Hardly a rival in any real way- perhaps a small marketplace participant. It sounds like M$ will once again be doing the "me-too" shuffle and lunge to try and catch up. Small surprise there.

...to go to the Moon!...and I'm going to bring my bicycle and a trampoline and...and...and...

let's see, $5 buys you 400 points and a song costs 79 points which means $5 buys you... ummm...

retarded.

(yes, I can do the math in my head but it's still stupid because most people are put off by this garbage)

they're committed to this market. no matter how much money they've lost.

they're committed to games (closing in on 6.5 billion in losses)

they're committed to "search" (they'll buy Yahoo since they can't make headway on their own).

they're committed to buying their way into whatever someone else does first and better.

it's simply the MS way!

Move along nothing to see.

But I hear in 2011 they are planning some great features.

The points system isn't retarded! It's great!! See, by making everything points-based in price, they can raise the cost of each point, so 79 points costs $1.29 instead of 99 cents.

This way, as a consumer, you're not bothered by little details like worrying about price increases, since the price is always the same (79 points)! It's pure genius!

What will make this even better is what will come with Zune Marketplace 2.0! By then, the cost of a point will differ depending on where you are. So 79 points in "new music" may cost more pennies then 79 points in "c*** music from Bill's Zune!" area. This way, they can give the labels the flexible pricing they've wanted, but give the consumer the 'one price for everything' model!!

Now, the other side is how they're helping our kids. By not following the lame Apple way of pricing music using standard currency, MS is helping kids improve their mathematics abilities by teaching them fractions, multiplication, and division.

"But I hear in 2011 they are planning some great features."

They sure are! Ones that iPods have or will have long since had. They just have to wait for Apple to innovate a few more of them so they can figure out what to attempt to copy.

I actually like some parts of the zune hardware/software interface, but with iPods moving to intel and OSX, what will they do in the future - migrate to Vista Touch?!

Nice point, testie, I like how the Zune Marketplace keeps its sense of reality and aesthetics in line with that of D&D level generations and WoW experience points. My parents really would be able to relate to these.

I wonder what cooler wi-fi features iPhone and iPod Touch will be offering by then?

is this news for a Mac based website?

Article on MacNN again!

Zune does not work with Macs_ Zune is not a viable iPod competitor_

MacNN - why are you so retarded?