I’m not getting a Zune because I use linux (a true pointless rant)

Today I was talking to Trevor and something dawned on me… I’m not buying a new Microsoft Zune because I use linux(Ubuntu).  Years ago I bought one of the first generation 30gb Zune’s and it has served me well,  until 2 years ago when I fully switched over to Linux.  I tried to make it work with linux, I really did! I loaded up a VM with my old XP Pro installation and hooked up my media library to it (via shared folders), and this worked for a little while, but as time progressed something started to happen.  The months rolled on an soon I realized that I wasn’t booting into this virtual machine I had built to sync my library…podcasts…vodcasts…all the changing media that I used to listen to was being left behind(well atleast as far as the Zune was concerned).  Now I wasn’t any less up to date with the information that was contained in the media that I wasn’t syncing with the Zune, I just wasn’t using the Zune.  Now I’m not sure if it was the extra step of firing up another operating system or if it was the hassle of trying to get USB to pass through to the VM, but I discovered something…..

I will not buy another Zune until Microsoft supports the Zune software on linux(or through wine).

It’s just too much hassle.  I bought a Sansa Clip and that has served me extremely well, even without video support. Also, for the sake of contrast, Apple’s iPod is supposedly supported through Rythmbox on Ubuntu 9.10.  But I won’t be getting an ipod anytime soon either(well unless I switch to Macs…).

Bottom line I think hardware and software need to come together and play nice.  This is something that soooo many vendors and big software companies have struggled with since the dawn of the circuit board.  Hardware is pretty useless without software and software is just an idea without hardware, so why hasn’t there been a stronger movement over the years to bring the two together?

Apple sort of solved this issue by only supporting “some” hardware and working on quality(sometimes successful, sometimes not).  Microsoft gained market share by supporting tons of hardware(…I didn’t say they support it well..that’s a different post) and let’s be honest…left quality behind on a napkin somewhere.

Somewhere between the $100 bills and the middle aged man crying because his computer system turns on but is totally useless, I’d like to think there is a happier place.  I could say that the happier place I’m talking about is open source or linux or whatever but that wouldn’t really be fair.  Open source isn’t perfect and linux by far isn’t perfect but I really truly think that the “happy trail” lies with these groups.

In what environment could there possibly be a merge between hardware and software that is not an open environment?  Apple constrained hardware to maintain quality, Microsoft constrained nothing to maintain market share and I’m running linux.

And that’s my pointless rant.