The first-generation Zune was an example of poor taste in colours and style. The brown one was especially my favourite to pick on because it resembled the kind of human waste that attracts large numbers of flies. The "three plays or three days" policy for sharing music on the original Zune was also laughable.
A good start to this newer second generation zune is that those things have largely been abandoned. You have two flash drive models in 4GB or 8GB sizes, along with an 80GB model that still uses the older hard drive. Black, red and pink are the colours of choice. And the whole "three plays or three days" is now just "three plays" when sharing music wirelessly with other Zune owners.
The sharing aspect behind the Zune was always a good idea, but its implementation was frustrating for both sides. For one, you needed to spot someone who actually had a Zune, which was as easy as finding underwater buried treasure. And if you did track someone down, they'd have to be willing to actually share with you. Not to mention that you were always on a clock with the music being shared.
While you can still share music that way, the focus here is on how the Zune can be part of the social networking experience. By using what it calls "Zune Social", it would be possible for me to have a "card" on sites like Facebook, MySpace or even my own blog, so that my friends can see what music I have. This is a great idea, even if it is effectively someone else's (the iLike application on Facebook is one example). Either way, the true value of Social will show months after this launch.
Marketplace isn't quite ready for primetime
The Zune software is essentially supposed to be what iTunes already is for the iPod - a one-spot stop for the music, movies, TV shows and podcasts that you already own, along with a store full of ones you can buy. But Zune Marketplace, as Microsoft calls it, won't be available in Canada until the fall at the earliest. Nor is it even a sure thing that it will launch before the end of the year.
This raises a contentious issue. Microsoft has walked the DRM tightrope before and it will do so again with Marketplace. Except the lack of an outlet to buy the content legally pretty much means that it's a free-for-all for early Canadian adopters of the Zune. After all, if you've bought a lot of music from iTunes, then those songs won't play on the Zune because Microsoft doesn't support the DRM-protected AAC file format.
Marketplace is supposed to include something called "Zune Pass", where Zune owners can pay a monthly fee for access to "millions of songs". But there's little else known about it right now. Microsoft says it would cost "the price of a CD per month" but how much is that exactly? Will there be any restrictions on what songs are available? They're not saying for the time being.
The player behind the brand
The Zune player itself is a nice piece of gear. It's small, sort of like the iPod nano, though taller and slimmer. The 4GB and 8GB models have 1.8-inch screen with great clarity that's decent enough for watching small video clips and episodic content from TV. The 80GB is essentially the same player, albeit with a bigger 3.2-inch screen. The Zune software can actually sync with Windows Media Center so that I can take content I've recorded on the go. Not a bad perk for this little guy.
I did like that I could set up the Zune software to recognize my home network, so that I could wirelessly sync the Zune and take music from it as if I was plugged in with a USB cable. But even when I did have it plugged in, I could easily just drag and drop whatever I wanted into the Zune icon on the bottom left of the interface. And for some reason, certain album artwork that I didn't have on iTunes was showing up on the Zune software. But the reverse also happened, particularly when it wouldn't show me the art for Michael Jackson's 25th anniversary Thriller album.
I did feel a case of menu overload when cycling through the player's interface though. By habit, I kept using the big directional button to cycle through and play a song, not realizing that there was a quick play/pause button that skipped a couple of steps. It got annoying a few times when I would see the word "Play" highlighted on two separate screens before the song actually started.
But I won't dock too many points on that because there was an alternative that I just needed to get used to. Overall, I found the Zune to be fairly easy to manage, and I could use the software to play music on my PC instead of Windows Media Player which I actually preferred.
I should note that the Zune and its software will only work with Windows XP SP2 and Vista. If I had anything prior to that, I would've been out of luck.
The Zune's long road ahead
The Zune has an uphill battle, no question. Microsoft is trying to brand it into a better alternative to the iPod, which is a difficult task to begin with. But even if they started small and went after the market share occupied by the likes of SanDisk, Creative, Sony and Samsung, they'd still have their hands full.
I will admit that I haven't personally met anyone who was clamouring for a Zune. Some of those I asked had no idea it was even launching in Canada. But when I showed it to them, they were at least willing to play with it a bit.
Perhaps that's the biggest challenge for Microsoft in this new phase for the Zune - getting it into enough hands to at least have it stick with some of them.
It's a good multimedia player, but I get the sense that its real success will depend more on how its supporting assets, like Social, Marketplace and even Originals, will ultimately fare with the masses. People are willing to share content now more than ever before, but only time will tell if they're willing to do all that with a Zune in hand. |
