Don’t mean to be rude but only this type of thing can happen to a Microsoft Consumer product….
January 1, 2009
A Year Ticks Over, and Zunes Get Hiccups
It has been nine years since the Y2K computer glitch inspired apocalyptic fears. On Wednesday, another time-related bug created its own small-scale panic. Owners of 30-gigabyte Zunes began flooding Zune-related Web sites with complaints early Wednesday morning. They said their players had suddenly stopped working, displaying only a frozen start-up screen.
After spending much of the day digging into the problem, Microsoft said that it had traced it to a software bug “related to the way the device handles a leap year.” Apparently the Zune was expecting 2008 to have 365 days, not 366.
The fix for the glitch? Patience. The company said the internal clock on the players should reset itself at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday. Microsoft advised Zune owners to drain the battery and then turn the players back on after that time. Those who were hoping to provide the soundtrack to New Year’s Eve parties had no choice but to find a friend with an iPod.
The end-of-year timing led some Zune owners to call the problem “Z2K9.”
Back in July, I found that the Zune does not even support Unicode (and yes, even up to today’s version while Apple supported it from Day 1)… See:
Zune does not support Unicode Characters
Moral of the story ? Some companies just dun know what it takes to sell a CONSUMER product.
