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The Microsoft Zune :

Posted by: JonTEK

Zune logo

Earlier today, I was granted an opportunity to play around with a Microsoft Zune that a friend of mine purchased. Due to â€œsomething coming upâ€, it was left in my possession for a total of just under six hours, and I utilized my time with the Zune wisely by poring over its intricacies and nuances. Itâ€™s clear beyond any doubt that Microsoftâ€™s intentions were to compete directly against Appleâ€™s ubiquitous iPod. After my hands-on time with the Zune, I think itâ€™s safe to say that Apple really doesnâ€™t have anything to worry about. Being that the iPod is clearly the Zuneâ€™s biggest target, I thought that the best way to review it would be to compare the two outright, while focusing on the Zuneâ€™s (few) strengths and (many) weaknesses.

Microsoft Zune in white

On its physical and technical merits, Zune is competitive with the iPod at literally every turn. Slightly bigger than the iPod, the Zune can be forgiven for this â€œflawâ€ thanks to housing a bigger screen that works vertically or horizontally, an FM radio tuner, and a Wi-Fi feature. The Zune is slightly heavier than your average hard-drive-based mp3 player, but itâ€™s nothing that would really concern any average user. The audio output seems to be just as good as the iPod at a comparable bit rate. However, I have heard that for audio purists, both are not in the top tier of playback quality.

More after the jump!

So the Zune certainly sounds like a real winner on paper, but the story doesn’t end there. Microsoft essentially mocks the end user by trying to leave them out of the equation altogether. Anyone apparently foolish enough to have bought music from Microsoft and MTVâ€™s URGE venture are left out, along with older, legitimately-purchased WMA files. Not only that, but the only video format supported is WMV, and the only picture compression format supported is JPEG. Microsoft doesnâ€™t seem to care at all about the interface for the Zune, either. The URGE store is built right into Windows Media Player 11, but for Zune, youâ€™ll be required to download a (awful) piece of software known asâ€¦ Zune. Zune (the software) isnâ€™t so much awful as it is completely unpolished.

Whereas iTunes offers content like no other legitimate download service before it, Zune Marketplace is sparse and devoid of content that isnâ€™t music, and even thatâ€™s pretty lacking. Thatâ€™s a problem made worse by a total lack of support for podcasts as opposed to Appleâ€™s Library of Congress-sized collection that grows every day. Add this to the fact that youâ€™re required to use Microsoft Points as currency to purchase content on the Zune Marketplace, and it becomes a challenge to even figure out how much you can buy with what you have.

Zune software

For all their talk about welcoming users to the â€œsocialâ€, Microsoft seems hell-bent on doing everything possible to exclude usersâ€™ content from the get-together. The Wi-Fi feature is nice, but only if you have other people with a Zune to use it with. That feature could serve so many other extremely useful functions out of the box, and Microsoft purposely chose to gimp it with only Zune-to-Zune transfers of songs that expire after three days or plays. Microsoftâ€™s user interface on the Zune itself works wonderfully indoors, but outdoor usage of the Zune shows exactly why Apple has kept the simple blue-and-white user interface all these years â€“ Itâ€™s difficult to see what youâ€™re doing with Microsoftâ€™s glass-like user interface when youâ€™re outside, which can be made worse depending on what background you set on the Zune. I can honestly make the claim that I have never seen a company work so hard to alienate users that it doesnâ€™t even have yet.

The fortunate irony of Microsoftâ€™s Zune is that it’s a $250 testament to the reason that Apple commands the mp3 player market at its whim â€“ It doesnâ€™t take its users for granted. If this is the best Microsoft can do, it would be well-advised to just cut their losses and exit the market now before they get in too deep.