Robbie Bach says no Zune Phone, no Xbox Blu-ray... maybe a touchscreen Zune

Someone clearly didn't want Microsoft fans being left out at this time of extreme Apple coverage. In an interview with SFGate, Robbie Bach manages to deftly deny the rumored Xbox / Blu-ray match-up, deny a Zune Phone is coming anytime soon (although he intimates Zune software may come to phones), but still cleverly suggests that a Zune Touch could be in the offing. Of course, by "cleverly suggest" we mean he mentions the possibility of a device with touch capabilities, which is like saying Dell might release a laptop with a keyboard. Is that the device pictured above? No silly, that's just someone's Photoshop work. Steve Jobs -- anything to say about this?

[Via wmpoweruser; Image courtesy anythingbutipod]

[clak @ Jun 8th 2008 6:41PM]

Oh, Jesus, Microsoft people, listen up. I used to be a loyal follower of the Redmond brand and I, like many people, left Windows because you couldn't deliver on Longhorn, eh, Vista, but guys, this is getting pathetic. At least make me work for my insults. Please, this is getting too easy. You might as well promise to deliver more of the Vista platform to other devices, because as you know, that's what everyone wants (Yeah, right).

So Microsoft, out of pity, I will give you three things that you can do to stop sucking so much.

1) Stop trying to be Cool.

Listen, Microsoft is NOT COOL. Yeah, yeah, I know your Fanboys are going to say that the Xbox 360 and the Zune are cool, but they are NOT cool. The games OTHER people make for the Xbox platform are cool, but Microsoft itself will never be cool, even when they buy out development houses like Buggie. Isn't it ironic that the best known game for the 360 platform, Halo, is from a gaming developer that had its origin developing for Macs? That should tell you something. Some people are cool. Some people aren't, but you can't be both. You can not serve two masters. I'm not particular religious, but that's one thing that Jesus got right.

A dork driving a Ferrari F430 is still a dork. You can not buy cool, but you know what you can do, that would be cool? Fixing Windows and sticking to what you do best, making boring Office software. There's no dishonor in being the company that makes Office. There is a need in the world for Office software, just like there is a need for nerds and engineers in cubicles. The nerds and engineers in cubicles make the world turn, so that the cool people can drive around soaking up the benefit, like George Clooney in that Ferrari F430 I mentioned a second ago. Yeah, he didn't design the thing, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be the guy to sell it. But that's his job as a cool person. Your job is too make sure Windows goes from 0 to 60 in seven seconds, metaphorically of course.

2) Fix your code.

Notice that I AM NOT advocating that you start over, like everyone else. The primary reason you should NOT start over? Old code has been used and tested over the years and many of the bugs have been FIXED, especially with operating systems like UNIX. It's the FIXED part that Microsoft gets wrong. Ever wonder why Apple is doing so well with APIs and frameworks built over a code base more than 30 thirty years old? Because UNIX has been FIXED, time and time again. The first internet worm was created for UNIX and yet, Apple has one of the best security records of all time. You know why? It is NOT, as Microsoft Fanboys like to say, because of market share. It's because UNIX has only about 200 entry points into its secure kernel environment. It has been reworked time and time again.

When you throw away code and start from scratch, you are throwing away years of accumulated knowledge and collected bug fixes, for a new code base that has not been tested, for which there WILL BE problems, just like the code you just orphaned. There is no reason to believe you're going to do better a second time, just ask any of Elizabeth Taylor's five husbands. So FIX your CODE. This doesn't mean that I'm advocating keeping bloat. Prune the bloat if you have to and make the code more lean, but FIX IT and fix it fast or it's all over for you guys in Redmond.

3) Eat your dog food.

I can't stress this enough. There used to be a time when Microsoft advocated "EATING its own dog food." And while Microsoft may still advocate this in word, they have lost this concept in action. Apple seems to be the only company actively using their own dog food, and I'm not saying that just because I'm an Apple Fanboy, even though I am. I'm saying it because it's the truth. You guys are not eating your dog food. You've hired partners to eat the dog food. The partners want 50 features that don't work all that well when they would be better off with 10 features that rock. The partners don't want what's best for Microsoft. They want whatever they can get. So if a company like Intel asks for a certain processor to be Vista Capable, even though it's not, Microsoft needs to say NO.

Apple gets a lot of flack for saying no, but they make controversial decisions because they know what's best for the user experience. For example, Apple said no to multi-tasking on the iPhone. They've said no to flash on the iPhone. They've said no to game developers like Gabe Newell and John Carmark. It's not because Apple is mean and arrogant. It's because they know what's best for the Apple ecosystem. Multi-tasking in Windows Mobile has made phones running Windows Mobile unstable and while you may have satisfied partners in the sort term and won a few battles, Microsoft is ultimately going to lose the mobile war.

Safari crashes a lot in OS X and as a user of Safari, I can tell you that 90 percent of the time it's because of a Flash plug-in, which is why Apple probably banned Flash from the iPhone. But how did Apple know to do this? Because they USE Safari. This is crazy, I know, but eating their dog food seems to be working for them and it will probably work for you.


We have had two chickens in every pot, two cars in every garage, and now two headaches for every aspirin—Fiorello La Guardia

[axemt @ Jun 8th 2008 6:44PM]

"It's not because Apple is mean and arrogant. It's because they know what's best for the Apple ecosystem."

That's what every dictator says, hmm....

[Kris @ Jun 8th 2008 6:44PM]

TL;DR

[dspalding @ Jun 8th 2008 6:45PM]

dude this is the internet, no one is gonna read that much text

[MED @ Jun 8th 2008 6:45PM]

wow. someones got sand in their vagina.

[Lein @ Jun 8th 2008 6:47PM]

Damn. Kris beat me to it.

[Richard Lai @ Jun 8th 2008 6:47PM]

OK, Engadget, please ban clak's IP address.

[Daspl @ Jun 8th 2008 6:48PM]

TL;DR

[untitled @ Jun 8th 2008 6:49PM]

am i s'pose to read all that?

[Aguiluz @ Jun 8th 2008 6:50PM]

"now two headaches for every aspirin"

My two headaches here are clak and iEye.

Well, got to get an aspirin now.

[Moorio - XBL: peacebyanymeans @ Jun 8th 2008 6:52PM]

You're posting a comment. Not a blog post, not an essay, not a novel. Jesus Christ, keep it below 500 words, will ya, buddy?

[MeatPop @ Jun 8th 2008 6:56PM]

Who takes this much time to write his idiot dissertation on a rumor post?

[d @ Jun 8th 2008 6:57PM]

And the award for "longest post" goes too...

[Striker @ Jun 8th 2008 6:59PM]

Clak, gotten a piece of Steve Job's bum yet?

[Aguiluz @ Jun 8th 2008 7:00PM]

@MeatPop (spelling?)

He could just have said F*** MICROS*** and moved along. He'll still get the same low ranked. And we still don't care.

[nerdtalker @ Jun 8th 2008 7:03PM]

Clak, it's official. You need a wordpress to go rant on and on and on and on and on and on and on.... (fades into distance with a mellow air of absurdity)

Seriously, nothing you said there hasn't been said before. Stuff isn't inherently "cool," popular-culture and brand-fanboyism makes it "cool."

[Christy McGrory @ Jun 8th 2008 7:04PM]

come on, it's clak he's an idiot. Whatever he says, he is going to get low ranked, most likely due to the random spamming every fucking post Engadget makes. And he still hasn't got the message, so clak: FUCK OFF.
I'm sure many Engadgeters will agree with me.

[Nohone @ Jun 8th 2008 7:12PM]

I am going to ignore your first two points since they are uninformed drivel, but I will touch on the third point, although it falls into that same category.

So what you are saying about eating your own dog food is that Apple realized they had an underpowered device and inefficient code that could not perform correctly to do multi-tasking, keep from crashing (you say Safari crashes because of Flash, and yet Safari on my iPhone crashes quite often, without Flash), among other tasks. Rather than taking the time to fix that code and making it work correctly, they would rather not give the user the best user experience possible and rush to market? That is an amazing admission from you, clak.


A few months ago, in a posting about the Zune, some Apple apologist (like yourself) made a claim about the Zune that was blatantly incorrect. When I tried to correct that statement, I was asked (I believe it may have been you, clak) why Zune owners feel the need to defend the Zune, and the phrase "Me thinks thou doth protest too much." And yet, here we have another Zune post, and immediately the Apple apologists are here, attacking, and using arguments that they know nothing about. How do you know that Microsoft does not use their own tools daily? Do you not think that the Zune team does not have the latest firmware on their devices? That they do not touch the device until the day it is released? These are a lot of claims that do not seem to be backed up with any proof. Why not have your contact in the Zune team get on this blog and tell us about how he wrote all this software, but never once tried using it?

Or are you just making this up to fit into your little Apple world?

[Neebs @ Jun 8th 2008 7:20PM]

your #1 point could be applied to mac users :|

[DefPo3t @ Jun 8th 2008 7:23PM]

@clak&@nohone

blogpsot.com for you nohone
Wordpress.com for you clak

[DeoWulf @ Jun 8th 2008 7:23PM]

Elitist much?
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/17/survey-finds-apple-users-have-sense-of-superiority-no-wait-h/
It's a big burden you've taken upon yourself to decide what's cool and what's not you know. Honestly, I think we were doing a better job when we decided that for ourselves.

[Bunson @ Jun 8th 2008 7:28PM]

You officially go down on record for the most bashing replies to a comment.
You officially go down on record for making even fanboys look bad.
You officially go down on record for being more special than your mommy used to tell you.

I'm done now.

[Reader @ Jun 8th 2008 7:37PM]

See it's easier to pass you off as an uncaring troll that just does it for the lulz when you type small bits of bullshit, but this just goes to show that in fact you're an idiot with no life. I pray you copied and pasted that from somewhere (though I have no idea what it says, didn't read it).

[DeoWulf @ Jun 8th 2008 7:51PM]

Reader, he must have copied and pasted because there's no way he could have typed that all up and still gotten first post. He's either regurgitating fanboy crap or he wrote that all himself in his free time and saved it for this specific purpose. Both are amazingly pathetic.

[vileta2 @ Jun 8th 2008 7:56PM]

@Richard Lai

I was thinking the same thing.

[El Taco @ Jun 8th 2008 8:06PM]

you had enough time to write that...and STILL be the first post?

impressive ;-)

[deyanimay @ Jun 8th 2008 8:17PM]

Are you guys serious, he has the right to say what ever he wants. I dont agree with him but i'm not gonna bash him simply for having a different mindset. He has a point that ms has some problems but from his point of view he only sees the terrible side of ms and the "perfect side" of apple. Everyone attacking him is also looking at the situation from the other side so that makes you just as bad as him and you all dont want to be like him do you?

[loosely_coupled @ Jun 8th 2008 8:21PM]

@Nohone

HA! How ironic that you call his post "uninformed drivel" when you yourself argue with patently false information. Feel free to disagree with him, but first you have to actually HAVE AN ARGUMENT supported by the facts, not the bullshit you slobbered into the comment box.

".... Apple realized they had an underpowered device and inefficient code that could not perform correctly"

This above is a pure bullshit statement. Whats funny is that the iPhone actually has some of the best smartphone hardware on the market. It has a 620Mhz power-efficient ARM11, and an Imagination Graphics engine.
Have you seen the interface and software run, including the web browser? To say it's underpowered is a mark of pure ignorance.

Also, it is just as preposterous to claim that the scaled down Darwin unix kernel and foundation libraries are "inefficient code". That is truly laughable. All of the applications are written in Objective-C with an optimizing ARM compiler.

Comparatively, alternatives like Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Samsung's proprietary crap are Toys best used in an alarm clock.
Even most cellphone apps are written in JAVA for god sakes. Are you claim mobile OSX is inefficient? HAHAHA.

Although somewhat controversial, Apple is (for now) avoiding widespread use of background processes to keep the phone running well in the hands of the technologically semi-literate. People will go crazy filling their iPhones with applications and will end up with all of their RAM and CPU time filled with wasteful background processing. Where it makes sense, like in a chat program, I can guarantee it will be allowed.

Macromedia Flash has run terribly on Macs since day one, although it has gotten a little bit better on Intel Macs. This is because Macromedia never spent the time to make a properly optimized version that takes advantage of OSX's modern graphics APIs. The Win32 version has always been much faster. It's obvious they just lazily ported it over to the Mac. For this reason, Flash performance has been crap, and I could only imagine how inefficient it would be on the iPhone using the same libraries.
Everyone thinks all mobile smartphones can run real flash, and it's just not true. "Flash Lite" is a world apart from a modern desktop Flash plugin. On the other hand, Although I would like to see an optimized iPhone version of flash, it probably is good in that it will force the adoption of open standards like animated SVG graphics (using avascript), CSS effects, etc. which WebKit has been working feverishly on. Otherwise, if flash became popular on the iPhone, it will no doubt become entrenched on mobile platforms, and that is a BAD thing in my opinion.

[Ace b @ Jun 8th 2008 8:27PM]

Um....what does TL;DR mean?

Yes,I've been reading this site for a while and I still don't know all the mannerisms yet.

[Richard Lai @ Jun 8th 2008 8:40PM]

@Ace b: Google it. I had to do that too to find out the meaning. I should have known better though.

[Mike10010100 @ Jun 8th 2008 9:15PM]

@deyanimay (sp?)

I agree. However, the fact that he does it constantly makes him annoying. At first glance, this whole bashing of clak would seem a bit out of hand if you didn't know the background story.

It's ok if someone has an objection. But when someone says that objection again and again, it becomes annoying and futile. And unfortunately, it isn't simple trollishness, as most of his posts are long and constant bash-fests.

Every company and product has redeeming qualities, and each fit some specific user, but claiming that one product is "better" definitively is like saying that a certain shoe is the best fit for everyone. It most certainly is not. Not until you wear the shoe and test it can you make certain that you like it. I love mac, windows, and linux for each of their strengths.

[Marvin Quach @ Jun 8th 2008 9:16PM]

For anyone who STILL hasn't googled what "TL;DR" even after all those posts and their curiosity hasn't gotten the better of them, your solution is here!

Too long; Didn't read.


(*is also very surprised your curiosity withheld for that long too*)

[Jon Graft @ Jun 8th 2008 9:38PM]

Agree with #2, but #1 sounds like you're stretching for reasons...and was too lazy to read #3.

[Ellianth @ Jun 8th 2008 9:54PM]

Can you imagine what his inbox must be like if he forgot to uncheck "email me when someone replies to this comment?"

[t3_slider @ Jun 8th 2008 10:05PM]

You know what's cool? Donating a billion dollars to AIDS research. That's cool. Steve Jobs ain't cool. I'm no Microsoft fanboy (I use Linux, avoiding both feuds and actually using my OS as I intend it to be), but Bill Gates most certainly is 'cool'. As for the non-multitasking OS bit, the ancient Palm OS has no real multitasking and after using it for years it is SO frustrating. People wrote hacks that could freeze an app and let you switch to another one just for that purpose. And the sad part is that most Palm apps save the state anyway, so switching between apps isn't the end of the world -- and it was STILL the most frustrating experience ever. Multitasking should be a feature on any modern smartphone, no exceptions. My Sharp Zaurus (not a phone, but a PDA) has nice multitasking on a 400 MHz ARM processor and it doesn't crash unless you do something stupid (and this is nowhere near a mainstream product). Apple can't even create a multitasking smartphone with all of their resources and a faster processor. Not 'cool'.

[Owen @ Jun 8th 2008 10:27PM]

Okay everyone lets clap for clak the quacks essay!

[xValentine @ Jun 8th 2008 11:05PM]

The Great Wall of Text.

[JewWithASmallNose @ Jun 16th 2008 10:45PM]

lawlz
...
you sir are a fucktard

[Technex @ Jun 9th 2008 6:45AM]

I like to spam Clack's email woot.

[Patriks7 @ Jun 9th 2008 8:46AM]

get over it dude :")

[teej @ Jun 9th 2008 12:36PM]

i don't think i've ever seen an Engadget post generate so many replies...it's even funnier that no one read said post either.

[roach @ Jun 9th 2008 12:53PM]

I'm glad Clack moved on to Apple products. I be embarrassed if he endorsed Window products.

[Darth Abe @ Jun 8th 2008 6:50PM]

Touch screen Zune + XNA?
I am intrigued by the possibilities.

[J L @ Jun 8th 2008 6:53PM]

That's a *very* good photoshop....

@clack: What the hell are you smoking? "I'm not saying I'm an Apple fanboy, even though I am."

'Nuff said.

[meatwad64 @ Jun 8th 2008 7:18PM]

I don't want to defend the long post of clak's but I know its tough to read in the internet age but he says:

and I'm not saying that just because I'm an Apple Fanboy, even though I am.

He never said he wasn't an apple fanboy....

[J L @ Jun 8th 2008 8:22PM]

Oh, my bad. :-)

I mis-read that. (It *is* hard to read now-a-days... )

Sorry!

[Minilap @ Jun 8th 2008 7:01PM]

Iriver FTW.

[ijyt @ Jun 8th 2008 7:08PM]

Hmm, I wish this is true. I've been eyeing the Zune 80GB for a long while.

[Burke @ Jun 8th 2008 7:09PM]

I just dont get it sometimes...I use Vista, have been since beta 2. We had our ups and downs but since the RC I have not had a problem. I use it at work, school, and home. Different machines different hardware, still works like a charm. Mostly FUD imo. I have a 360, a launch one. I travel with it frequently, bang it around put it in tight areas w/ no ventilation and it still works great. And surprise...I have a zune. Love it. Yes, I did have several ipods but imho I really like the zune. The software works great with sharing with my xbox. Mix everything together and it works really really well for me and my digital lifestyle. For some apple works well, whatever. Different strokes for different folks.

[Bunson @ Jun 8th 2008 7:30PM]

Amen brotha