So, Microsoft's 30Gb Zune players can't handle leap years. That's the reason why many of them froze yesterday morning just as the 366-day year of 2008 was coming to a close. Most users simply let the battery drain before turning their Zunes back on again and, hey presto, everything's back to normal. But could this short term oversight point to a more long term issue? Why was the leap year neglected in the product developers' minds?
Well, the 30Gb model that features the leap year glitch was launched back in February of 2006, meaning it was in development probably as early as 2005 if not before - a whole three years before the next leap year would come around. Now in the grand scheme of things three years might not be so long - but in the life of high-tech consumer electronics items it can represent two or three generations.
It's for this reason that I suspect the oversight is actually symptomatic of a general lack of long-term durability testing that is becoming increasingly common in the consumer gadget market, rather than being simply a plain honest oversight.
After all, it's not so long ago we had the panic and hysteria over the dreaded 'Millenium Bug' - which actually caused a great deal fewer problems than some had feared (and facilitated the sale of endless 'protective' software packages). The programmers that work on Zune software are not 16-yr old bedroom amateurs new to such stuff - they are experienced professionals, who in all liklihood have had to plan for, and accomodate similar concerns in the past.
In other words; it is highly unlikely that they genuinely all failed to anticipate this problem because of the unique novelty of a leap year (we haven't had one since 2004!). I'm not suggesting that this problem was known about all-along but deliberately ignored; just that the reasons for it being forgotten might be more complex - and worth some consideration.
Most of us who own any sort of consumer gadget will be familiar with the throwaway culture that drives the market's constant expansion. With new models constantly superceding previous ones, it's not expected that we'll remain content with the old ones for very long. And even if, for some strange reason we do, the utter lack of long-term durability makes keeping a mobile phone, iPod or digital camera for four or five years pretty rare (obviously not all companies are the same in this respect).
But if we're paying upwards of two, three or four hundred pounds for something, aren't we reasonable to expect more than the standard (but slightly tight) one-year guarantee? Think to yourself - what is the average length of time a consumer gadget lasts you? Sure I've had the odd phone (especially back in the early days of the 90s) that was in essence a clever calculator which lasted a few years - but these definitely resemble exceptions in my personal experience.
Personally I feel that even if a gadget is being developed in early 2005 - those who intend to ask £300 or whatever for it should test it as if they expect us to keep it until 2010 or longer if we wish. Maybe if such attitudes were present at the development stage (of course this is down to company policy and not the developers themselves - they need only to be granted resources to do adequate work) - then the 30Gb Zunes might not have crashed yesterday. Even though the problem persisted only for a few hours, and even though my reading of its roots might be speculative in this particular case, the core point seems pretty solid. Maybe it's time we started demanding a little more from these expensive toys, and those who make them...
Dejan Levi
