FUZ — Fear, Uncertainty, and Zune

2006.12.21   prev     next

THERE were a few years, not too long ago, when the far-and-away-best roadmap application was Microsoft MapPoint (an app that, incidentally, I heard MS didn’t even write, but instead bought out). MapPoint wouldn’t run on the Mac, and that worried me. Since I couldn’t use MapPoint on my Apple laptop, I would use it on my wife’s built-from-parts Windows PC (we needed a Windows machine for her AutoCAD work). When pressed, I had to admit that it was a significant weakness of my pro-Apple position that MapPoint wouldn’t be available to anyone who bought a Mac. If I absolutely had to look at roadmaps on my iBook, I would use MapQuest, but it was a wretched experience after becoming accustomed to MapPoint. Thankfully, Google Maps came along and saved the day, bringing a better-than-MapPoint experience to any computer with a web-browser (although there was a brief period when it didn’t work in Safari).

Looking at Microsoft’s Zune, which no one seriously suggests has a fighting chance at upsetting the dominance of Apple’s iPod, I feel suspicious. What is MS trying to do with this? Then, the other day, it hit me. The Zune doesn’t work with Macs. In most reports, this is just a minor footnote about the device, but what if that’s the product’s whole point?

Let’s suppose that over the next few months/years Zune doesn’t even dent iPod’s market share, but it does manage to gobble up the much smaller (but still significant), pre-Zune market for non-iPod, hard-drive-based players. That would make Zune a distant second to iPod, but still the second-most influential product of the iPod genre. And perhaps unlike some of the players it replaces, the Zune can’t be used by Mac users at all, and MS can guarantee that it never will. What does that do? Of course — it’s the MapPoint effect all over again. Even those consumers who wind up buying an iPod will be aware that their only major option besides the iPod is something that won’t be available to them if they buy a Mac. It’s the same, FUDdish phenomenon that has been keeping down Mac market share all along. People are discouraged from buying a Mac if they fear they will have compatibility problems for having made that choice.

Entering a market for secondary effect

Could the whole point of Zune be just to reinforce anti-Mac FUD? Recall that Apple entered the retail market with no goal loftier than getting one store into each of several major metropolitan markets, and keeping those stores at break-even status. To the surprised delight of Apple and its fans, those retail outlets have done so much more than merely holding up their economic weight, but no one, not even Apple, knew that would happen. Apple’s purpose in establishing a retail presence was just to put a knowledgeable, pro-Apple presentation within the retail shopper’s reach, and in so doing, break a long-standing retail curse whereby large numbers of computer buyers were not even made aware that buying a Mac was an option to be seriously considered.

So ... what if that’s what Microsoft is trying to do with the Zune? Not topple the iPod, not even necessarily make money — look how much dough they’re losing on the Xbox — but just reassert Mac compatibility issues by creating them wherever they can, and in particular wherever Apple can’t fix them. Note that Apple brought iPod compatibility to the Windows PC, by writing iTunes for Windows. Can Apple bring Mac compatibility to the Zune? I don’t think so. Zune is a closed system, just like the iPod, and any attempt by Apple to hack into the Zune (which I doubt Apple would attempt anyway) would be met with about as warm a MS reception as Apple gave the efforts by Real to hack into the iPod with “Harmony.”

Microsoft, I have little doubt, would love to purposely break iPod/Windows compatibility, but doing so would get them in so much trouble with the feds, they don’t dare risk it. However, keeping the Zune closed to anyone’s attempts to make a system compatible with it is different. In court, MS would have the winning argument: No one was ever invited to make software for the Zune, and Apple is playing a similarly closed-product game with the iPod.

The two ends of the strategy spectrum

If I’m right about this, then the contrast between Apple and Microsoft has never been clearer than it is today. Vista’s unfurling reveals it to be little more than a bunch of maybe-as-good copies of OS X Tiger features, wrapped around the same horrifying, legacy, patchwork of systems that invokes tears of joy from malware authors, but a different sort of tears from everyone else. And the Zune looks to be an effort to cement anti-Mac FUD in the non-iPod share of the MP3 player market. MS has only ever had two ugly cards in its hand, which are either to buy out the competition, or to make a me-too product, then leverage that product’s success off of Windows dominance. In the past Apple, by refusing to be compatible with the products and standards that most people were already using, practically handed MS the leverage tactic on a silver platter. But today’s Apple has wised up, so now MS can only try to find ways to cause incompatibility with Apple (while steering clear of Uncle Sam).

Apple’s cards are creativity (iMac, iPod, iLife, Tiger, Leopard, etc.) and evangelism (superb retail stores, entertaining ads), newly combined with a special respect for compatibility (iTunes for Windows, USB iPods, Intel processors, Boot Camp, broad file-format support, etc.). These positive strategies have created a bright new future for a company that only ten years ago looked nearly ready to keel over or fade into the fog of obscurity.

Let’s all hope that Microsoft’s efforts to leech the rewards of creativity, and chip away at cross-platform compatibility, will not be enough to spoil that bright future.

(Negative hypothesis: Microsoft soon adds full Mac support to the Zune.)

Update 2010.10.13 — Looks like my negative hypothesis might be coming true! But I was right for, what — four years? All it took to convince Microsoft to do this was a big resurgence in the popularity of the Mac, plus two huge, new, Apple mobile products that are starting to seriously nibble on PC sales. I guess even Microsoft can see the light when it’s blazing across the sky right in their face.

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