From A Loyal Supporter From Day One - When Can We Expect A Statement?

This software release has been a nightmare to many of your loyal supporters who have been there from day one, including me. And I for one feel like a sucker.

I will try and keep this brief. I purchased my Zune during the first release, had some issues with the syncing waited patiently till January for the fix. Heard tons of chatter about how firmware updates would abound, and the the product would be a constant evolution. Frustrated with the lack of real decent accessories I custom built my own car dock and encouraged everyone of my friends and family to convert over from Apple regardless. I then purchased another Zune for the wife, then another for a relative and finally two more a month ago for upcoming Christmas presents. So I feel I can safely say I have been a true supporter. I have contributed on zuneinsider.com along with many other sites out there and although it is far easier in this iPod ruled world to go the direction of Apple (read tons of accessories, support, features etc.) I went with the underdog, beat the drum for the Zune team, and never looked back. Until today.

Today is a total slap in the face of loyal Zune supporters. Being in the tech and application industry myself I can easily say I feel like this software is beta at best. I feel like we are all beta testers for a bad experiment by the Zune Team. I have been the Zune's most loyal supporter for a year and what have you given us? The removal of many key features that made this product great:

- metadata editing capabilities beyond simple artist and album info (was present in the previous software version)
- batch metadata editing
- auto-playlists
- 5-star rating
- old organization of videos
- easy album art via drag and drop and auto search ability

You missed the boat on some things like:

- Detailed metadata for videos
- Video Playlists
- etc.

So after all that has gone wrong today your supporters like myself are still out there in the blogosphere defending a product and team, that I feel now really let us down. All I am asking for is a press release or official notice on when the 'beta' software will be fixed and when we can expect things we just assumed would be in the new software that were removed be added back? I only hope the answer isn't next November.

I would hope that after 4 Zunes and a years worth of cheerleading from myself and others, letting us know when we can expect this nightmare to end the software to be fixed, and that people are actually reading and understanding the problems here isn't too much to ask.

I know I am about to abandon ship. I am frustrated and dissapointed. I know for sure with all thats out there it won't be hard to convert back.

Soon To Be Lost Supporter,

-Lil'

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You can't steal second with your foot on first.

atleast you can get it to install! 2 hours on hold for level 2, I give up. I will put it on Ebay tomorrow and use the money to buy the "other" player.

I agree... I was a diehard iPod guy for years (owned 4 different models)... got a june a few months ago.  The only thing that Zune had that iPod didn't is the Zune pass.  For unlimited downloads I dealt with the HORRIBLE player.

I was so excited for a new player.  YEAH RIGHT!  Where are the auto playlists?  I don't even use regular playlists... who does?  Too much music to be manually making lists.

Also, I CAN'T SIGN IN! I CAN'T USE MY ZUNE PASS.  One hour on tech support -- they blamed Vista and told me to call Vista support.  BS!

I've had it... I won't wait much longer for the functionality to return -- I'm not paying $15.00 a month for nothing!

Well said. I am with you all the way on this.  This is Beta software and frankly not even better than what we had yesterday.

agreed 100%!

I'm keeping my itchy little fingers from reaching out to a myriad number of MAC loyal Media contacts I have.

They would have a field day with how badly Microsoft has handled the current Zune 'issues'.

 

 

 

Seriously just a little timetable would be great from the Zune Team. Give me some reason to keep the faith in Zune.

Overall... I think the direction is great... But lilsalmon hit it on the head with those bullet points...

I’m pissed that they took away metadata editing... HTF are we supposed to treat this like the media management software is is pretending to be if I cant edit my stuff? And leaving Video categories out was just plain stupid... I have a metric crap-ton of video that I haven’t put on my Zune since Day 1 because it's all mixed up and jumbled... Let me flag it as a music video, TV show, or Movie, like iTunes... and you’ve won me over...

Also... Am I the only one having an issue with the podcasting aggregator pulling a huge backlog when I only want the last 5 episodes... I don’t want that crap taking up my space..

And what happened to right-click, delete, and being able to delete from PC... ? I’ve got crap in here that I’ve never seen to be honest, and want to delete it , but am afraid it just gunna abolish it from the library, not the PC entirely... and there isn’t even a "go to file location" option anymore so I can delete it directly... I have to go fishing for the damn thing...

I guess I'm more pissed than I realize...

Keep up the good work!

 krashdown wrote:

This is Beta software

I would disagree with this statement. The software quality (aside from the install issues which some people have experience, which are to be expected on an open operating system such as Windows XP/Vista -- trust me, you can't test the infinite number of hardware/software scenarios that are out there) is definitely release quality.

You may not like the FEATURE SET that is included, and I know to a user this is picking nitts, but that does not make the software a piece of beta software.

I personally have had no problems upgrading either my pc software or my Zune30. I've used wireless sync several times with no issues. Signed in to the Zune Social and see my listened to tracks update, etc.

That said, I despise the fact that we "advanced" users lost a lot of features (auto-playlists, tag editing, view by genre on the pc). The same things happened to MS Money over several revisions and I eventually had to switch to that "other" finance package.

 zmanaaa wrote:

So tell us...how do you use auto/smart playlists. Tell us what it didn't do that you want it to do. Tell us what it did that you didn't want. This way when we do it, we'll do it knowing exactly how you use it and can inform our designs with that.

As anyone can see in the forums...and we knew from our betas, autoplay list is a functionality that is loved and heavily used by our advanced users...and is unknown/confusing to other users. Do not get us wrong we(as advanced users) love them too...

{Some text deleted for as it wasn't relevant to this thread}

_Zach

Zune Product Team
.:  This posting is provided "as-is" with no warranties, and confers no rights  :.

I guess this statement says it all.  This version of the software wasn't made for advanced users.  It's basically an alpha for us.  This version is made for the folks that have never owned a DAP.  Then they wanted us, the "advanced" users to come here and tell us what we really want.

Maybe they should have done that before releasing the software, but then they would miss the holiday sales.  Unfortunately, I think that there is a flaw to that thinking.  Firstly the early adopters, AKA "advanced" users are the ones that use it first and recommend the product to others or buy the product for other users.  If we get a bad first impression then we don't recommend the product.  For V1 software some of these flaws may have been considered acceptable. But V2 is a serious step backward for "Advanced" users when it comes to the library. 

The funny thing is that some of the most important new features will probably be completely ignored by the non "advanced" users.  How many of these people are going to set up a wireless sync?  How many of them will use the Social Networking?  Probably not a lot of them.  At least not until we "advanced" users show them the way.  But it's hard to do that when we're so disheartened.

So you don't agree it being called "beta", then fine, what about release version of version 0.75, since it's worse than version 1.0

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Feature request: *Asia language support *More flexible playlist on device

 nlinus wrote:

The funny thing is that some of the most important new features will probably be completely ignored by the non "advanced" users.  How many of these people are going to set up a wireless sync?  How many of them will use the Social Networking?  Probably not a lot of them.  At least not until we "advanced" users show them the way.  But it's hard to do that when we're so disheartened.

 

I think this is the reason:

 zmanaaa wrote:

...and what we had to do to differeniate ourselves by making compelling user scenarios(think wirelesss sync and the social website your using now).

 

They have to differeniate, for the sake of it.

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Feature request: *Asia language support *More flexible playlist on device