Ipod vs. Zune
Microsoft have fired their first real shot across the bows of Apple's Ipod with the release of the Zune music player in the US - a 30gb model retailing for the equivalent of £130.
Abandoning their previous policy of working with many different hardware manufacturers on a variety of mp3 players all using their licensed Playsforsure software, the Zune is Microsoft branded and uses an all new dedicated Zune music store, designed to topple Itunes. The "killer" feature of the Zune device is the added ability to share music wirelessly with other Zune users, but as it turns out this is heavily limited - in order to control piracy, tunes shared in this way can only be kept for three days, and are only playable for a limited number of times. These limitations don't just apply to copyrighted material but to user created tunes too - leading to some complaints already.
The Zune also includes an FM radio, and is available in three colours including brown(!) - more on the BBC here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6143500.stm
I like the look of that you
I like the look of that you know, but i'm happy with my iPod. Surely people will find a way to be able to keep the songs longer than 3 mins? that's bound to be worked around!
I don't know, I expect
I don't know, I expect Microsoft will relax it a bit at least with non-copyrighted stuff, or at least extend it a bit, it's a bit severe.. I quite like the look of it too but tbh it reminds me a lot of my new phone, which got me to thinking that really, maybe the days of standalone music players like this and the ipod are coming to an end anyway... most phones sold nowadays have pretty good music players built in, and Sony Ericsson seem to be pushing their Walkman branded phones a lot harder than Sony are pushing their Walkman branded players, so maybe that's the way they things going? The new Walkman version of mine has 4gb built in, a lot less than a Zune or full sized Ipod but still as big as a Nano or Mini.. in another year or two, who knows what they'll be up to?
BTW - I had a sudden urge to go look up my very first Walkman, and here it is: http://www.walkmancentral.com/products/wm-22
great...
great... another market for MS to foist their crappy crap at! because, lets face it, what has MS gotten RIGHT?
MS bashing aside, i do like the look of it and love that it's available in brown. the only thing better would be pink with brown stripes or brown with pink stripes. but cool stripes, like racing stripes, not un-cool stripes, like.. i dunno.. like zebra stripes or something. not that zebras (or their stripes) are un-cool, just a little... common?
with all of that said, i really love my tiny ipod shuffle. it doesnt have a lot of room, but it does have more than enough for me to stick tunes on for kitchen-laundry-yardwork duty. and it was free, cos my honey won it for filling out a survey. which makes it even better. too bad it's not pink, tho.
it'll never fly
I look forward to seeing this crash and burn. Most people who have Plods are more or less locked in aren't they? I know most of the stuff on mine is Apple's AAC format (by the time I realized it didn't need to be it was too late) and even if I fancied a different player, converting nearly 8,000 songs would be out of the question. And 'wireless tune sharing' sounds like the kind of thing that only marketing suits imagine that people really want to do. And the only thing that stands a chance of 'toppling' iTunes is something with a similar choice but much much cheaper. Like allofmp3. Oh, those Russians...
A radio on a pod would be a good idea though. Surprised Apple haven't started including a nice little DAB radio feature... they can keep the phone, thanks.