Leap-year bug kills Zune

To quote Star Wars: Now Ballmer's failure is complete.

December 31, 2008 (IDG News Service) Microsoft's Zune 30GB music player just wasn't ready for a leap year.

That's what owners of the devices discovered Wednesday morning when they awoke to find their players frozen and unworkable.

The problem turned out to be "a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year," Microsoft Zune spokesman Matt Akers said in a posting to Zune forums Wednesday. The issue does not affect all Zune players, but all models of the Zune 30GB are potentially affected, he said.

Zune is Microsoft's alternative to Apple's popular iPod devices.

The bug disabled the players on Dec. 31, the last day of a leap year. Microsoft expects that the bug will resolve itself by Jan. 1, when the device's internal clock will reset itself.   [From Zune chokes on leap-year bug]