Commons license or play stuff from the iTunes store, the pricing system for purchasing music by the song is a little weird, and its chassis isn’t quite as tough as I’d thought initially. But after using the Zune for two weeks and a day and being pretty satisfied with its design, features, and performance, I can’t believe some of the stuff I’m reading about it. People really seem to have a problem with this thing — especially the brown model.
The Zune isn’t perfect, but neither is the iPod. In 1998, I thought the MP3 players we’d be seeing by 2006 would be more advanced than the iPod and Zune combined. Apple has made great strides with the iPod in many areas, especially ease of use and integration with its groundbreaking online service. But innovation has been spread too thin in the iPod line lately. Without real competition, it appears Apple has had the luxury of postponing next-generation features in order to squeeze extra product cycles out of the iPod line.
There have been complaints about the Zune’s "three plays in three days" sharing limitation, but the iPod doesn’t even have a wireless sharing feature to limit (or FM radio and a music subscription option for that matter). And somehow, people have gotten the impression that Zunes won’t play MP3s downloaded from P2P sites; it plays them as much as the iPod does.
No one’s talking about things like the Zune’s nicely designed menu system, which takes advantage of the fact that the control moves in four directions rather than the two allowed by the iPod’s scrollwheel, or any of the other nice touches I’ve noticed over the past couple of weeks.
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