Zune's Messaging is Off to a Bad Start

Michael Gartenberg | October 03, 2007, 08:42 AM

The new Zune's are really good, the software and features are really good. You'd think Microsoft would want the world to know that right? What's concerning to me is how early marketing and messaging is being handled so poorly. Granted, at least they're not calling the iPod, "The Model T of Music Players" anymore but look at this quote from Bill Gates in this morning's NY Times.

"For something we pulled together in six months, we are very pleased with the satisfaction we got," Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, said in an interview Tuesday. "The satisfaction for the device was superhigh. The satisfaction on the software actually is where we'd expect to see a huge uptick this year. It was just so-so on the software side."

Microsoft said it had re-engineered the Zune hardware and software and the associated digital music store to make them all easier to use. "I'm sure a year from now we'll do even better," Mr. Gates said. "But I'm blown away by what they've been able to do in a year."

Excuse me? Is this a new product announcement or an apology? Can you imagine Steve Jobs getting up on stage and saying, hey, "This isn't too bad and next year we'll do even better... I'm amazed we did this much in a year?"

One of the core differences between Apple and Microsoft is, for better or worse, Apple never gives an inch much less makes this kind of statement about a product. It's never a design flaw, it's a feature. If it's not in our product, it's not worth having (right up until the time it's in their products). Ironically, it never used to be that way at Microsoft. The company would always tout their stuff as the best there could ever be.. until the next version came around. This is not the kind of marketing this product needs at this time. If Microsoft keeps up this type of talk, it's no doubt there's a public perception for consumers to wait for the 3.0 release.