanks to Shadowskater555 on Twitter.
The most popular game on multiple mobile operating systems, iOS included, will finally make its way to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. After months of speculation, waiting, and a final confirmation, Microsoft officially announced today at the company’s Spring Showcase in San Francisco that Angry Birds will be making its way to the Windows Phone platform on April 6th.
Besides Angry Birds, though, other games coming on the same date include:
All games are Xbox LIVE compatible.
*Too long; didn’t read notation below
“The Zune brand is dead! Off with Microsoft’s head! The end is where we’ve been lead!”
In the news today is that Microsoft is trying to slowly, but very surely, kill of the Zune brand name. They want to take all of the elements from Zune and move it to other services, like Xbox and Live and maybe even Xbox LIVE. The result: outrage from Zune users all over the Internet clamoring away that their favorite music service has gone the way of the DoDo.
Our friend, Travis Pope, posted an editorial earlier today on ZuneSpring that stated the exact reason most of this is just a lot of bull… droppings. A statement by Paul Thurrot ignited into an Internet phenomenon and has taken over. And while that in of itself isn’t enough credibility that Microsoft is, in fact, killing off the Zune brand (regardless of how much they didn’t say “Zune” instead of “music app” at MWC this week during their keynote) it’s important to note one thing.
Thurrot said that Microsoft wants to kill of the Zune branding.
Read the rest of this entry »
Greg Sullivan, Microsoft senior product manager, told Bloomberg that the company shipped more than 2 million Windows Phone 7 devices to mobile carriers last quarter. The last time Microsoft was asked that question, the number was 1.5 million… which perhaps indicates that the platform is reaching a plateau of sorts.
And while that’s not exactly the good news everyone was hoping for, it does get a little bit better. Sullivan also stated that WP7 has a general satisfaction rate of 93% (which, yes, is high) and awareness of the devices are up 20 points to 66%, most of that kudos due to their marketing team.
But that’s not all. 90% of customers who have used a Windows Phone 7 would recommend it to a friend, too.
The Microsoft WP7 Marketplace is also seeing its numbers increase in a much more rapid succession. There are now more than 6,500 applications in the Marketplace and more than 24,000 registered developers.
The company is supposed to release an update to the WP7 OS in the coming weeks.
