A much more accurate description than ’surface’ – its almost appealing in a slapstick way – if it were discounted to $99 like the Zune, it would sell, well, like a ‘BigAssTable’!

Great graphic with Gates and Ballmer in the ‘table.

Amazing when you think that people really put this Laurel and Hardy comedy object up as a useful thing.

I don’t always agree with what Daniel writes, but it’s helpful to use to compare and contrast what other people are writing. The bottom line is to take in information from as many sources as available and draw your own conclusions.

I suppose so. It is like Apple not reporting Apple TV unit sales and combining revenue with iPhone. Anyway, I told you how Zune 80 is currently doing in major retail stores. Zune 80 is selling relatively well for the last month. Don’t know if it will continue. Can’t help if you think or hope it is still a failure.

Think – outrage overload, I think people have become numb to thinking for themselves and basically turn off reasoning, or any critical thinking.

This is your brain. This is your brain on Infomania.

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_8/zeldes/index.html

Attention Deficit Trait (ADT), learned by rote.
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), congenital.

The section entitled:

Technological Reality – Cultural Paradigm

… is case in point for the ever encroaching trend of the sloughing off of reason and common sense, not HAVING the time to consider, much less do more than react. The intellectual equivalent of “fight or flight”, essentially hammering you to a malleable stupor.

Anyway, I enjoy your writing, the research must be quite time consuming – and I appreciate your attempts at having balanced opinions, you’ve been correct a lot of the time.
It can’t be said you haven’t done the homework.

YES, I’m new here.
;-)

hylas

Why do you keep repeating that exaggeration? The so called firesale for $80-$99 30GB Zunes was to start the holiday season, for one day and in limited numbers. It might have been also to clear existing ones with old firmware to replace them with 30GB Zunes with updated firmware.

So how is Zune really doing in the marketplace. Surprisingly, the best selling Zune model is the Zune 80GB, not the small 4GB flash models. At Walmart Zune 80 is currently #2 selling mp3 player. At BestBuy it is #6. At CircuitCity it is #4. At Amazon it is #21 because it is out of stock this week, but has been consistently been in top 10 since its release.

[Sorry, but it wasn't a one day sale, it went on for months. I get affiliate links from advertisers who were pushing the fire sales, and it was very widespread, involving lots of merchants. Even as early as June 07, BestBuy, Amazon, CircuitCity, Staples, and Wal-Mart were selling it off for $199 or less. Woot held many one-day sales in August and September.

As for more the Zune 80, if sales numbers had not been embarrassing, Microsoft would have reported them along with the Xbox figures (which themselves weren't that flattering). According to NPD, this year "the portable media market declined on average by 16 percent compared to the same period a year earlier [2006]. The lone exception is the iPod line.” In other words, Apple grew while the Zune and other models did worse than last year.

A key reason for tanking Zune sales was its competition with fire sale prices of last year’s model, as I predicted would happen. I’m not sure “predicted” is the right word; I don’t predict the rising of the sun every day. – Dan]

My sources: Gene Munster, Shaw Wu, 10 years worth of previous sales data that I use to predict trends, some access to component costs. I didn’t grab opinions from a rather silly thread at macobserver. Walt Mossberg did in his blog. Oops, Walt, seriously?

If I seem smug, sorry, really. I’ve lucked out the past few quarters and that’s fun for me. Stick with the pros if you’ve got real money on the line.

What’s funny about this guy is that some “columnists” aren’t that far away from him in terms of intellectual strength.