“Tons” of Gizmodo readers are reporting that their Zune 30 players stopping working last night. The Zune Scene tech support forums are full of posts (and a sticky at the top titled “Stop Creating Zune 30 Frozen Threads Look Here First”), as are the Zune.net forums. Folks are dubbing the fiasco with amusing names such as Z2K9 and Zunepocalypse.
Microsoft acknowledged Zunepocalpyse at 10 AM. Later in the afternoon they posted an official update and explanation of the issue — their technical team says there is a bug in internal clock related to the handling of leap years, and they expect it to correct itself as the new year switches over to January 1st, 2009. They urge Zune 30 users to let the battery completely deplete itself tomorrow, then turn the device back on.
Photo by ShinyHat1 used under a Creative Commons license.
