Zune Will Drive Girls Away, says Jobs

Newsweek has done a three page piece on an interview with Steve Jobs. You've probably heard about it already. Even considering the source, it increases my skepticism concerning the Zune's prospects.

Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they're really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there.

It seems like you could just ship it at this point and improve things over time with firmware updates. That thinking might be considered to align with Agile principles, but I don't think it does. Ship an over-complicated product and it's already to late. I don't believe that release early and often means you get to skip user interface design.

It's not all happy though:

Do you think that it's fair to the customer that the songs they buy from Apple will only work on iTunes and the iPod? Well, they knew that all along.

I find that attitude ... upsetting. It will be interesting to see if pressure from the Zune can help encourage openness at Apple.

I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable.

Okay Zune, I'm good enough at chasing away girls all by my self, thank you.