the software was abominable. The zune ran a version of MTP that was proprietary and so could not be used on older versions of Windows or Linux... while ipods worked beautifully on Linux.
Just getting Music on the Zune using the desktop software was an exercise in pain.
Agreed, entirely. I adored my original Zune, as far as a piece of hardware, it was amazing. Cool look, big color screen, heck even an FM tuner. It was ahead of its time. The software on the other hand still gives me nightmares. It crashed all the time, would constantly lose large chunks of metadata I had meticulously entered, would randomly freeze while loading music... it was the weak link in the Zune chain.
Just getting Music on the Zune using the desktop software was an exercise in pain.