Why are zunes so bad

But those aren't the reasons Zune is doomed to become known as the New Coke of failure in the drinks holder of the Edsel of marketing misfires. Here are ten much better reasons to point and openly mock. Look at it.

Fake scroll wheel. Fake iTunes. Fake buzz. Comes in black and white. Five years to come up with something new, and this? It so fails to be an iPod. It comes in brown. It's fatter, it's heavier, it looks like a lump of robot poo from a big, fat, heavy robot. Do you want robo-poo in your pocket? From a fat robot? ZuneScene are selling it in the States with the tagline "Dude, you're getting a Zune. Microsoft is selling it in the States with the tagline "Welcome to the Social".

My uncle used to go down the Social. It was a frightening place full of coffin-dodgers trying to hide from the Grim Reaper behind a smokescreen of Benson and Hedges.

It smelled of at least six things at once, none of them good. The only technology they had was a 78RPM record player and hearing aids with valves in. Is this how Microsoft wants us to think of Zune?

The accessories are even uglier than the Zune itself. Either way, the addition of Zune-like software to existing phones doesn't add up to a bona fide Zune phone. The idea that Microsoft would jam cell phone electronics into one of its larger Zunes, then compete head-to-head with the iPhone, ignores the categorical difference between devices like the iPod Touch and the Zune.

But you can't understand what's great about the iPhone unless you also understand that it has a categorically better UI, not just a qualitatively better one. The iPhone is a third-generation UI device. No, I'm not talking about 3G mobile broadband, which is unrelated to the user interface of the device. The first generation was the command line. The iPhone was revolutionary because it was built around the world's first-ever, publicly available third-generation user interface.

This third-generation UI involves multitouch, of course, and also gestures shapes you draw on screen send commands to the system , physics objects move as if they have mass and momentum , 3-D and the minimization of menus.

It's like comparing radio to television. My Zune HD is still pumping out great-sounding music after more than three years. A similar response came from a laughing co-worker. When I showed people the device, however, the response was always different — always positive. People hated the Zune HD without having ever even using it, yet their opinions changed when shown the device.

At the end of the day, people who used a Zune music player knew it was a quality device. But what if consumers have caused Microsoft to focus more on perception and less on the quality of its music and video products and services?

The Xbox music and video app on Windows Phone shares a similar interface to what was found on the Zune HD, and the Xbox Music Pass is essentially just a rebranded Zune Pass with some changes here and there. The Xbox Music app has a poor interface that makes navigation a pain in the ass. Beyond that oversight, there are plenty of other issues that users of the app are more than willing to point out. The initial reaction to the Xbox Music app has been less than stellar, to put it mildly.

Paul Thurrott even brought the issue up in an article published last month. History has not been kind to Microsoft's Zune.