Dell's Zing hopes to rival Apple in ecosystem, launch two players early next year

With Zing on board, Dell's going after Apple's portable media dominance once again, but it seems our worst nightmares of a DJ Ditty 2 could be unfounded. Instead of building just another PlaysForSure-friendly or even WiFi-happy DAP, Dell's hoping to partner up with Apple's rivals to build a new ecosystem that will create better interoperation between PMPs, phones, cars, satellite radios and the multitude of online music stores out there. From the looks of things, that ecosystem is in good hands: with the acquisition of Zing's Tim Bucher, formerly of Apple fame, and the 120 person team he's built to help Dell put Apple in its place. Dell's staying a bit coy about the specifics of its plans, but word on the street is that they'll start shipping the software later this year, and push out a couple of players early next year. Sure, it could all fall apart in the end, but it's nice to see someone trying to be "the whole widget" of open standards portable media, as royally as it might eventually fail in the Apple-owned marketplace.

[Tonicboy @ Aug 15th 2008 4:35PM]

Deja Vu. Wasn't PlaysForSure and then Zune Marketplace supposed to be the new ecosystems to outdo Apple? How about we do away with this DRM silliness and you guys just concentrate on making players that don't suck.

[telepheedian @ Aug 15th 2008 5:53PM]

I dunno, Zune's getting there.

[sr @ Aug 15th 2008 7:30PM]

^^^ Funniest comment all day!!! Nice one!!!

[UnixSystemsEngineer @ Aug 15th 2008 8:28PM]

Exactly. If the ecosystem involves anything other than non-DRM'd music, no sale. How many customers out there both hate iTunes and Apple, but can't wait to pay for DRM'd music? Not a whole lot, I'd venture to say.

I like Apple's products a lot and generally trust them as a company, but I'm sure as hell not going to invest a lot of money in DRM'd music (I have maybe $30 worth). Just hedging my bets until something better comes along.

[Andrew Fong @ Aug 15th 2008 9:03PM]

For music at least, Amazon offers a nice no-DRM system. You can even configure the downloader to send your MP3s straight to iTunes for iPod syncing.

[xValentine @ Aug 15th 2008 9:56PM]

"I dunno, Zune's getting there."

lol, getting where ?

[fanman @ Aug 16th 2008 7:36AM]

All of the DRM's can be breached anyway (requiem for iTunes, hundreds of programs for windows media). Unless this system has no DRM in it whatsoever then frankly they can jog on if they think there going to pursuade people away from coverflow.

[telepheedian @ Aug 16th 2008 9:06AM]

Zune's getting there quality-wise, the subscription music scheme; although DRMed; is an awesome deal, and they are starting to sell some MP3s (more compatible than iTunes Plus in general).

[Vink @ Aug 15th 2008 4:36PM]

I am worried that with the anouncment of this and how much the industry has already counted it out, that it might actually make it. Everybody loves an underdog. Shoot, that was one of the reasons I loved apple so much for the last 20 years. I'm also torn between hoping they fail to make sure apple does really well, or hope they do very well to create competition to bring prices down and R+D up on the apple side.

[Flashpoint @ Aug 15th 2008 4:37PM]

Its gonna take more than "just another DAP" to even put a dent in APPLE's lineup. There is nothing DELL makes that I could buy unless I was buying with my school's technology budget.

[mikeg @ Aug 15th 2008 5:12PM]

Excuse me?

From the twisted sentence you constructed, you make it sound like everything Dell sells is extremely expensive.

It's quite the opposite in reality.

Dell products are usually MUCH less expensive than Apple's in terms of normal everyday products.

[chrisn @ Aug 15th 2008 4:39PM]

how is the picture related?

[Vink @ Aug 15th 2008 4:42PM]

They want to be able to incorperate the new ecosystem (read:itune-esque utility) into everything from basic DAPs to *gasp* satelite radio. AKA Sirius/XM

[Tim F. @ Aug 15th 2008 4:56PM]

Zing, the company Dell bought and is leading this effort, built the Stiletto for Sirius and the Sansa Connect with SanDisk/Yahoo.

[aaron @ Aug 15th 2008 5:51PM]

Vink - 0

Tim F. - 1

[DBrim @ Aug 15th 2008 4:39PM]

FLAC support please.

[bradwjensen @ Aug 16th 2008 12:48AM]

We can only hope they're smart enough for FLAC..

[Zak @ Aug 15th 2008 4:40PM]

Oh this ought to be good. The dynamic duo of Rob Enderle and Tim Bucher. Enderle has been wrong about almost every single thing he's written (but because he's an industry pundit that's okay somehow), and Tim Bucher didn't leave Apple - he was fired.

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/03/01.16.shtml

Steve Jobs told Bucher: "People sometimes think you are manic-depressive...I'm not sure what I am going to do, but I think I am going to have to ask you to leave the company." After he was sent home, Apple's HR director suggested that Bucher seek psychiatric help.

And this is the guy who's going to take on the iPod's market dominance? You know, people seem to be making a big deal that Bucher used to work for Apple, but nobody seems to be mentioning the fact that he was fired from Apple because of excessive complaints about his manic depression.

[JR @ Aug 15th 2008 4:59PM]

Maybe he got help. Manic depression is treatable. I don't think the fact that people at Apple used to complain about him is reason enough to say this project will fail. Also, do you actually know if he was diagnosed with a disorder? Just because Apple employees thought he had one doesn't mean he did.

[Zak @ Aug 15th 2008 5:08PM]

That quote came from Bucher's own lawsuit against Apple for wrongful termination, so I doubt that it's inaccurate. He was a fairly highly ranked employee at Apple, pulling $400k a year. I sincerely doubt they would have fired him if his condition weren't serious enough to warrant it. They must have gotten a LOT of complaints for it to get that far.

[JR @ Aug 15th 2008 5:21PM]

Yeah, but that quote by Jobs doesn't imply he's been diagnosed. Your implication is that he can't succeed because he was fired by your favorite company for a condition that he may or may not have. Maybe he does have it. Maybe he's getting help now. Either way, your argument against his success is ridiculous. Lots of successful people have been fired. Like... Steve Jobs. And to suggest that people with disorders can't succeed is absolutely ignorant.

[fred @ Aug 15th 2008 5:57PM]

"And this is the guy who's going to take on the iPod's market dominance? You know, people seem to be making a big deal that Bucher used to work for Apple, but nobody seems to be mentioning the fact that he was fired from Apple because of excessive complaints about his manic depression."

Great, not only has the Apple Attack Crew pulling their usual hatchet job on anything that may harm their precious little company, they are now resorting to personal smears.


Stay classy, Apple fanatics...

[Wormbolt @ Aug 16th 2008 9:24AM]

Wasn't Steve Jobs also fired from Apple?

[Kelmon @ Aug 16th 2008 12:33PM]

@Wormbolt

No, he left "voluntarily" but only because the then CEO made his job suck until the point that he went without actually having to fire him. This seems to be a fairly normal but nasty practice in business to remove people you don't want without having to pay them redundancy money.

[Zak @ Aug 18th 2008 10:17PM]

Yes yes, you all hate that I pointed out the simple fact that Bucher was fired from Apple because of excessive complaints about his manic depression. Ever hear the phrase "shooting the messenger"? But yeah, I'm sure this will all work out perfectly for Dell and they'll completely take over the market Apple currently owns. I mean with Bucher and Rob Enderle on board, how could they lose?

LOL.

[I-phone Is I-sexaayy @ Aug 15th 2008 4:42PM]

hmm close, but they arent there yet.

ok, a lil off subject but did anyone see colbert the other night?
hehe
he found out that the iphone had a kill switch, so he thought his iphone was going to kill him.

"luckily" he said "i switched to zune, it cant kill me, or do anything else"
hahahaa i was cracking up :)

[I-phone Is I-sexaayy @ Aug 15th 2008 4:43PM]

ohh forgot to mention, it probably doesnt sync with itunes. it wont catch on if it doesnt, since everybody uses itunes. but good luck dell! love your comps

[telepheedian @ Aug 15th 2008 5:58PM]

I'm sorry, but iTunes is a load of fail, and people only use it because they have to. It used to be the best, it just evolved into a superbloated app that installs 7 services and puts a new browser, media framework, and 2 additional control panel applets on your system. And that is why I will never use it again, even though I started using it back at version 4.

[fred @ Aug 15th 2008 6:00PM]

""luckily" he said "i switched to zune, it cant kill me, or do anything else"
hahahaa i was cracking up :)"

Yeah, that's real funny. How many hacks did it take to put that joke together.

I would email him to tell him to get better writers, but he uses MobileMe, so he may not get it.

[Kevlar @ Aug 15th 2008 6:25PM]

I use iTunes because I want to. There are very few programs that have iTunes' level of organization (My music collection is meticulously organized). The only other that really comes close is Songbird, but it's basically an iTunes ripoff anyways.
My only complaint with iTunes is version 7+ have rather high memory requirements. This is less of an issue with 4gb of ram, but it's still rather annoying.

[I-phone Is I-sexaayy @ Aug 15th 2008 6:39PM]

(^_^)

hi haters :)

1) itunes is the best, no argument there ?
everything is perfectly intergrated with the store and syncing. plz tell me what is better.. hahaha
2) colbert is the best show ever, how could you not love him??

(:

[telepheedian @ Aug 15th 2008 8:17PM]

Songbird actually is a good iTunes alternative, also, I would give MediaMonkey a try if you are looking for organization. The beef I have with iTunes is not the organization, or the interface, but the software itself. It feels almost as if Apple made the Windows version slow to help sell Macs, it nearly freezes when I sync an iPod shuffle nowadays. Also, while the organization is nice, they left out some things, such as not deleting old folders with nothing in them, and putting things in the Music\iTunes\iTunes Music folder, rather than the Music folder.

[UnixSystemsEngineer @ Aug 15th 2008 8:34PM]

iTunes for Windows is pretty bloaty and only a marginally okay piece of software, but I'm pretty unhappy with all of my media player choices in Windows.

iTunes on the Mac has essentially zero of the issues iTunes for Windows does. It's fast, fast, fast, and super clean and slick. The only complaint I could see having about the way it works on the Mac is if you simply don't like the interface or how it categorizes your music or something.

[I-phone Is I-sexaayy @ Aug 16th 2008 2:29AM]

i see exacly what your saying, cuz im running itunes on a pc as well, and it can get slow. but im sure apple didnt intentianally develope it to faul, it needs itunes for its money. now i may be wrong, but im thinking that it is the pc itself thats the problem, they need replacing so often and most are slow and unable to handle a big program, that being said, itunes runs on mac faster because macs dont slow down like pc's. they are build better, to last, and that is probably why

[telepheedian @ Aug 17th 2008 10:03AM]

^ You are living proof that their tactics are working. My PC could smoke a Mac Mini, and yet iTunes still runs slow, not because of the specs, but because QuickTime for windows is coded like a train wreck.

[Vink @ Aug 15th 2008 4:45PM]

That was off topic, but I saw it too and I think it made me pee a little. Funny stuff.

[I-phone Is I-sexaayy @ Aug 15th 2008 5:11PM]

yeah i love that guy haha.

[Xenoterranos @ Aug 15th 2008 4:48PM]

I dunno. No one really has an end-all be-all portable music/media solution. You'd need a device with wifi AND cellular internet to really provide adequate service, and on top of that you'd have to have one unified store and platform...

Oh snap.

[JR @ Aug 15th 2008 4:52PM]

It would be nice to see another good choice in the PMP market. It'd be sad to see another offering that just doesn't measure up. Though it sounds more like they might go overboard here (too much emphasis on new features and services) and sacrifice simplicity and usability.

[bcrider @ Aug 15th 2008 4:54PM]

fugly.

Like all things Dell. :)

[MMisterio @ Aug 15th 2008 5:04PM]

you must be a woman because only a bitch cares about aesthetics especially when it comes to a piece of tech.

[JR @ Aug 15th 2008 5:04PM]

I don't think that's a Dell product.

[Kelmon @ Aug 16th 2008 12:38PM]

@MMisterio

Aside from the obviously disgraceful language, you are quite wrong. How technology looks is just as important, if not more so, to males than it is to females. That it is not important to you is wonderful and all, but you are not representative of the market.

[tande @ Aug 15th 2008 5:01PM]

Mmmm.... Maybe.

It seems like as soon as everyone finally realized it wasn't just the iPod that people were flocking to but the whole "ecosystem" of iTunes intergration they've been taking pot shots at that too. The problem is they have just been pot shots. Zune never really caught on, Best Buy's collaboration didn't really catch on, maybe if Dell really can create a whole new one and get all of the other players to jump on board they might have a shot but its going to have to be an all or nothing type thing. Just one hold out (zune anyone...) and to the average consumer its still going to be just as confusing as the plays for sure was. Unless it gets to a point where you go into a store and its as simple as Mac vs PC for DMP I don't see it being any different then any of the other systems that have tried to take on apple.

[I-phone Is I-sexaayy @ Aug 15th 2008 5:10PM]

i agree, although i would personaly love so see apple continue to dominate, competition always brings out better tech.

but lets all wait till september when apple rolls out its new line of ipods

[itsnobody @ Aug 15th 2008 5:11PM]

Dell has improved a lot when it comes to design and they are extremely good with pricing as well. There is a very good chance that they will get some heads turning.

[Markus @ Aug 15th 2008 5:17PM]

This will without a doubt crash and burn taking million of dollars along with it, but I applaud Dell for giving it the old second college try.

[Jubei @ Aug 15th 2008 5:19PM]

Ahahahaha... It will only cannibalize Zune user base. So instead of 25 users, plus the added 5 in Canada, Zune will be about 10 users.

[Rob Schoenfeld @ Aug 15th 2008 5:57PM]

Go back to rougly drafted Jubei. I'm sure you can geek with fellow apple fan boys rather then providing meaningless comments.

Secondly this is rather bad move on dell's end.. The PMP market is now mature stealing market share be will be difficult.. Dell should focus on creating a better media experience in the household.

[I-phone Is I-sexaayy @ Aug 15th 2008 6:40PM]

zune has users ??
i thught zune was a joke.. they actually tried to sell them ? :D

apple wins with 100 million ipods sold hah well, as of a year ago