18 thoughts on “Brown?”

  1. While it is not really my place to question the Macalope’s wisdom, I feel the Macalope may be missing an important marketing decision.

    But being first to market with a brown portable media player, Microsoft is clearly targeting their core market – the delightfully dull, brown suited corporate middle-management demographic.

    This undeniably large market has likely avoided the current crop of white, black, and yes, even pink devices out of fear of ‘standing out’, or being labelled ‘hip’.

    With the launch of the ‘Brune’ (yes, I may have made that up), they can feel comfortable in the knowledge that they can purchase one of these devices and have it blend in perfectly with their wardrobe, their desktop PCs, and their pleather laptop cases.

    A marketing coup by Micrsoft?

    Maybe!

    PS: This *is* a ridiculously small comment box!

  2. Mr Jamieson may be on to something, the ‘brune’ may be the next black! Now all those corporate lackeys too afraid to buy the suave iPod line can show their appreciation to the Giant Redmond Beastâ„¢ by plunking down some hard earned scratch and display these brune babies proudly on their belts or breast pockets, even though they’ll have no clue as to where the all-vital “On” switch is.

  3. Hey, man. I *like* the brown. What can I say? Earthones are hip. Look at fashion these days, and you will see lots of muted, washed out browns and blues. Corduroy and stuff. Just sayin’. I know the Apple Genius look hews pretty closely to the black tee-shirt, white iPod model, but you can hardly blame people if they conflate that with the Fat Dude Who Sits On His Sofa And Eats Cheetos All Day look, or even the Supercilious But Pathetic Computer Professional look.

    Anyway, I’d take brown any day over the iPod Mini line of sparkly Teletubbies-inspired hues.

  4. I’ve been following the Zune hype rather closely and it seems to me that most of what Zune offers gets as much fanboy attention from people just because it’s Microsoft as Apple stuff gets the same attention from Mac junkies. The “reality distortion field” seems to be in full effect in both camps. Although as a Mac love I like my chances of getting a great product better.

    I think that Zune is going to get lukewarm attention at best. The two things that I keep reading in reviews are the WiFi, which will be useless with an installed base of less than 10% of the users (if that) and the bigger screen than the iPod, although people seem to be missing the fact that it’s the same resolution as the iPod screen and therefore probably does not look as good.

    I wish Microsoft would take a hint, this would have been a bigger deal if they’d told no one, and then just exploded it on the market. But like Vista as people have time to analyze it, it’s going to lose it’s lustre.

  5. Brown makes a lot of sense. They have to pick some color to differentiate themselves from the iPod black/white and Apple has already used bright colors in the mini/nano.

    I too, think it could have a cool vintage look. Of course, it may end up looking like crappy brown plastic too.

    Anyway, despite all the snickering on the Mac web, Zune actually looks like a decent attempt on MS’s part. Nice interface, vertical screen and a few unique features like sharing.

  6. Brown might be beautiful, but they’re going retro with those curves mashing into each other. It’s the brown meant to match the shag carpeting, while you wait for them to release the avacado green for the kitchen to complete the look. Groovy.

  7. as quoted from an engadget.com roundup of zune news circa 9/15/06:

    ‘…Microsoft went with brown on one of the three Zunes because “artists would and musicians would.” We’re not going to lie, some of us around here like it (key word: some)…’

    …as would, judging by this here gloriously brown page, the macalope, perhaps? 🙂

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