Mass suicides by 30 GB Zune. Yep, they just couldn't face another year.

[alfredo]

MS sure knows how to make great software.

http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/12/30gb-zunes-kill.html


he internet is awash with reports that the 30GB Zune is committing suicide across the planet. Not just one of them, either. It seems that some weird bug is simultaneously killing the music players, like lemmings leaping from a cliff.

Speculation is of course centered around the timing. It is New Year's Eve, after all, and the conspiracy nuts are calling this Z2K (with or without a +9 at the end). Our own NYC Bureau Chief John C Abell prefers the idea that it is "Brilliant Microsoft DRM Technology", which would be the most hilarious explanation.

The reports say that the units are simply freezing and won't respond to anything. Grunfloz at the Zune.net forums:

[Neshanic]

1. Ballmer to loading dock..."We need a SHITLOAD of Zunes!"

[alfredo]

2. The new firmware killed it

A fix I found at a link in another Zune thread.


I think we have figured a fix.
I have a white Zune that was playing last night when I went to sleep. My wife woke up this morning and stated that it was not work. I tried the reset even the Hard reset with no luck. I told my wife that I would look at it when I got to work. When I got to work, I saw that I was not alone in what had happened to my Zune. I tried the removing the battery trick and that did not work. I did notice that it finally powered off after being drained. I tried to connect it to my system and charge, saw the charging image and then tried to reset, and nogo. Finally I reset the date on my computer to Jan 31, 2008 and then connected the Zune and it powered on just fine. I went in and tried to access the clock like someone seggested in an earlier post. I then noticed that the time on the Zune was @ 830pm. Dont know why it showed 830pm since it was playing @ 11pm. Set the clock. Since it was working now, I disconnected the Zune to see if it still worked, then reset the clock on my computer, reconnect the Zune, and it was still working. checked the clock on the Zune and it had the correct time from what I had set it for.
So, as of now, My Zune is back to working just fine!
Woot!

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. OMG..the humanity...the humanity!!!!

:cry: :cry: :cry:

[alfredo]

4. Buyer beware.

[Sultana]

5. Tee-hee, my iPod is remaining sexy while Zunes are falling apart

:evilgrin:

[alfredo]

8. A "good enough" attitude instead of "it has to be right" seems to be

part of the corporate culture.

I didn't like the finish of the case. It looks cheap. It might work fine most of the time, but it was butt ugly.

[Tesha]

12. You might enjoy an oldish essay entitled "The Rise of Worse-is-Better"

It describes the rise of a software development philosophy that
goes a long way towards explaining why most computer programs
nowadays blatantly suck.

It's all over the web, but here's one place to find it:

o http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

Tesha

[alfredo]

14. very good article. The first part shows why Jobs has such control over

Apple hardware: keep it simple. They don't have to program to deal with a dizzying array of hardware.

[Swamp Rat]

6. I'm glad my 5 yr old 60G iPod Photo still works, though I'd love to have the new 120G iPod Classic:

http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic

[alfredo]

10. there's rumors of a larger form iPod touch. 5X7 screen.

[Swamp Rat]

15. ... yeah, that and touch screen iMacs.

... as well as rumors of a nine-inch iPod Touch by next Fall.

I would love to see, at least, iMacs with a Core 2 Quad Q9550 (2.83GHz/12MB L2), dual nVidia GeForce 9600M GT (512), and DDR3 RAM. O8)

[alfredo]

16. It's a national past time: trying to figure out what Apple will pull out

of its hat.

[originalpckelly]

7. "I'm a hideous knock-off of an iPod, I can't take it anymore! Goodbye cruel world!"

[alfredo]

9. Reminds me of the Zappa cover that has a sign that says:

This tree is ugly and wants to die.

[Tesha]

11. It turns out that the latest Microsoft firmware screwed up leap years!

The problem, apparently, is that the latest Microsoft firmware (software
stored within the Zune) screwed up the way it calculates leap years. As
you'll recall, 2008 was a leap year so when December 31st turned out
to be the *366th* day of the year (which the firmware thought should
have only 365 days), the firmware freaked out.

Apparently, if you let the Zune run its battery absolutely dead and reboot
it in 2009, it will then operate until December 30th, 2012, and by then,
Microsoft claims they can have the problem fixed. We'll see...

Tesha

[alfredo]

13. Let's hope that works.