[dead jim]

Originally Posted by Nurta

The "actual software manufacterer"? What does that mean? Is it integrated into an OS yet? If not, I see no difference between who makes it, except that what Apple did was weak

of course it matters who makes it. people are much more likely to trust a company who makes the software they already use daily, that shares the same name, than they are to use something from a company with which they are unfamiliar.

It doesn't? It is nothing if everybody sees how worthless this thing is (taken out of context, I know)

"everybody" doesn't see this kind of thing as worthless. ilike and last.fm's similar widgets are terribly popular. my point was that it doesn't matter if you don't use it if a great number of other people are. and they are.

You call that social?

yes, this is clearly focused on something that is genuinely social, namely sharing with others what's going on with you. how is this anything but social?

That is nothing compared to what MS has left in their registry for us to find. If you have looked at the huge number of strings and .js files they left in there that hints at what they are doing, you wouldn't be underestimating them. What MS has plannned will combine strongly into their already powerful online tools and will largely rid the idea of music using media players as an end point and so tightly combine the device and the onliine aspects that it you can send a hello image to some random person you meet you can then go online later and chat with find their blog and chat with them. It could easily be the ultimate social, allowing easy interaction with people due to your common interests who would otherwise be strangers.

so what? it's not there yet, even though the zune tagline is "welcome to the social." the point here is that itunes is able to one-up the zune at the zune's game, and that is an issue.

Their entry into the social aspect is laughable, it is a widget that advertises their product. Compare that to Last.fm, which is the most interesting online social music site, where it finds songs for you depending on what your peers like and you form a community in music.

i don't disagree that last.fm's app is better; it is. that's not the point. the point is that ms claimed this as their own area of attack, an area that apple said they weren't even interested in being a part of. and yet, here we are, with apple releasing a genuinely social app before ms. if you can't see that that's going to cause a problem for the way the general public perceives the zune, one that would have been easily remedied if ms would have simpy done what they suggested they were going to do, then our way of thinking is so different that we have little else to discuss.