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Zune Fail
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008Weird. Lots of first generation Microsoft Zunes seem to have frozen up at exactly the same time this morning.
33 Responses to “Zune Fail”
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I love all aspects of this story – that it happened to Zunes (already somewhat of a punchline), that the freeze happened just after midnight Pacific on December 31 (like they tried Y2K9 but even missed that by a day), and that it’s such a bizarre glitch.
I’d imagine the engineers at Microsoft are freaking out right now trying to figure out a fix. They aren’t iPods, of course, but if Microsoft has to take back all of the Zune 30s in the world they are in some trouble.
Just checked out the Microsoft Zune support page. They have no solution as of yet……
Even a Zune cannot handle being a Zune.
I imagine it’s related to the date, but why December 31 rather than January 1? And why midnight Pacific time? Why not local, or UTC?
LOL, the banner ad to the right is for a Zune. :)
@#2-> That’s because Microsoft Zune support is closed today. Not that they wouldn’t start calling people like mad, but just saying.
Oh, and the banner ad to the right of this post is for….a Zune on Swoopo…funneee
Theory is that it’s because today is the 366th day of the year. I guess it’s a leap-year issue.
Damn, some developer somewhere is crapping himself right now. Glad it’s not me.
Happy New Year, Agitator readers. Unless anyone here is in Guam, I imagine I’m among the first to be in 2009.
Cheers.
Ha, Billy-Jay. Makes me think of one of our family sayings….”Hey, it’s Happy Hour somwhere!”
I know it’s mean, but I can’t help laughing at this story. Microsoft is hysterically pulling grumpy people away from their families at this moment. What a clusterF.
man..my zune is stuck at the loadin screen all day..so hating this day..can you link where you are getting the microsoft updates.pls!
billy-jay is posting from the future!
Time Machine! Time Machine!
So what’s it like tomorrow?
“Hi, Bill? Bill this is Steve, I just wanted to say thanks, and happy New Year! Bubbye Now.”
“What do you mean there are 366 days? I only signed on for 365.” -30GB MS Zune
@Eric- The Zune uses DRM that depends on the date. It’s probably having a problem dealing with the 366th day (no Zunes in 2004). I have visions of somewhere in the source an integer variable being declared bounded as 1-365, inclusive, which would be awesome.
I originally read that as “take back all of the 30 Zunes in the world” and thought, gee, he’s overestimating.
Seriously, if Microsoft had to take back every Zune ever sold, it would offset their Windows profits for a couple of weeks, tops. It’s a drop in the bucket for them.
Hahaha i’m sitting here and my effin Zune’s frozen :-) I got screwed bad my Apple w/ my i-Pod so i got a Zune……. I love my luck, hope i-Pod gets it right and they all freeze TOMORROW! Technology, Y2K9 Hunker down everybody! The end is near! Bahaha
Yup, it was the sneaky leap year: http://www.pcworld.com/article/156240/microsoft_says_leap_year_bug_caused_zune_failures.html
When your Zune says 24/7/365, it means it.
Yuhp John, you nailed it…from Microsoft:
Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year. The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on. If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.
For me, as a project manager in a technology company, it is absolutely inconceivable for me how a team of professional and trained software engineers could not consider leap year and used non-standard base time. Even worse, I can’t imagine how the code could pass QA. In our company, Quality Assurance normally takes three quarters of our development time; if Microsoft doesn’t have better quality standards than that I’d be very suspicious of their other products.
Wow, there oughtta be a law…
Well, it’s ’09; is the bug fixed yet?
I was trying to follow this as a story for a UK based Tech newspaper. No one in Microsoft had a clue. Not a clue. Phoning round the PR and technical people and just getting “Err, we don’t know”.
Overnight (I’m in Europe) they finally worked out that it was that 366 days in a year thing. A dismal performace I think.
I am not one of those folks who automatically hates Microsoft. But over the years I have come to appreciate products from other vendors, and have been migrating to them as my stuff wears out. I bought one of the first Mac Minis to find out what all the Apple hoo-hah was about, and have been pleased as can be with it. It is slow and has dismal video if I want to watch video clips, but for most use, it is about the most agreeable computer I have ever owned. I still run an XP Windows box for work I must perform in MS Access, but aside from that, I generally stick with the Mac.
As for music players, I never really thought about owning one. But when the Zune came out, I gave it a looking-at, and also at the iPod sitting on the display next to the Zune. There was, really, nothing to recommend the Zune. It felt clunky, was too laden with stuff I did not want.
I never did buy a player that day, but now own an iPhone. Yes, there have been quirks with it, but Apple has been reasonably quick on addressing the issues, and I am nothing short of delighted with it.
Microsoft has ridden the Office/Windows cash cow for so long they have forgotten how to make a product anyone wants. Even their keyboards and mice have dropped in quality over the past year or so. With the exception of Access which I *have* to use, and Excel, which I like very much, MS has nothing I can’t get elsewhere.
The bug did indeed fix itself, and the code that caused it was found yesterday afternoon. The programmers didn’t ignore leap years altogether when writing the software, but they’re morons all the same.
I fully expect Microsoft to not honor any warranties for the extra day and/or retroactively charge all users 1/366th of the purchase price of the Zune in order to continue to use it.
Or use their dominance to force all IT companies and world governments to revert to the Julian Calendar.
How many Microsoft Engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None, they just declare darkness the standard.
That code snippet makes me laugh. That is literally a programming 101 error, failing to take into account one of the (important!) possible states of the variable that you’re dealing with (days==366).
@ David: They did worse than ignoring leap years, they actively made leap years put them into an infinite loop, locking up the device. If they had ignored leap years, the calendar would just have been off by a day and the device would have worked.
Yeah, hence “they’re morons just the same.”
I’m not sure moron adequately captures the magnitude of the error :).
Yeah, it’s pretty bad. I mean, what, this had to end up affecting literally tens of people?
I read a funny column on College Humor a while back. It was called something like “10 reasons you know your parents are idiots.” One example was, “my mom was making copies and ran out of blank paper in one tray, so she took a blank piece of paper and made 100 copies of it to refill the tray.” And others like that.
The last reason was simply, “My dad bought a Zune.” Nuf said.
Yes, that code snippet is classically boneheaded programming. And evidence that MS’s software testing is far, far from up to snuff.
Which leaves me with just one question: What’s a Zune?