Zune HD pre-order page appears on Amazon.com; 16GB priced at $220, 32GB at $290

only us nerds have negative opinions of microsoft.
the average consumer thinks bill gates when it hears microsoft.
he is still VERY rich and appealing to most of the world. it WILL sell!

@ninjaap

People who enjoy Zune-pass, HD radio capabilities, OLED screen, and a cheaper entry point are reasons to choose the Zune over the iPod Touch.

I’ve passed the 32gb threshold so I would like to see this with sd expandable memory and working on mac os would be sweet. I hate using fusion just to transfer music. Otherwise those things this sounds like an exciting player.

there is a new ipod coming and the mac sites rumor it to be in September. supposedly September is Apple’s ipod refresh month.

the current Touch is the same hardware as the iphone 3G without the camera and phone components. The next touch should double the storage and use the 3GS hardware like the new ARM CPU along with the graphic co-processor. the 3GS is supposed to be close to the Sony PSP in graphics quality if someone were to write a game like that for it.

and all summer apple has had a promotion where you get a $229 rebate if you buy a Mac and an ipod touch. it’s supposed to clear out old inventory. the promotion ends September 8th.

all the apple sites were right on about the new iphone being announced at WWDC so this info is close to trust worthy.

“I disagree and swear at you for your opinion, I win @ internet! My profanity means I am right!”

“You don’t like microsoft so you must be apple fanboy, because that is the only other option in the world, so you lost @ teh interwebs”

Zune has gotten plenty of bad press. Think of it’s perception by the mass consumer market, not by a bunch of tech freaks that frequent BGR and other tech blogs.

Microsoft deserves the bad press. the current Zune basically only plays back media. The iPod Touch is a media player and has tens of thousands of games and other applications for it.

I think you can even read Exchange email on it over wifi. If you can hit Exchange from an Apple MP3 player, but not a Microsoft one then MS deserves it’s 5 Zune customers. it’s just a software issue, not even anything to do with hardware.

Honestly, I’m more excited about the Zii Egg at this point. 32GB plus an SD slot running Android? Sold. I’ll pass on both Apple and Microsoft’s options for that.

@alen

Last time I checked the Zune was a media player. So you are upset that it plays media? Who needs to read their email over their media player?

have most of you seen this?

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/11/zune-hd-video-hands-on-chock-full-of-media-edition/

RIP to my ipod touch

@ian, why buy only a media player when you can get so much more for the same price?

Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone) at: New York Greater New York, United States

Heres my thoughts. I own an iphone 3g 16gb white and an 8gb 2nd gen ipod touch I love them both and they work fine. I do plan on buying A zune HD though. I don’t think it will mess with the ipod touch selling wise at all.

Who cares if it doesnt do as much as the ipod touch. Face it people we are tech nerds, Not everyone on earth has the same needs as we do so they may think the zune hd is perfectly fine because it is a good piece of product and at a good price point.

Actually at this point the ipod touch refresh isnt even certain everyone just thinks so because september is there month for ipods.

I personally am getting it over the ipod touch 3g if it comes out because i want to experiance it and i think it will be a good product and theres nothing the ipod touch 3g will probably be able to do that my iphone wont maybe besides a compass and possibly voice control. So i think everyone just needs to stop with the hate because they are both good products just worry about whats good for you.

correct me if I am wrong, but the limpdicks at BGR have never criticized any product ever made. any hype on the zune-an object of complete derision-is worthless.

since you are clearly a loser, I am glad your windows computer was ruined.

I know it’s probably a given, but I hope this thing is Mac compatible. I’d really like to give it a shot. My iPhone can’t handle all the movies I want to throw at it.

Nah, IMo I don’t think this will touch the Ipods at all. I have the Iphone3gs and an ipod touch , but being a tech geek, I might get a Zune HD too.I primarily use a Mac at home,but use Windows at work and have a laptop running windows too. Knowing Apple, they will come out with another Ipod touch that will sway consumers their way. However, with good marketing it might make a little slice off the Apple pie.

Let’s agree to disagree then; I’ve read both sides and here’s my 3 cents: The ipod touch is really a camera-less, phone-less iphone. Really. To get excited over a camera being added to your touch when it should’ve been there a year ago? Whatever. I’m a Zune holder. I’ve bought more ipods (for other people) than Zunes, and setup them up, tested, blah, blah both. Here’s the long and the short of it. Though I have a distaste for ipods, I will give credit where credit is due: Innovation, sheep marketing (sorry – alternatives exist, lazy consumers), elegant design, dual OS operation and expanding capabilities. Bad – iTunes, songs sales over artist wishes, uncooperative (see Palm Pre, music industry CTX), elitest ignorant fanboys who spit verbal garbage without the facts. On the Zune side; relatively quick evolution, radio (now HD), sharing, better sounding (imo), wallpaper changing (seems small, but really personalizes the player), wmv and mp4, zune pass (especially since you can keep 10 a month – sweet!). Bad – no native mac support (though I dont care, others do), weak marketing (earlier marketing anyway), developers games require restart, no apps (yet! – c’mon OneApp!!), perception. To the uninformed, perception is everything. If touch seems cooler than Zunes, people (sheep), think touchs are cooler and pony up the now large gap in prices for ‘cool’. Chances are the 64gb is close, but i heard about an issue trying to achieve this, which is why it hasn’t been announced. Maybe apple will be innovative and announce it when no one else seems to be able to get it done. P.S. M$ could really pull a fast one if the ZuneHD had games, apps (I’d write some quickly!!!), 64gb, and snuck in a phone; the phone probably wont happen, but imagine – one high capacity device; no more carrying a pda, and a media player and a phone (or a smart phone and a media player like i do now) – just one….
P.P.S. Honestly, as far as ease of use is concerned for customers neither has it right yet btw. The apps (itunes and zune software) at this stage should be robust enough to handle drag and drop AND automatically add it to both the device and the library. Ease of use is important to the average consumer! I’ve seen people dying to get a pod, get turned to a sansa for cheaper price AND drag and drop ease. Interesting isn’t it?

I have an iPhone, a 5th gen iPod, and a 3rd Gen iPod mini… I bought the iPhone becuase its the only phone that does what I wanted out of it, without it being a blackberry (college students do not need blackberries….). I won the mini in a raffle, and bought the 5th gen at a time when I had only seen a few zunes around. I’ve used a few iTouches before and am not impressed, especially considering I have an iphone. I love 360, the zune software (I dl-ed it to try it out a while back when I was thinking of getting one of the 120gb), and I dont have that much music (only about 6gb, becuase I go through and remove the music from my players that I dont listen to, imagine that, removing music you dont listen to, huh…). The zune pass also seems like a great idea, with unlimited downloads, plus you keep 10? I will definitely be getting one of these come holiday of this year.

Does anybody have a link to the pre-order page on Amazon? When I do a search for Zune HD is just re-directs me to a generic “Alert Me” sign-up page instead of the pre-order page shown above.

god, blog comments are so entertaining to read.

Resistance if fultile.