Andy Ihnatko Mercilessly Slams the Zune

Chicago Sun-Times’ Andy Ihnatko absolutely trashes the Zune in his recent review of Microsoft’s portable music player.

Now, Andy is a known Apple fan, but he’s not typically this unabashed in his language. Check out some key excerpts:

Yes, Microsoft’s new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I’ve spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.

“Avoid,” is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that’s so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

And:

The setup process stands among the very worst experiences I’ve ever had with digital music players. The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal, I found myself asking my office goldfish, “Has it really come to this? Am I really about to manually create and install a .dll file?”

And:

You’ll have to buy all-new content from the new Zune Marketplace.

Oh, and the Zune Marketplace doesn’t even take real money, proving that on the Zune Planet there’s no operation so simple that it can’t be turned into a confusing ordeal. The Marketplace only accepts Zune Points, with an individual track typically costing the equivalent of the iTunes-standard 99 cents.

And this classic quote that illustrates the political selling-out MS had to do with the Zune to Universal Music’s CEO Doug Morris:

“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” said Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”

Well, Morris is just a big, clueless idiot, of course. Do you honestly want morons like him to have power over your music player?

Then go ahead and buy a Zune. You’ll find that the Zune Planet orbits the music industry’s Bizarro World, where users aren’t allowed to do anything that isn’t in the industry’s direct interests.

And finally:

The iPod owns 85 percent of the market because it deserves to. Apple consistently makes decisions that benefit the company, the users and the media publishers — and they continue to innovatively expand the device’s capabilities without sacrificing its simplicity.

Companies such as Toshiba and Sandisk (with its wonderful Nano-like Sansa e200 series) compete effectively with the iPod by asking themselves, “What are the things that users want and Apple refuses to provide?”

Microsoft’s colossal blunder was to knock the user out of that question and put the music industry in its place.

Result: The Zune will be dead and gone within six months. Good riddance.

Bold emphasis mine, because that’s the key point here. Instead of Microsoft making the Zune a device that’s simple to use and that benefits and inspires innovation for both users and media labels alike, they ignored the user and made themselves Universal’s bitch. And guess what? We can see the plumbing, and it’s ugly.

But still, holy shit, what a tirade. I’ve cited quite a bit for you, but nowhere near the whole article. It’s a must-read, and I can tell you this: any product launching to this level of criticism is obviously not well thought-out. I don’t know if I agree the Zune will be dead and gone within six months, but any hope MS suits had of this thing knocking the iPod off its throne is already curb-stomped and breathlessly crawling around looking for a reason to live.

And guess what? The Zune deserves what it’s getting, because it ignores the user, instead leading corporate beaucracy and political bullshit run the show.