“Microsoft has been working on an iPod competitor? Nooo! How would any of us have known, what with the months of official/nonofficial leaks, images, developer blogs, and other stuff, like this funky site that promised to zip me email to keep me informed of Zune news, but was silent Thursday. Even as a valued early-adopter insider, I had to get my news from the cheesy press release,” Seth Jayson writes for The Motley Fool.

“Yes, Microsoft is so pathetic, it can’t even manage to spam me about its next big thing. And if that gives you a giggle, then you have not yet begun to laugh… I just have to get a few things off my chest,” Jayson writes. “I think this thing is just plain ugly, folks. That tiny little wheel coming off the large screen: It looks unbalanced. And the finish, at least in the large images available for download from Microsoft, looks decidedly low-rent. And look at those colors. There are only three, and none of them is really a color. Black and white … bland, but OK.”

“But brown? Brown? Insert your own scatologically-themed ‘truth in advertising’ joke here. My Macophile colleagues have already begun,” Jayson writes. “Surely you can do better than 30 gigs of storage, Mr. Softy… But can we talk about the wireless? The idea is that Zune users can beam songs to each other and they’ll run a limited number of times, for a limited time. Thereafter, if you want to buy it, you can flag it for purchase when you synch the device with your PC.”

“Anyone remember Bill Cosby’s ‘Playground’ monologue? It’s a classic and hilarious tale about how parents ruined a perfectly good abandoned lot by installing all sorts of stuff kids didn’t want or need, like monkey bars,” Jayson writes. “That’s what I think we’ve got here: a feature no one asked for, and something of doubtful need. (Ever hear of passing the headphones?) Honestly, what Microsoft egghead thinks kids want to beam self-destructing songs to each other’s media players? And even if they wanted to trade tunes, the wireless range had better be 100 miles. If this thing sells as slowly as I fear it will, that may be as close as the nearest Zune to share with.”

MacDailyNews Take: Think about it, would you even want to share music with someone whose taste would allow them to chose a Microsoft Zune? Or snapshots taken by someone with such an eye for design? We’ll pass on The Perry Como Christmas Album and those pix of your dad on the beach wearing Bermuda shorts and sandals with black socks, thanks.

Jayson continues, “The fact is, this meager offering here is not an iPod killer. Nothing Redmond can produce in this product line will make much of a dent in Apple’s lead. This shareholder only hopes Microsoft can avoid embarrassing itself too much. Zune seems to have done that, but I can’t help but feel Microsoft’s time and money would be better spent getting Xbox 360 into more living rooms, and getting Windows Vista out the door on time.”

Full article here.
Well, there’s another nice review, huh? Did you know that “Zune” means “self-immolation” in Redmond?

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