Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Javin Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you see, y'all. I'm currently on vacation at
Speaker 1: the moment. I should be somewhere in the Caribbean, and
Speaker 1: that means that I'm not able to record a new
Speaker 1: episode for you today, So I thought I would bring
Speaker 1: an episode from last year, May twenty fourth, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: to be exact. This episode is titled The Sad Tale
Speaker 1: of Microsoft Zoon. I mentioned the Zoon in a recent
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff, and it got me to thinking
Speaker 1: back about this particular device. Hope you enjoy well. I
Speaker 1: had got a story to tell. Once upon a time,
Speaker 1: two companies like indignity, Apple and Microsoft were locked in
Speaker 1: a battle for the home computer market. Apple had started
Speaker 1: off with a few computer models named after the company itself,
Speaker 1: you know, the Apple and the Apple two, and then
Speaker 1: Apple two E and so on and so forth. Microsoft
Speaker 1: when a different route. Microsoft gained rights to various pieces
Speaker 1: of software. It developed some but it essentially bought or
Speaker 1: from a certain point of view, maybe not stole, but
Speaker 1: definitely hoodwinked some developers and ended up licensing out operating
Speaker 1: system software and things like that. So two very different approaches.
Speaker 1: So by the mid nineteen eighties, the struggle between Apple
Speaker 1: and Microsoft had intensified. Apple introduced the Macintosh computer with
Speaker 1: a graphical user interface or GUI GUY in other words,
Speaker 1: Microsoft introduced Windows its own guy operating system, and while
Speaker 1: Microsoft wasn't making the hardware, the term Windows PC became
Speaker 1: shorthand it was almost as if Microsoft had been making
Speaker 1: the PCs itself. It wasn't, It was just making the
Speaker 1: operating system on top of the PC. But then the
Speaker 1: operating system was in many ways more important than whomever
Speaker 1: made the machine itself, because the operating system would determine
Speaker 1: what kind of software you could run on the machine.
Speaker 1: After all. Now, during the eighties and through the nineties,
Speaker 1: Apple was on the ropes for a lot of different reasons,
Speaker 1: which I've covered in other episodes of Tech Stuff. At
Speaker 1: one point, Apple co founders See Jobs left the company,
Speaker 1: with some versions of the story saying he was essentially fired.
Speaker 1: Other versions say he was just strongly encouraged to leave.
Speaker 1: Apple hit some really really rough one and at one
Speaker 1: point it was in danger of going out of business.
Speaker 1: Then Apple actually brought Steve Jobs back kind of to
Speaker 1: act as a type of advisor. But it wasn't too
Speaker 1: long before Jobs regained control of the company he had
Speaker 1: co founded. That's also a very dramatic story. After that,
Speaker 1: Apple made a series of moves that would really turn
Speaker 1: things around for the company and set it on its
Speaker 1: path to become a trillion dollar company. Now, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing is, while Windows would retain a dominant hold on
Speaker 1: the business and home computer operating system markets, Apple would
Speaker 1: find new ways to become the company associated with entire technologies,
Speaker 1: and Apple wasn't inventing these technologies. Instead, the company was
Speaker 1: designing appealing products and then marketing the heck out of them.
Speaker 1: And one product that really helped turn Apple around was
Speaker 1: the iPod, Apple's digital music play so a standalone device
Speaker 1: on which you would store and play music. Now, again,
Speaker 1: Apple did not invent the MP three player. It was
Speaker 1: not the first company to make one. They just made
Speaker 1: one that looked really nice, it worked well, it had
Speaker 1: some really cool features, and it it really benefited from
Speaker 1: the power of Steve Jobs's presentation at various marketing events,
Speaker 1: and Apple was able to forge some alliance with various
Speaker 1: music labels over the next couple of years, and that
Speaker 1: helped create new opportunities, including the launch of the iTunes
Speaker 1: Store in two thousand and three. So iTunes had been
Speaker 1: around before that, but iTunes first started out as software
Speaker 1: you would have on your computer and you would use
Speaker 1: iTunes to organize your music library, but you couldn't actually
Speaker 1: buy music from iTunes at first. Instead, you would buy
Speaker 1: a CD, a compact disc, put that in the optical
Speaker 1: drive of your Mac computer, and you would rip music
Speaker 1: from the CD and store it digitally within iTunes. That
Speaker 1: would be your organization software essentially, and that's how you
Speaker 1: would transfer music over to your iPod too. You would
Speaker 1: physically connect your iPod to your Mac and then you
Speaker 1: would port music over from your library on your Mac
Speaker 1: computer to your iPod. Now, with two years of negotiation,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs was actually able to convince music labels to
Speaker 1: offer up digital tracks for individual purchase within iTunes itself,
Speaker 1: and that was the creation of the iTunes store, where
Speaker 1: instead of using it as just your means of organizing
Speaker 1: your music, it also became the way you could purchase
Speaker 1: new music. That would really push Apple to new heights.
Speaker 1: Microsoft was way behind on the MP three players space.
Speaker 1: They did not jump into that market early on, and
Speaker 1: Apple was able to essentially define that market. Microsoft eventually
Speaker 1: recognized that there was money to be made in the
Speaker 1: digital media player space, and the iPod had been out
Speaker 1: for several years, like five years, and then Microsoft decided
Speaker 1: they were going to try and create their own digital
Speaker 1: music player. Maybe this one could have some really innovative
Speaker 1: features that would set it apart. Designers could actually take
Speaker 1: the opportunity to learn about what worked with the iPod
Speaker 1: and what didn't work, or what people wish the iPod
Speaker 1: could do. They could take that information and use that
Speaker 1: to design a superior digital media player. They could have
Speaker 1: done that. They didn't succeed in doing that. They tried
Speaker 1: in some ways, but really it was a massive failure,
Speaker 1: and it's a shame because Apple's incredible success put aside.
Speaker 1: There were people who had notes, not musical notes, but
Speaker 1: like critical notes for the iPod. For example, for folks
Speaker 1: like myself, I did not own a mac computer. Now, initially,
Speaker 1: if you want an iPod, it would only work with
Speaker 1: Mac computers. You had to have a Macintosh in order
Speaker 1: to synchronize with an iPod. It did not work with
Speaker 1: Windows based machines. Later generations of the iPod and later
Speaker 1: generations of iTunes would change that, but initially you just
Speaker 1: couldn't do it. And if you did want to use
Speaker 1: a Windows based machine with an iPod that was compatible,
Speaker 1: you had to download iTunes. You had to install iTunes
Speaker 1: onto your Windows machine, and the Windows version of iTunes stunk,
Speaker 1: or at least in my opinion, it stunk. iTunes could
Speaker 1: do some stuff that was legitimately useful. You know, it
Speaker 1: could detect when new tracks were added to your library
Speaker 1: and then transfer just those new tracks to your iPod
Speaker 1: when you next connected your iPod to your computer, But
Speaker 1: at least on PC's iTunes was very slow. It was clunky,
Speaker 1: It took up a ton of space on your computer,
Speaker 1: and it required a lot of your computer's assets to run,
Speaker 1: so everything else slowed to a crawl. It seemed like
Speaker 1: it was working great on Mac computers whenever I saw
Speaker 1: people in interface with it, but my own experience was
Speaker 1: totally different. I hated iTunes on Windows. I thought of
Speaker 1: it as bloatwear or worse, and you couldn't interface with
Speaker 1: the iPod using any other kind of digital media organizational software.
Speaker 1: It had to be iTunes. So this meant that Microsoft
Speaker 1: actually had an opportunity to perhaps design a player and
Speaker 1: a software package that would work more smoothly for people
Speaker 1: who were Windows owners rather than Mac owners. That was
Speaker 1: a real opportunity for them. But even with a really
Speaker 1: good product, Microsoft still would have faced a truly tough challenge.
Speaker 1: Apple had really defined the MP three player landscape for
Speaker 1: five years. At that point. They had introduced an iPod
Speaker 1: capable of showing video. It had really great reviews. They had,
Speaker 1: you know, models that could hold up to like eighty
Speaker 1: gigs of material. It could be a storage product, so
Speaker 1: you could actually store files on your iPod, not just
Speaker 1: media files, but other types as well. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons why the iPod was seen as a
Speaker 1: great product. I mean, heck, the iPod is why we
Speaker 1: call podcasts podcasts like we call it podcasts because Apple
Speaker 1: created this product that defined an entire generation of technology,
Speaker 1: so that brand was really entrenched in the minds of consumers.
Speaker 1: So even with a spectacular product, Microsoft was going to
Speaker 1: face uphill battle. But it wasn't a spectacular product, so
Speaker 1: the battle was even harder. The very first Microsoft Zoon
Speaker 1: was originally just called the Zoon, but later on Microsoft
Speaker 1: called it the Zoon thirty, and the thirty in this
Speaker 1: case references the amount of storage available on the device.
Speaker 1: It had a thirty gigabyte hard drive. A company called
Speaker 1: Freescale made the processor that ran in the Zoom thirty.
Speaker 1: It also made the processor for another digital player called
Speaker 1: the Tashiba gigabeat S. In fact, the Zoon resembled the
Speaker 1: Tashiba gigabeat S in many many ways, like it almost
Speaker 1: was as if the Zoon was essentially a Gigabeit s
Speaker 1: from Tashiba that had gone through a little bit of
Speaker 1: a redesign that changed the dimensions of the player and
Speaker 1: maybe some some aesthetics, but otherwise it looked like it
Speaker 1: was very similar to the Gigabeats. And that's because that's
Speaker 1: what it happened. Microsoft didn't really build the Zoon. Tashiba did.
Speaker 1: Microsoft made some changes to the design, but they were
Speaker 1: mostly cosmetic in nature. So Freescale used to be a
Speaker 1: division within Motorola until two thousand and four, when Motorola
Speaker 1: divested the division and it became Freescale. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Freescale would become absorbed into a company called NXP Semiconductors.
Speaker 1: So the Zoom came out in a brief span of
Speaker 1: time where Freescale was its own company, and unfortunately, someone
Speaker 1: made a booboo with the drivers for the Freescale processors
Speaker 1: that went into both the Zoom thirty and the gigabeit s.
Speaker 1: It was a booboo that wouldn't become noticeable for a
Speaker 1: couple of years, which is foreshadowing. We'll talk about it
Speaker 1: when we get there. Okay, before we go any further,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back. So when
Speaker 1: the Zoon thirty launched initial you could get it in
Speaker 1: one of three colors. There was like a pearl white,
Speaker 1: there was black, and there was brown. I have no
Speaker 1: idea what made Microsoft think that brown would be a
Speaker 1: sought after color for an MP three player. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they didn't anticipate that this was going to
Speaker 1: create a whole bunch of jokes about the nature of
Speaker 1: that MP three player. It's like they were setting themselves
Speaker 1: up to be hazed. Surely someone at Microsoft at some
Speaker 1: point said, guys, this might not be a good idea,
Speaker 1: and yet they went with it. So the original Zooon
Speaker 1: had a three inch screen and a four x three
Speaker 1: aspect ratio, so taller than it was wide. This was
Speaker 1: a much larger screen than what you could find on
Speaker 1: the iPod at the time. That was really impressive, right,
Speaker 1: Like it was a bigger device than the iPod. It
Speaker 1: was definitely thicker too, like it was a chonky boy
Speaker 1: as they might say, and it was going to be
Speaker 1: a hefty piece of plastic that you were going to
Speaker 1: hold in your pocket if you're going to walk around
Speaker 1: with one of these things. But the screen was very large,
Speaker 1: which was impressive. The UI was pretty nice too, at
Speaker 1: least on a surface level. It did turn out that
Speaker 1: the resolution of that larger screen was actually the exact
Speaker 1: same resolution as the smaller iPod screen, which means that
Speaker 1: images shown on the iPod would appear sharper than those
Speaker 1: that you would see on the Zoon because you had
Speaker 1: the exact same resolution, but the Zoon had a larger screen,
Speaker 1: so same resolution, but an in large screen means that
Speaker 1: the images on that screen are blurrier. It could play video,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of immaterial because you couldn't just
Speaker 1: use video from any source, and the Zoon marketplace didn't
Speaker 1: have video on it, so you couldn't purchase video to
Speaker 1: play on it. It could technically support it, but there
Speaker 1: wasn't really any way to get video onto it, at
Speaker 1: least initially. It ran a custom version of Microsoft's Portable
Speaker 1: Media Center software. The user interface, the actual controls, well,
Speaker 1: it had a circular dpad like it didn't look like
Speaker 1: a dpad. It looked like a click wheel like if
Speaker 1: you think of the old iPods, they had a mechanical
Speaker 1: wheel where you would put your thumb on this wheel
Speaker 1: and you would spin the wheel in order to navigate
Speaker 1: through the menus. That's what this thing looked like. It had.
Speaker 1: It looked like a very similar control mechanism, but no,
Speaker 1: it was just a dpad in the form of a circle,
Speaker 1: and then in the center of the circle was a
Speaker 1: button that you could use to select stuff. So like
Speaker 1: a dpad on a game controller, you would push up, down, left,
Speaker 1: or right to navigate through menus and then use that
Speaker 1: center button to make a selection. So kind of a
Speaker 1: bummer because it looked like the control was meant to
Speaker 1: be more tactile and touch based, and it's not. It
Speaker 1: was just a dpad. The Zoom did have a couple
Speaker 1: of neat features. However, it had Wi Fi capability. The
Speaker 1: Zoon thirty had WiFi sort of, so you could use
Speaker 1: the zoon's Wi Fi to connect with another Zoon that
Speaker 1: was in the same local space that you were in,
Speaker 1: like the same room or whatever, and then the two
Speaker 1: Zoon owners could share songs and even photos between the
Speaker 1: two different Zoon devices. So if you had a photo
Speaker 1: on your device, which by the way, there's no camera
Speaker 1: on the Zoon, so you had to have loaded this
Speaker 1: photo on from your computer. Or maybe you have a
Speaker 1: music track you really liked and you wanted to share
Speaker 1: it with your buddy who also happens to have a Zoon.
Speaker 1: You could use this method and send that music file
Speaker 1: over to your buddy. But uh, if you wanted to
Speaker 1: purchase a song and put it on your Zooon, you
Speaker 1: couldn't do it wirelessly. You still had to do the
Speaker 1: old tethered connection. You'd purchase the song through the zooon
Speaker 1: marketplace on your computer. You would tether your Zoom to
Speaker 1: the computer and then transfer the music that way. Now,
Speaker 1: let's say you did somehow find the other person in
Speaker 1: your town who also owned a Zoom, and the two
Speaker 1: of you decided that you wanted to exchange a song.
Speaker 1: You could do that if you were close enough to them,
Speaker 1: you could send them a track, but they would have
Speaker 1: just three days to access that track, and they can
Speaker 1: play it a maximum of three times, and then it
Speaker 1: would just delete itself off their device, so after three
Speaker 1: days or after three plays, that song would disappear. They
Speaker 1: called this feature, and I can't believe it to this
Speaker 1: day that they did this. This is like the Brown
Speaker 1: Zoom decision. They called this feature squirting, so you would
Speaker 1: squirt a music track to another Zoom user. And I
Speaker 1: know it sounds like I'm making a joke, I am not.
Speaker 1: An actual company created a Brown MP three player that
Speaker 1: could squirt music at other MP three players, and yes,
Speaker 1: everybody made fun of this. For ages. You couldn't listen
Speaker 1: to a tech podcast, you couldn't read an article without
Speaker 1: some commentary on the topic of squirting. This was the
Speaker 1: extent of the Zoom thirties Wi Fi capabilities. Was just
Speaker 1: sending these files a short distance to another Zoon. That
Speaker 1: was it. And like Apple, Microsoft went with a proprietary
Speaker 1: cable when it came to connecting to the zooon to
Speaker 1: charge it or to transfer files to it. The zoon
Speaker 1: did have one other thing that I thought was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It had an FM radio built into it, and I
Speaker 1: thought that was kind of neat. So like Microsoft was
Speaker 1: trying to position this as it's a music device, not
Speaker 1: just for digital files but also to access radio. But
Speaker 1: Microsoft didn't really learn learn a whole lot about what
Speaker 1: people disliked about the iPod because they made several of
Speaker 1: the same choices. So one of the big drawbacks of
Speaker 1: the original Zoon was that they would only work with
Speaker 1: files that had a certain kind of DRM attached to them.
Speaker 1: DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and the whole purpose
Speaker 1: of DRM is to prevent people from being able to
Speaker 1: pirate stuff, to steal things, or to download stuff without permission.
Speaker 1: But even DRM that Microsoft itself had designed before the
Speaker 1: Zoon came out wouldn't work on the Zoon itself. It
Speaker 1: wasn't backwards compatible with Microsoft's own DRM history, and that's
Speaker 1: because Microsoft introduced a new kind of DRM around the
Speaker 1: same time that they launched the Zoon, and the Zoon
Speaker 1: would only be compatible with that version forward. And that
Speaker 1: meant that if you happened to already have a bunch
Speaker 1: of music tracks that had the earlier version of Microsoft's
Speaker 1: d on them, they would not work with your Zoom.
Speaker 1: So this was very discouraging. Right if you already had
Speaker 1: a sizeable digital library and you were just excited about
Speaker 1: getting a player where you could put the library on
Speaker 1: the player, it would be very upsetting to find out, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't because that has the wrong DRM on it.
Speaker 1: Like in the history of technology, DRM I think has
Speaker 1: long proven to be more of a frustration for legitimate
Speaker 1: users than it has been a deterrent for piracy pirates
Speaker 1: figure out ways around DRM, which means DRM ultimately just
Speaker 1: becomes a frustrating experience for people who legitimately purchased the item.
Speaker 1: So DRM is bad, is what I'm saying. Like it
Speaker 1: doesn't do what it's supposed to do, and then it
Speaker 1: does do stuff it's not supposed to do. That's the
Speaker 1: definition of a bad product. Anyway. Microsoft also did something
Speaker 1: supremely stupid in my opinion, that it had previously done
Speaker 1: with its Xbox marketplace, which is, instead of having Zoom
Speaker 1: users buy tracks with you know, real money, you first
Speaker 1: had to go through this process of purchasing Microsoft points
Speaker 1: and then using the Microsoft points to get tracks, so
Speaker 1: you would redeem points for tracks. So there was this
Speaker 1: middle step that was really frustrating. Part of this was
Speaker 1: to obfuscate how expensive a track was, right because they
Speaker 1: didn't have a dollar amount associated with it, just a
Speaker 1: number of points, and you would have to do the
Speaker 1: math in your head to figure out, okay, well, how
Speaker 1: many points is equivalent to a dollar? Right? But you
Speaker 1: never could buy them in increments of a dollar. It
Speaker 1: would always be like five dollars or more. So that
Speaker 1: also meant that if all you wanted to do was
Speaker 1: buy one track, you actually had to spend five bucks
Speaker 1: to do it, not a dollar, but five dollars just
Speaker 1: to get the points, and then you would end up
Speaker 1: with this bank of Microsoft points just sitting in your
Speaker 1: account doing nothing. So this Microsoft was not the only
Speaker 1: company to ever do this. I mean Disney did this
Speaker 1: at their parks. They had something called Disney dollars, and
Speaker 1: they were encouraging people to spend their real money to
Speaker 1: buy theme park currency where you couldn't use that currency
Speaker 1: anywhere else but inside those theme parks. Knowing that at
Speaker 1: least some of your money was just going to be
Speaker 1: wasted on this currency, you wouldn't be able to redeem
Speaker 1: all of it, so you would actually spend more money
Speaker 1: at the parks, but you wouldn't get value out of
Speaker 1: all the money you spent because some of it would
Speaker 1: just be caught up in this fake currency and you
Speaker 1: don't have enough of it to do anything useful. Microsoft
Speaker 1: points were the same way. Ultimately, Microsoft would back off
Speaker 1: of the system on the Xbox marketplace, but they were
Speaker 1: still going strong with it when the Zooon launched. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to take another quick break. I've got some
Speaker 1: more things to say about the Zoon before we wrap up.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. I'm not done slagging off on
Speaker 1: the Zoon yet. Unlike the original iPod, the Zoon could
Speaker 1: not be used as a storage device for other files. Right,
Speaker 1: Like I had mentioned that that was one of the
Speaker 1: things you could use an iPod for. You could store
Speaker 1: files on it, you could use it like an external
Speaker 1: hard drive. You could not do that with the Zoon.
Speaker 1: It also didn't support lossless file formats like wave files
Speaker 1: or wave files if you preferred WAV. Lossless means that
Speaker 1: when you create that digital file, you haven't lost any
Speaker 1: of the information contained within that file. So when you
Speaker 1: convert music into a digital file, a lossless form factor
Speaker 1: means everything that was in that recording is there. Loossy
Speaker 1: means that the process of making that file will actually
Speaker 1: eliminate some information. Ideally it's information that wouldn't affect your
Speaker 1: experience listening to the audio file, but the quality typically
Speaker 1: takes a hit, whereas lossless year getting the highest quality
Speaker 1: possible based upon whatever recording procedure was used. So reviews
Speaker 1: said that Zoon's playback quality was good despite the lack
Speaker 1: of support for lossless audio, but it also said like
Speaker 1: album art, despite being shown on a larger screen than
Speaker 1: the iPod, didn't look very good. And again it's because
Speaker 1: of those resolution issues. So Microsoft pushes out the first
Speaker 1: Zoom in two thousand and six. That's unfortunate wording. I
Speaker 1: probably should have said something else. Anyway, that year, two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, Apple sold nearly thirty nine and a
Speaker 1: half million iPods. Now that was impressive because up until
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, collectively, across every single generation of iPod,
Speaker 1: Apple had sold around forty million units, and in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six they saw nearly as many just in
Speaker 1: that one year. So, in other words, like in one year,
Speaker 1: they doubled the number of iPods they had sold throughout
Speaker 1: the history of the product, So Apple really was in
Speaker 1: the dominant position for the digital media player space. So
Speaker 1: how did the Zoom do well the first couple of weeks?
Speaker 1: It did okay. Initially sales were slow, but CNN reported
Speaker 1: at the end of the second week that had moved
Speaker 1: into the number two spot for digital media players. That
Speaker 1: does kind of ignore the fact that the number one
Speaker 1: spot was light years ahead of it, Like it wasn't
Speaker 1: even close, and being one and two doesn't mean so
Speaker 1: much if number one is like fifty miles ahead of
Speaker 1: you in a foot race. Microsoft, in a rush to
Speaker 1: try and make up for five years of lost time,
Speaker 1: had launched a bit of a flop. It was received
Speaker 1: fairly well critically. The critics didn't hate it. They did
Speaker 1: point out some of the downsides and the ways that
Speaker 1: the Zoon failed to live up to the standard of
Speaker 1: the iPod, as well as some of the things that
Speaker 1: were really interesting that Microsoft had done. But there were
Speaker 1: a lot of things to criticize. So Microsoft gets back
Speaker 1: to work and gets to work on the second generation
Speaker 1: of the Zoon. This generation would actually ditch that circular
Speaker 1: dpad and instead use a touch sensitive little surface. It
Speaker 1: was a quasi square and I say Quasi because it
Speaker 1: had rounded corners. It didn't have actual angular corners, but
Speaker 1: it was a surface where you could use touch commands
Speaker 1: to navigate through the UI, so different from a dpad.
Speaker 1: It also had some features that I think were pretty neat.
Speaker 1: Like say that you were listening to your FM radio
Speaker 1: on your Zoom and let's say a new song comes
Speaker 1: on and you really dig it. You've never heard it before,
Speaker 1: you really dig this song. You could actually flag the
Speaker 1: song on your Zoom and then when you connected to
Speaker 1: your Zoom to your computer or you could find that
Speaker 1: song in the Zoom marketplace and then purchase it. It
Speaker 1: made song discovery really interesting. I thought that legitimately was awesome.
Speaker 1: You can also download some games to the device. The
Speaker 1: user interface and the screen resolution were both improved with
Speaker 1: the second generation, but this generation of the Zooon launched
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven. Two thousand and seven was
Speaker 1: also the year that Apple launched a pair of devices
Speaker 1: that ensured it would continue to dominate the mobile space.
Speaker 1: The first was the iPhone, and ultimately the iPhone would
Speaker 1: lead the way to the decline of standalone digital media
Speaker 1: players in general, including Apple's own media players. The other
Speaker 1: device was the iPod Touch, which was like an iPhone
Speaker 1: without the phone part, And when you stack the iPhone,
Speaker 1: or rather the iPod Touch against the second generation Zoon,
Speaker 1: there was just no comparison, Like the iPod Touch was
Speaker 1: like a sexy Lamborghini and the second generation Zoon was
Speaker 1: like a decent car. And you have to remember Apple
Speaker 1: still dominated the iTunes space, like almost all downloads of
Speaker 1: purchase music were through iTunes, So Apple had just this
Speaker 1: almost a monopoly like hold on the whole ecosystem of
Speaker 1: digital music at this point. Now we're also chronologically getting
Speaker 1: to the point where another problem with the original Zoon
Speaker 1: cropped up. I had hinted at it before with the
Speaker 1: foreshadowing comment, So you remember I said someone at Freescale
Speaker 1: made a booboo when designing the driver for the processor
Speaker 1: that was found both in the Zoom thirty and the
Speaker 1: Tashiba Gigabeat. S well, that booboo failed to account for
Speaker 1: the fact that two thousand and eight was a leap year.
Speaker 1: So at midnight Pacific Standard time on December thirty first,
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, as the West coast of the
Speaker 1: United States prepared to ring in the new year, Zoo
Speaker 1: thirties stopped working. They froze. The gigabeat s devices out
Speaker 1: there also froze. They were frozen or bricked, at least temporarily,
Speaker 1: and it took a little bit for folks to figure
Speaker 1: out what had happened. And it was again because of
Speaker 1: the failure to account for a leap year. It saw
Speaker 1: that there were three hundred and sixty six days in
Speaker 1: the year, and it didn't know what to do, and
Speaker 1: it got caught in a kind of loop that meant
Speaker 1: that the device was frozen. Now, the fix was actually
Speaker 1: pretty simple. All users had to do was keep their
Speaker 1: frozen Zoom thirties and as well as you know, gigabeat
Speaker 1: s's on and just let the battery drain completely. Once
Speaker 1: the battery was completely drained, they would just hold off
Speaker 1: on recharging their device until it was after like noon
Speaker 1: on January first of two thousand and nine. Once that
Speaker 1: that time had passed, they could charge it back up
Speaker 1: and the device would reset and it would work again.
Speaker 1: But this was another embarrassing misstep for the original Zoom.
Speaker 1: Microsoft did take one more swing with the third generation
Speaker 1: of the Zoo in two thousand and nine. This would
Speaker 1: be the Zoon HD. It was an answer to Apple's
Speaker 1: iPod Touch. So like the iPod Touch, it had a
Speaker 1: display that was a touch display. It got rid of
Speaker 1: all the little physical buttons and stuff for you to
Speaker 1: navigate through. Everything was touch oriented. And the problem was
Speaker 1: the Zoo HD came out in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: The iPod Touch had come out in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: so again Apple had had a couple of years had start,
Speaker 1: plus there were some other things going on now. The
Speaker 1: Zoo HD introduced some cool features like wireless synchronization as
Speaker 1: well as wireless web access, so you could use it
Speaker 1: as a wireless, you know, mobile device, but you could
Speaker 1: do that with the iPod Touch as well. And at
Speaker 1: this time, the writing was starting to show up on
Speaker 1: the wall for the standalone media playing device, whether it
Speaker 1: was a Zoom or an iPod or anything else, because
Speaker 1: people were starting to use their smartphones to play media
Speaker 1: instead of having a standalone device dedicated to it. Why
Speaker 1: would you carry two devices around if one can do
Speaker 1: the trick. So consumer opinions were starting to shift toward
Speaker 1: accepting streaming as a music delivery service. So early on,
Speaker 1: people were not really keen on the idea of streaming
Speaker 1: They wanted to be able to own the tracks they
Speaker 1: loved and not rely on a service to continue to
Speaker 1: offer the tracks they loved in perpetuity, which you know
Speaker 1: these days when you look at different streaming platforms, specifically
Speaker 1: like streaming video platforms, you see cases where a platform
Speaker 1: loses the rights to a particular type of media and
Speaker 1: then you can't access it anymore on that platform. That's
Speaker 1: a real problem, right. It's a problem that you avoid
Speaker 1: if you purchase the media and you have it in
Speaker 1: a format that you can still access no matter what
Speaker 1: happens to the platform. That's different, and that's what people
Speaker 1: really were worried about back in when they were buying
Speaker 1: digital tracks rather than streaming. But eventually streaming went out
Speaker 1: and it became a more acceptable delivery system. Apple was
Speaker 1: still miles ahead at this point, so Microsoft decided to
Speaker 1: call it quits in twenty eleven, having never made a
Speaker 1: huge debt in the market. So the Zoon launched in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, Microsoft discontinued it five years later.
Speaker 1: So Zoom launched five years too late and only lasted
Speaker 1: five years. This would not be the only time Microsoft
Speaker 1: would have to admit defeat in the hardware space. But
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the Windows Phone debacle another day. Today,
Speaker 1: the Zoon is remembered primarily as a joke. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was used as a joke in the Guardians of
Speaker 1: the Galaxy movie. The product itself wasn't necessarily bad. It
Speaker 1: was just introduced far too late and without the features
Speaker 1: needed to set it apart from the standard defining iPod.
Speaker 1: But I think we can all agree the marketing around
Speaker 1: it was truly terrible. And that is the down and
Speaker 1: dirty story of the Zoom. If you had one, I'd
Speaker 1: be curious to hear from you. You can always tweet
Speaker 1: at me on Twitter. It's tech stuff, HSW I too
Speaker 1: need to get another way for people to reach out,
Speaker 1: because I can totally understand folks not wanting to go
Speaker 1: to Twitter. But yeah, I'm curious for the zoon owners
Speaker 1: out there at what they thought of the device. Did
Speaker 1: they like it? What features did they really love? Were
Speaker 1: there any things that really irritated them about the Zoon?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm speaking as someone My first MP three
Speaker 1: player was not an iPod. I had a creative Zen
Speaker 1: MP three player, and golly, I loved that thing. It
Speaker 1: was not perfect by a long stretch. It had a
Speaker 1: lot of issues, but it worked for what I needed
Speaker 1: it to do, and I didn't have to use iTunes
Speaker 1: to access it, so that was a big bonus. But
Speaker 1: I'm curious what Zoom owners thought about their devices. And
Speaker 1: it's a shame really that Microsoft wasn't able to compete
Speaker 1: more in the space. And I say that because when
Speaker 1: you have competition, it really pushes companies to try and
Speaker 1: outperform each other. Apple was going hard anyway, they had
Speaker 1: the lead spot, and they just kept going hard. They
Speaker 1: probably didn't need to go as hard as they did,
Speaker 1: but we ended up with really good devices as a
Speaker 1: result of that. But you can't always count on that, right.
Speaker 1: If a company dominates a market, they don't necessarily need
Speaker 1: to try to maintain their market position, whereas when there's competition,
Speaker 1: companies do have to try in order to win over customers.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of why I'm always bombed when something fails.
Speaker 1: It might have been a complete ridiculous show from beginning
Speaker 1: to end because of silly decisions. But I don't want
Speaker 1: to see failures because I want to see competition so
Speaker 1: that we get even better stuff on the other end
Speaker 1: of it. That's it for this episode. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I hope you are all well, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.