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Yet another spin on the Microsoft brand carousel. Someone over there seems to think that if they give their product a certain name then people will start buying it. Zune seemed like a good brand. The products were of high quality and had good reputations. I feel like a few well placed articles titled "Zune: Microsoft's quiet success" or "Microsoft becomes the underdog with Zune" would have gone a long way.

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I think the Zune launch tarnished the name so permanently that it never recovered. In too many peoples' eyes, it was always the poop-brown also-ran.

Which is too bad, because in many ways, the later Zunes were superior devices, although far too prone to sync problems. My old Zune became unrecognizable to the Zune software far too many times.

The Zune was never well-known enough for its name to be tarnished. The marketing was so low-key and sporadic that it hardly seemed to penetrate much beyond Redmond. Not to mention that it was basically non-existent outside of the US.

> The products (...) had good reputations

Considering I never met anyone who actually owned one, Microsoft employees excepted, I am not surprised the reputation was good.

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