“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 $250-and-under tiny device buyers,” Horwitz reports.
Many more details and larger photo of the device in the full article here.
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Bleh. Typical Microsoft. Big promises to start with, utter mediocrity when finished. If anything, Zune will make people want iPods even more because they see how bad the supposed #1 “iPod killer candidate” is.
You idiot. Thinkpad was made by IBM… IBM MADE the frackin’ G5 processors. The GUTS of Apples were IBMS.
and btw, white on black uses less battery power.
Remind me why I should care about this? Even if it were as good as an iPod, I already own two iPods (20gb, 4gb Nano).
A day late and a dollar short.
Why didn’t they go green text on black? At least then it would look like DOS. So retro man.
Interesting thing… the talking pop-up ads manage to make their presence known running Firefox 1.0 on Mac OSX, but are completely blocked using Firefox 1.5 on Win2K. What gives with that??
‘Zune’ I’ll be getting an iPod next gen… Maybe even pick up a spare older model on eBay. I’m starting to like the notion of collecting some of the original iPods just for historical purposes – and they still work just fine. I like the firewire ports – wish the new ones still had ’em.
MDN magic word “radio” – as in, I don’t want no stinkin’ radio in my iPod.
I love how Micro$oft takes everything Apple does and just reverses it clumsily.
@huh?
Why are you still using Firefox 1.0 on OSX? There’s obviously a reason – I just can’t think of it.
The pics from Gizmodo look like they were taken by a minimart security cam…
@huh?
And why are you using Win2K? There’s obviously a reason – I just can’t think of it.
So with the X-box and this Zune thing I guess MS is slowly moving into the Hardware business.
Pretty soon they will be doing PC boxes just like Apple – well not just like Apple – just like Apple but the opposite.
The next phase of the PC wars?
Until you’ve driven across Saskatchewan at night in January when it’s -40C/-40F and no city or town with a radio station is less than 200 miles/ 320 kilometres away and you want to know whether a blizzard is on its way, don’t knock AM radio from a country that can broadcast only on FM at five watts because it’s only four square kilometres wide and butting up against another country that’s populated with yet another 200 million people speaking yet another language.
Besides, the real good stuff is on 50,000-watt AM radio: George Noorey interviewing aliens from the planet Mong between 25 minutes of ads each hour, for example.
Not to beat a “missing feature” to death but AM radio is often a better signal and does offer, sports, news, weather, traffic, and lots of talk radio of all kinds. FM radio offers a compressed signal for music and is subject to a lot of interference. I probably listen to at least an hour of AM radio every day. It’s really seen a resurgence with the growth of talk radio and the homogenization of radio programming on the FM band. Seriously…if some manufacturer of an MP3 player quietly included AM in the feature set…I’d buy one…and I own three iPods and love them including a first gen that still works great…no battery replacement ever.
Someone help me please
I deleted and emptied the trash with my Originals Pictures in it is there anyway to recover those files??????? I have movies on there that are not saved anywhere please tell me i can get them back
S O S HELP
Until you find out whether there’s any software that can recover the movies, don’t save anything more to the disk! You might obliterate the files with the new stuff.
@jarrettnewsdaily
You have to use Time Machine.
i would use an AM radio attachment on my iPods.
Does anyone know of a technical limitation such that they could not just add it to the existing radio remote that they sell.
1. FM for the gym audio system
2. AM for news/traffic/weather/live sports
3. iPod for music
___
4. Profit!
AM matters because it matters in the U.S.
I don’t care one wit about Europe. If I wake up tommorow and it has disappeared, that’s fine with me. Europeans are cowards, fools, and fags.
to dunx
yeah i understand that…
but seriously does anyone know of away to recover my files? or to revert my computer back to a previous day so that the files are back????
please just help someone else has had to of had this problem before
Zune is a complete me-too product, skimping in some areas (size, asthetics, etc…) in order to try and compete in other arena’s that are necessarially markets.
When MS says this is a four – five year endevor, it is because they are back at the same old game. Throw Zune at the wall with a bunch of advertising (I will not use the word marketing – this product does not deserve such acolades) dollars, and see what sticks. Over the course of serveral years and revisions, they may get something right, but how much share will they really have is the question?
Most importantly, when will Zune become profitable? If ever?
Near the time Zune launches, Apple will have countered with the all new nano – untouchable at it’s price point, and iPhone, which will steer the gadget market a different direction for $300…
Oh, Apple will offer a slighly revised iPod with 40 and 80 GB hard drives at the same price points.
Plastic? People aren’t going to buy that.
http://getkickedoffaplanewearingthis.blogspot.com/
Jarrett,
Don’t save anything to the drive you deleted the files from…it could over right the data. Of course if you use secure delete it probably is gone for good.
Go to http://www.pcinspector.de. They have free software that can recover “SOME” file types.
Or wait for “Time Machne” in Leopard.
I meant “over write” the data
“FM support is fairly complete, with both an FM tuner and an FM transmitter so you can beam the music to your car. The FM transmitter also feeds up Song and Artist information so you can see what’s playing from your car stereo (if it supports that feature, like in GM cars). Pretty neat.”
This is from the gizmodo report. And thats a cool feature. As a whole i wont say that it is compelling enough to ditch my iPod but it is a stronger player then anything creative has come up with.
Plastic? Right – people will inherently feel the difference in quality between the iPod and the Zune – and immediately justify the iPod as the product they want to plunk down $300 – $400 for.
Jarrett…
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/datarecovery.html
This is the only program that I’ve heard of that might possible work. You need to know, that in it’s current version, the mac 0S isn’t designed to allow recovery of files after they’ve been deleted easily. A friend of mine used this site to recover some movie files from a folder that had been trashed using this software. But not all of them.
The earlier advice about stop using your mac is correct. Surfing the net downloads files into cache… possible overwriting your files. Get the software in the above url and then try and get the files back.
good luck (crossing fingers)