We've all been a bit up in arms about the apparent lack of a push for apps on the
Zune HD given the platform's obvious strengths, but news from
Daring Fireball seems to suggest that may not be the whole story. According to John Gruber, after publishing a short story on the ZHD and Microsoft's seeming lack of developer interest, he was contacted by an iPhone dev who claimed to have been pinged by Redmond to code for the new device. According to the source -- a Twitter client-maker -- he was asked to port his software to the Zune platform for "a bucket of money," though he ultimately declined the offer. Details beyond that fact are scarce, though apparently this dev is "certain" the offer was for the Zune. We won't argue for the benefits of having your application on two high-profile devices (clearly a personal decision), but it is extremely encouraging to hear that Microsoft sees the need to bring more than just basic functionality to a device like the Zune HD. Now, it's just a question of how smartly they go about it.
[Via
The iPhone Blog]
posted August 14th 2009 10:10AM
Kudos for you, for sounding like a douche-bag.
@mission and you too
So you believe the cute little story? Sweet. Now drink your warm milk and go beddy-bye.
Well it's not like it hasn't worked in the past. Pretty much all of the exclusive Playstation games went over to the Xbox 360. And the recent Yahoo search buyout as well. Typical Microsoft, if you can't solve a problem yourself throw money at it.
The zune hd sure look nice and I wouldn't mind having one. But it's not multifunction enough to survive. You got the Pre, iphone, and the andoids and htc to compete with. To me...it's not nice enough where I got to have it. Unless this is dirt cheap I bet it won't go anywhere. Nobody wants an mp3 player anymore.
I want an MP3 / Video player. I have a blackberry and was assigned one for work. Sure it has mp3/video capability but I'd rather have a ZuneHD/IPod Touch for video/music.
I'd personally rather carry around a point and shoot, an mp3 player, and a phone that each does what it's supposed to do well rather then one thing that sorta does all of them but not really to my satisfaction. Granted I'm probably not the norm with this opinion.
Convergence has not lived up to it's promises.
This has been the issue Android has been facing.
It's a great platform to develop for better than the iPhone/iPod Touch but the issue is maintaining codes across 2 platforms is somthing practically nobody wants to do as it is a real pain in the ass.
So in effect developers are forced to choose between either one platform or another and as long as one platform is more popular that is the chosen platform.
Not to mention if you are dividing code between multiple platforms in effect you are increasing your operating costs which means each iteration of your app gets more expensive taking away your competitive edge.
Simply put find programmers who know a platform and then learn to code more effectively and efficiently for that platform reducing your maintenance costs and boosting your profit margins with a nice price tag.
I read both the iPhone Blog article and the original Post at Daring Fireball and I came away with a couple of things.
With Daring Fireball we don't know anything about the offer other than "Buckets of Money". The developer might not have beeen getting anything on the back side of the deal with Microsoft owning the Zune version of the code
With the iPhone Blog most of then article was mostly rehash of what was said on Daring Fireball but with a Snippy last paragraph about how iPhone has a public SDK and zune doesn't.
Lets be honest. No company would be stupid enough to pass up something that could easily be adapted onto a new product. Be it an MP3 player or anything else.
If the HD is anything like the other Zunes we will have a Firmware update the moment it comes out. We know with the demos on youtube that the firmware isnt finalized yet. Give it six months once any possible bugs are out of the system and a public SDK will be out and the app store will grow fast becuase of both Microsofts paying out developers and people making their own apps