During my time at RIT I worked at a campus computer store that specialized in selling Apple products. It was a very educational time where many of my biases were challenged and changed, and soon I began to see that Apple isn’t an entirely evil company.

GarageBand is a pretty sweet program for a pretty good price, for example.

Still, there were some feelings that became tempered during my exposure to their products. The iPod, to me, was an atrocious device. The “innovative” turn-wheel was one of my greatest frustrations. No matter what sensitivity it had been set to I could not reasonably use it. It was impractical and made basic functionality a pain.

This was only hampered by the user interface as a whole, where it took too many clicks to get anywhere. The damn thing just wasn’t functional, and my two previous Creative Zen MP3 players were far superior (even if Creative started trying to imitate the iPod with their Micro line of products).

When my store finally got a Zune I decided to give it a try, curious as to what would be different. Would Microsoft make an excellent product or would they screw it up in classic fashion?

I was floored. The user interface was intuitive, allowing me one click to access my music and to easily shuffle between playlists, albums, artists and other methods of organization with ease. I could turn options such as shuffle on or off right from the “now playing” screen instead of having to shuffle through different menus. If I so desired I could take a break from my musical collection and listen to the radio, or even listen to the music of another Zune owner in the vicinity.

Add to this the Zune Media Player software for the computer that comes with it. All I had to do was feed the program some folders with music and all of the data was sorted automatically. It was useful, user-friendly, and despite being built on the same architecture as Windows Media Player it wasn’t much of a resource vacuum.

The Zune wasn’t only a good MP3 player, it was the best damned player on the market.

Unfortunately, it had two things going against it. The first is that it came in well behind Apple, whose market share was already massive due to early adoption. Trying to convince those users that not only did they need to upgrade their current device, but jump ship to another manufacturer, was near impossible. The Zune looked like an imitation, not a new must-have device that could possibly be an MP3 player.

The second problem was the same issue Microsoft always runs up against: it was Microsoft. People seem to have an issue taking Microsoft seriously and always expect their products to run like garbage. Considering this was during the Xbox 360 red ring fiasco, well, it didn’t help matters much.

Public perception of the device became a laughing stock. I’d be lucky to find a single acquaintance that also had a Zune player, and even one of my favorite television shows Chuck used it as a butt of their joke. The only solace I found was that Tycho from Penny Arcade shared my enthusiasm for the device, though also my isolation as a consumer.

Now the device is dead. It clearly wasn’t profitable for Microsoft, and unlike the Xbox they saw no change in that future. It is to be laid to rest, and if I ever find the need to change to a new MP3 player I will either have to search high and low for a used or refurbished Zune or quite literally downgrade to a device with inferior design.

To you, Zune. You’ve been a most valuable device for me in College and continue to be used while exercising and taking extended trips. It’s been good knowing you.