Zune Bug Uproar Silly
Last week revealed an issue with first generation Zune 30s. Owners of this model were dismayed when they turned on their Zunes on December 31 only to find the unit reset itself and then got stuck in the reset process rendering the unit useless. Apparently there’s a bug in it’s software relating to leap years where it doesn’t recognize the 366th day of the year.
My RSS reader and Twitter feed were overloaded with information and opinion about the issue. People were all over Microsoft about this issue. This bug demonstrates a very basic failure on the part of Microsoft’s Zune programmers. There’s no excuse for a bug like this to appear on a production device.
But let’s look at the big picture here. Microsoft holds a 4% marketshare in the MP3 player category and has sold 2 million units since it’s release. By comparison Apple’s iPod has 71% marketshare and sold 76 million units during the same time period. Not to downplay the enormity of this bug but when was the last time such a small segment of the marketplace caused such an uproar.
Yes, this bug should never have existed. No, it should not have caused the uproar it did.
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