Zuned - Legacy

Legacy

After the Zune won a 2012 Slate reader poll of outdated technology worth a second look, Farhad Manjoo, the site's technology columnist, went to considerable lengths to acquire a Zune HD. " wasn't as complete a failure as you may believe," he wrote. "If you purchased one over the iPod Touch back in 2009, you wouldn't have regretted it."

Had Microsoft brought the first Zune to market at the same time as the iPod, or even the Zune HD at the time of the iPod Touch, it might have been a serious competitor to those players. "By that point, iPod had become the world's de facto digital entertainment device," he recalled. "To beat it, Microsoft needed to offer something that would make Apple's device look pitifully old-fashioned. The Zune HD didn't do that. Its design marked it as being different from an iPod, but that was pretty much the only difference." As it result it was unable to overcome the iPod's market share. Nevertheless, it was an effective enough product that he had started using it as his primary music player."

Like the Edsel, to which it has sometimes been likened, Manjoo said the Zune's failure may have led the way to eventual success with other products. The HD's user interface, he noted, was the first such Microsoft product to rely on text rather than icons, and it would form the basis for Windows Phone, Windows 8, Xbox and all of the company's web-based services. The Segoe typeface that is now used in all of them, as well as Microsoft's current logo, was first used on the Zune.