There was a family checking it out. The father seemed interested, and I had just seen a Target employee talking it up to them (clearly there is some employee incentive program related to selling the Zune). I thought it might be my duty to dissuade the family from a regrettable purchase.
My girlfriend was with me, and somehow without exchanging words, we knew what we had to do. Immediately we walked up to the display. “Is that the Zune? Oh man, it is HUGE. Jesus, that thing is ugly!” and so on. I touched it - touched the Zune. It was the black model, which, oddly, is not black, but an ugly muted, rubbery dark grey, with a weird ghost-like blue outline under the semi-transparent outer edges. The controls were weird, too, and I suppose with time one could get used to them, but in the moment I was flabbergasted that the circular pad didn’t scroll. I KNEW it wouldn’t, but I could not stop myself from trying. And then exclaiming, “Man this sucks, why won’t it scroll?” The whole time the family was standing there, watching and listening. (Yeah, I should’ve used cleaner language with kids around, I know - but this was serious.)
Then came the icing. Tina pulled out her brand-spankin’ new iPod Shuffle, which is like the size of four stacked quarters, and she held it up to the Zune. I’ve never seen jaws drop so low. The young daughter and her teenaged brother were like, “Whoa.” And the mother seemed pleased as well. “Is that the Shuffle?” she asked. “Oh yeah, it is awesome. And so small.” She was obviously pleased to see her children interested in something far less than $250. Her husband’s bubble seemed to burst audibly at her question. We smiled. Shook our heads at the Zune, and walked off. Still smiling.
Our work was done.
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24 comments:
marked as lame
oh snap!!! you've been marked as lame by some anon douche!! your life has obviously been changed for the worse.
seriously, good story. I lol'd.
Too awesome. Check out this thread about the story on Digg.
Thats awesome. You're going to get a lotta hate from the Digg crowd pretty soon, but they'll never really understand.
Hehe.. this is so funny
ur a dork...
..seriously, get a life.
Oh noes.. some family was going to buy a better product than you! Better stop them so you won't have to be jealous. Waa waa, I'm a hipster Apple Gen-Xer...
Gimme a break.
I find it humorous that neither the Zune nor the iPod are the best in market. Granted, the iPod sells well. Branding at its best.
I appreciate all the comments from you Diggers, but one thing I am NOT is a hipster Gen-Xer. Hell, I'm not nearly old enough to be called one, even.
And I absolutely recognize that there are and should be other players in the portable mp3 player market. But the Zune, as it stands is a sub-par product, and if it really wants to compete with Apple's products, it needs a lot of work. I think the competition is great, and hope it forces Apple to consider fixing some issues it has with its own products, but the fact is that MS needed to do much better with this.
The release was obviously rushed for the holidays, and, even with their predictions (goal) of selling 1 million Zunes in the first year, that means only ONE in 300 Americans will have one.
Good luck using that wi-fi sharing (which, admittedly, could be a cool feature were it not so damn DRMed - even worse than the iTunes Store, which is pretty bad itself).
But thanks for caring enough to read and respond to what was obviously meant to be a semi-funny and semi-interesting story. I appreciate it and hope you'll check out some of my other posts. I swear I don't always bitch about MS.
So there's a reason the title of this blog is "'frivolous' motion".
Go on, live your lives fighting all those frivolous battles. There's a frivolous heaven for petty people like you.
what a looser you are
That's why Apple fanboyz generate such hatred. They act like idiots, and they're proud of it.
oh the digg crowd will definitely understand you're no better than any fundamentalist out there pushing their views on others. your technical elitism is a beacon of shining light in the darkness. however, this all begs the question that if you're so technically informed and can help the unwashed masses, why did you compare a zune and a shuffle? these products fill two different market segments. did you give the pros and cons of having a 3" full color screen over the shuffle's huge display?
and this is why i love blogs. so people like you can post stupid shitty stories and have all your friends comment and say 'yea man!!11 you did it! you are great! i lol'd so hard at this! haha' and temporarily fill all that emptiness that is you.
"The controls were weird, too, and I suppose with time one could get used to them, but in the moment I was flabbergasted that the circular pad didn’t scroll. I KNEW it wouldn’t, but I could not stop myself from trying."
If anyone needed proof that you are a smug retard it is this paragraph that provides it. Since you have a girlfriend, please consider getting yourself neutered.
Dude, your comparing a freaking shuffle to a Zune??? Some people shouldn't be allowed to post on the internet, and you are one of them. Let's see, 3" display, 30GB hard drive, does pitcures, videos, music and built in FM tuner and the shuffle has what over this again?
I'm not happy about the DRM on WiFi sharing but at least it's a start. For people that actually pay for music this a nice feature. Have a freind share some music with you if you like then pay for it and your freind gets credit for it.
If the DRM is the reason your acting like it is so doomed then your not that techie after all, every one nows it will be hacked with in 6 months. You sound like a sony fanboy after MS launched the xbox, why do you think it was so popular... for the novice user it was new and offered more features then others but for the techies you could hack it.
It would be one thing if you offered the family the actuall details on the 2 devices instead of acting like a complete f'ing know-it-all, apple fanboy freak. People like you give apple a bad name.
Not a bad post -- you showed those people, or whatever, and are proud. That's cool. What bothers me though is the line where you suggest that obviously there's a Target incentive program for employees to sell Zunes. And this is based on... what, exactly? How do you know the father hadn't asked him about it and he was just selling it to them, as salesmen do. Thumbs down for that comment alone. You'd make a horrible scientist. :)
marked as douche
What a fag.
I work at Target and there is no employee incentive program. Whoever was there just liked the zune.
Bad Storytelling | Check
Douches that hate the zune | Double Check
Bad Lying | Triple Check
"Whoa is that the shuffle! " Said the mother.
The Shuffle sucks balls
get a ipod video
first of all you dont have a zune so you dont know what its like! of course the ipod shuffle isn't $250! it doesnt play videos,you cant have pics,it doesnt have a fm tuner,and you can't share songs! the original ipod also costs 250.and the zune JUST CAME OUT! you have to give the people at microsoft time to create new things! your way of thinking is awful.
you're stupid.
...that's all there is to say: you're stupid.
Thanks and love to all Anonymous haters. :) Hope you like your Zune.
i have a ZUNE... and i love it... it's way better than ipod.... of course... go buy a zune
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