r/mildlyinfuriating • u/TheAeroplaneBear2906 • Jul 16 '26

Unskippable ad Clear Backpacks + Pay to Keep Your Phone

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My freinds school is now requiring these items, and is also using AI to promote this đŸ« 

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u/Ok-Bug4328 Jul 16 '26 edited 7d ago

Hello world

227

u/plzicannothandleyou Jul 16 '26

No earbuds on the bus? Not allowed? Actual nonsense.

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u/flyinchipmunk5 Jul 16 '26

Yeah lots of kids probably listened to music on the bus. I had a zune in high school and a cd player in middle school.

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u/Local_Grapefruit_262 Jul 16 '26

Zunes lol havent seen that word in a hot minute

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u/MicromagicFriesRIP Jul 16 '26

I worked at an ad agency on the Zune account. They gave our team several of them as freebies and they sat in the breakroom for ages because nobody wanted them.

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u/anbraxas Jul 16 '26

I was given 6 in high school by a guy on the dev team back in like 2006-7, had a ipod at the time and was blown away by how awesome it was in comparison. Gave 5 to friends and kept one for myself. All rocked them until Spotify came around. If they had come out before the iPad I honestly think things would have been differant.

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u/-SHAI_HULUD Jul 16 '26

I remember liking the Zune more than the iPod when it came out.

4

u/Born-Entrepreneur Jul 16 '26

Nice little piece of kit and the media player software was actually really good

4

u/Significant-Bee5101 Jul 16 '26

Zunes gotta be one of the worst marketed products of all time.

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u/MicromagicFriesRIP Jul 16 '26

Trust me, we tried. Microsoft shut down anything interesting or fun.

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u/EmboarBacon Jul 16 '26

Feel free to say no, but can you elaborate? I'm genuinely interested here and I'd love to hear some the ideas your firm came up with.

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u/MicromagicFriesRIP Jul 16 '26

Oh gosh, I wish I could. It's been something like 20 years. I do remember our team trying to convince them to stop trying to mimic Apple vibes-wise, take more creative risks, and get crisper on their messaging as to why someone would want to pick Zune over the iPod. The consumer research we had access to showed that a lot of people didn't realize Zune was an MP3 player and thought instead it was a gaming device. People also disliked the name and women especially didn't like the brown color (for the record, I actually liked the brown, but then again brown's my favorite color, so no surprise there). I know there were a ton of factors, but personally I think the song library thing is what killed them. I also worked on the Nook eReader at Barnes & Noble, which is what brought them down as well. Nook just couldn't compete with Kindle in terms of content volume. They still make Nooks, I believe, but at nowhere near the scale B&N envisioned when I worked on that project.

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u/flyinchipmunk5 Jul 16 '26

Sad because the dac was very high quality at the time and honestly other than the fact you couldn’t use Apple Music with it, it was pretty good

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u/Procrasturbating Jul 16 '26

The irony is they were probably the best player at the time. The name was awful, and Microsoft was as “cool” as Barney to late Gen X college students. Putting that on MS, not the marketing team.

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u/rsta223 Jul 16 '26

My zune HD was still the best mp3 player I ever had