#FF00AA

@music@

iPod envy, anyone? Microsoft was lurking in the shadows, and waited a whole two days after the Apple keynote until they unveiled the Zune. Well, unveil it a bit more. Do they really expect to steal Steve’s thunder? It feels more like “why bother deny it, everybody knows we’re following Apple’s footsteps anyway.” Two days. Except they didn’t name a price (or a release date)… because right now just isn’t the best time to say it’ll be $100 more than the equivalent iPod. (Well, I know Microsoft can sell at a steep loss, and recoup on music sales, like they do with the Xbox and its games. But that’s not the way this market works, and as far as I know Apple makes little to no money from the store. Still, they’re quite capable of selling it at an unredeemable loss just to burn and salt the ground for Apple.)

I’m sorry to say, the device’s design is actually pretty sweet. At least in black (or, more like dark gray, which is probably why I like it); the white model is passable (why the hell they didn’t want to go all-white, I have no idea), and the brown one is… Geez. Whatever. Thing is, seeing it with something on-screen seems to make a world of difference for me: I wasn’t impressed by the original pictures, but when you see it held sideways, with a video playing, it suddenly becomes much, much more lickable. Probably because it looks so much like an iPod, only with that one feature we’ve been expecting for two years now.

The interface doesn’t look too bad, either. See the video, it’s rather cool — and thankfully chooses not to copy the iPod’s austerity. And it does FM radio. And it sends and receives pictures. (Why the hell doesn’t it have a camera, then? It costs nothing nowadays!) And wireless song sharing, even if temporary, isn’t that stupid after all. (But it’s still dumb to have wifi and not use the internet at all.) All in all, it’s not a bad alternative to the iPod.

I love what they did to the progress bar — well, I love the idea, although the implementation could be improved a bit. That’s an idea to steal ASAP.

 

@windows@

The Zune Marketplace software also looks sleek, and much more so than crappy iTunes 7 and crappy iTunes Store.

I’m not sure giving the same name to the device and the software is such a good idea; iTunes and its store are general-purpose applications that double as incentives to buy iPods, while the Zune Marketplace feels so tied to the Zune platform, you won’t want to use it if you don’t own a device — which you don’t, you have an iPod.

But then, maybe the Zune Marketplace isn’t even available to the Zune-less. Which would be a bit insane. Would “Alexandria” be a completely separate entity? Or would it be the exact same platform as the Zune Marketplace, only with a separate brand? Either way, it wouldn’t make any sense.

 

@phone@

Oh, and Microsoft isn’t afraid to confirm that a Zune phone (and possibly an MVNO) is very officially in the works. Which gives all the more incentive for Apple to finally release their goddamn phone and occupy the market while it’s still waiting for them.

 

@web@

Anyone care to explain to me why the Zune website is serving (gorgeous) Flash video in https?