M$ are making their big play by announcing the Zune media device. They'll be plenty of coverage over the next few weeks on this Toshiba built device that M$ hopes stomps on the iPod. First impressions are that the community side of device being able to send photos, videos and music between devices is a great idea. Especially even
DRM music which allows 3 plays of a song with a feature to flag this to purchase when next at the online shop.
The
interface looks pretty slick from what I've seen already and would really like to get one in my hands to try out. Be nice to see them come up with something different to the plain iPod one without too much of a performance hit.
I like the fact that the screen dominates the device rather than the current iPod where the wheel dial is overly size when this could have been space for more screen.
It'll be interesting to see what APIs will be available for it also!
Apple have gone for the big wow factor on storage space, but I've been fine with a 2Gb MiniSD card in my 02 XDA Atom windows mobile device and simple on sync shuffle some new songs onto it now and again. More often than not you have favourites you always want to listen to and 80Gb is definately over kill!
They've definately improved the Windows Media Player in version 11, and it'll be interesting to see what goodies they get into the stores and whether they acn compete with the iTunes store which is simply dominating and only drawback appears to be that the music is locked down to iPods only...a mistake M$ will make...I think not.
Passionate Apple people get behind the iPod...if M$ soldiers get behind the Zune it could dominate!
Whether it's 'cool' enough to survive the market I'm yet to decide until I've seen one in person and also the price!
CNET also have some good points...especially only 12 hours playback without wifi!
Check out
ZuneInsider also!