“If you’ve been wondering how the Zune’s user interface will compare with the iPod’s, we have some real answers for you this morning: the similarities are significant, but Microsoft has made a number of changes that range from cool to not so cool,” Jeremy Horwitz reports for iLounge.
Horwitz reports:
• That Wheel Thing: Not so cool… shaped like a wheel, but it’s really just buttons.
• General UI: Cool-ish. Think iPod, but in reverse: white text on black screens, but with a very iPod-like menu hierarchy.
• Scrolling UI: Cool-ish. [When crolling] screen superimposes the current alphabet letter over the right side of the song list.
• Album Art: Cool. Zune displays album art in a full-screen-width cube at the top of its screen… significantly larger and more detailed than the iPod’s largest such display, thanks to the size of Zune’s screen.
• Integrated FM Radio: Cool-ish. Yes, like virtually every other iPod wannabe out there, it has one.
• Wi-Fi: Eh. Apparently you can use the Wi-fi feature to “loan” other Zune owners music for some short period (a day), giving them the opportunity to buy the tracks themselves from the Zune music store… You may also be able to spool Zune music to a Wi-Fi-enabled Xbox 360, which again is a cool idea, but requires a $100 wireless adapter and the $300-400 console.
• Other Details: Not so cool. Zune is a bit bigger than a standard 30GB iPod, and apparently made entirely of plastic. In addition to the Music menus, there are Videos and Pictures playback interfaces, which aren’t as simple as Apple’s.
“The big question being asked around these parts right now is whether Zune has any feature so compelling that it can really rival the iPod juggernaut. Right now, the feeling is that Microsoft may have gotten a few things closer to right than normal, but neither any individual part of the package nor the complete experience will truly rival the iPod’s super-simple, mainstream experience. At best, we’ve heard predictions that Zune will fight for the same fraction of “tech geek” market share (15%) that Apple hasn’t yet taken; at a $300 entry point with a 30GB hard drive, it’s hard to imagine that Zune gains traction in the iPod’s strongest market, the iPod mini- and nano-loving $250-and-under tiny device buyers,” Horwitz reports.
Many more details and larger photo of the device in the full article here.
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Going…..going……Zune to the bidder from LinuxWorld. Yes, you can go now and try to put Linux on it.
Wow, that is crap.
Meh…big fat hairy deal:
– “iPod Killer” this is not
– it might be as ‘cool’ as any Creative or iRiver offering, but doesn’t even compare to an iPod
White lettering on black screen = hurt eyes.
DOA.
By the time the second iteration arrives…it will be so far behind it will look like a Discman.
By the way…why the hell don’t they put an AM radio in these things? Don’t people get news, information and conversations of interest through AM? Why not?
MDN’s talking “iPod Nano” pop-up ad is actually making me despise not only MDN, now when I hear the words iPod Nano I actually cringe.
I’m getting a Zune.
Keep flushing all of that money down the toilet MS!
MS Zune: “Think iPod, but in reverse.”
MS Windows: “Think Mac, but in reverse.”
Good job MS, way to be innovative.
Sick and tired!
You’re sick, we’re tired! (of you already)
“I’m getting a Zune.”
Not any time “zune” you aren’t, hope you don’t get “sick and tired” of waiting!
AM is dead. Nobody, except maybe Americans, use it. You’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere in Europe, a market amost 3 times as big as the US, that uses it.
To answer your question:
“Don’t people get news, information and conversations of interest through AM? Why not?”
No, nobody in the world outside US uses AM.
Why not? Because AM sucks really hard.
I am actually surprised how good the zune will be. Don’t get me wrong, I’m keeping my iPod and probably buying a new iPod next time. But this is actually better than what I thought they’d be able to create. So I hope they enjoy their 5% market share that they will get, if they are lucky and there aren’t virius’ and glitches (which we haven’t found out yet).
“MDN’s talking “iPod Nano” pop-up ad is actually making me despise not only MDN, now when I hear the words iPod Nano I actually cringe.”
Block it! or are you on a windows machine?
“White lettering on black screen = hurt eyes.”
It also uses more battery power. Constantly
activating all of those LCD pixels uses more
juice. Not to mention the characters being hard
to see unless the backlighting is running all
of the time. I bet the display will be hard to
read in the sun.
Black characters on white= Mac
White characters on white= MS-DOS
The Zune? They should have just called it Poo.
tryd, AM travels huge distances compared to FM. Europe is full of small countries that all speak different languages. Therefore there is no reason to use AM.
The same goes for many other technologies. Many of these countries that are compared to the US are geographically TINY and may not have had any technology preceding it. Look at Japan, tiny country almost totally destroyed in WWII. Of course it has the best technology, nothing is more than 50 years old. Telecommunications service only covers a fraction of the area of the US.
If you want to compare the US to other countries please use Canada, Australia, etc. Large, non-communist countries that don’t rely on prison and sweatshop labor.
Sigh, another plastic gizmo trying to pass as an iPod. Fact: the metal back of the iPod is 90% of its fashion appeal. Because of that, when you hold it in your hand it feels expensive and valuable, like a watch with a metal back is more attractive. But because people who don’t buy music players claim that the iPod is “too expensive”, everybody tries to cut costs, and the metal back is always the first thing to go.
iPod competitors: stop listening to whineyboys on the Internet. No matter what you do, a device with the capacity that people want is going to cost around $200 for the entry-level version. When people are spending this much, they’d rather pay an extra $25 for something built well than accept something cheaply made. Use metal.
@tryd:
In America, AM radio is essential for news, traffic reports, and baseball games. It’s FM that’s going the way of the dodo bird. I could care less about FM, especially on my iPod, but I do wish I could get AM so that I can listen to baseball games if nothing else.
Each individual design decision kind of makes sense…but the blatant avoidance of Apple’s motifs is typical Microsoft. “Black instead of white” (as with the mouse pointer in WIndows) is just like “Recycle bin” rather than “Trash,” “Shortcut” rather than “Alias,” “Explorer” rather than “Finder,” even (stretching the point a bit) “ThinkPad” vs. “PowerBook.”
So they avoided the Apple comparisons by inverting the properties; then they added the stuff that iPod doesn’t have…these all seem like the logical moves for somebody trying to compete with iPod.
But, in the end, it’s someone trying to create the iPod. And you just can’t do that because Apple already did.
tryd “You’ll be hard pressed to find anywhere in Europe, a market amost 3 times as big as the US, that uses it.”
what is the “market” based on, GDP of both are about the same? Population is a bit higher, like 30 something percent… so that cannot be it either.
This is the best thing that can happen to ipod. People will realize that there really is no other substitute (for ipod).
As predicted, Zune’s WiFi integration is underwhelming. OK, so I can loan music to somebody for a day, but streaming it to an Xbox 360 costs $100 for the adapter? Will you be able to sync with a computer wirelessly?
All I see is some questionable functionality at the expense of cost and battery life.
Are they sure the guys who made the UMPC didn’t have a hand in this as well?
The WiFi feature will never work. More that
one person within a 100 mile radius would
have to buy a Zune for it to work.
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After all the headlines for the Zune I must say that this is a bit underwhelming. The press made it sound like it was going to leave the iPod in the dust but there really isn’t anything out of the ordinary about this player. If I was to use a non iPod mp3 player I think the samsung and scandisk to be much better options than the Zune. Truly this is much ado about nothing.
one of these days…Bang Zune … to the moon