Microsoft Challenges the iPod (Again)
Don’t look now, but Microsoft might finally be getting the hang of hardware.
Microsoft's new line of Zune music players are intended to compete better with Apple's iPod than the original Zune has.
The company’s overall track record for designing gadgets is pretty awful. Remember the Smart Display? The Spot Watch? The Ultra-Mobile PC? The original Zune?
Me neither.
But Microsoft’s new second-generation Zune music/photo/video player is a pleasure to use. It fixes a long list of things that made the original Zune such a pathetic wannabe. Best of all, the new Zune is starting to develop its own identity. The echoes of Microsoft executives saying, “It’ll be just like the iPod, only ours” aren’t quite as loud on this one.
The family includes three new models. First, there’s an 80-gigabyte hard-drive Zune ($250) whose size, design, shape and price are intended to compete with the 80-gig iPod Classic. Then there are the flash-memory-based models, which resemble last year’s iPod Nano: thin, tall slabs that hold 4 or 8 gigabytes of music, photos and videos (for $150 and $200, like the Nano). The original, 30-gig Zune is still available, too, at $200. (There are no Zune equivalents to the tiny iPod Shuffle, the wireless-Internet iPod Touch or the capacious 160-gig iPod Classic.)
Confident design steps are evident in all the new models. The back is metal like the iPod’s, but textured and therefore far less likely to show scratches and dings.
Then there’s the new control pad. You can navigate the Zune’s bright, clear, animated software by clicking the dial at any of its four compass points; select something by clicking the center; and — here’s the twist — scroll through lists by rubbing the pad’s face. Music-player companies have struggled for years to come up with a controller as good as the iPod’s click wheel; Microsoft, in Zune 2.0, has finally done it.
The sound quality is very good, especially if you use the 80-gig Zune’s included earbuds. They’re not hard disks like the iPod’s and those of the smaller Zunes; they’re soft rubber bulbs that snuggle securely into your ear canals, sealing out the outside world.
On the 80-gig model, the screen is bigger than the iPod Classic’s — but it’s the same number of pixels. As a result, the pixel grid is far more visible, giving you a screen-door effect during videos with bright scenes.
Some of the biggest Zune-iPod differences involve the Zune’s wireless feature. As on the previous Zune, you can beam songs to your friends’ Zunes, to demonstrate your superior musical taste. But beamed songs no longer self-destruct after “three days or three plays”; the time limit is gone. You have all the time you like to listen to them three times.
Unfortunately, that beaming feature will remain irrelevant as long as there’s nobody to beam songs to. You could go a year without spotting another Zune (and, in fact, you probably just have). But at least the antipiracy limitations on beamed songs is now infinitely more sensible.
Microsoft. meanwhile, has finally begun to exploit its wireless transmitter in more useful ways. The Zune can’t surf the Internet, as the iPod Touch can. But it can now synchronize its music and photos (although not videos) with those on your Windows PC over your wireless home network.
Now the value of wireless synching may not be immediately apparent. Hooking up a U.S.B. cable, the usual way to sync a music player, has never been a particularly harrowing task.
But what’s great is that you can make it automatic. You come home, you set the player in its charging dock ($50) or a speaker dock, and presto: the thing syncs as it recharges. The next time you grab your Zune, it’s charged, synched and filled with your latest tunes or your favorite podcasts.
Microsoft has also written a new Windows-only loading-dock program for the Zune. You no longer use Windows Media Player for that purpose.
That’s good, because it allowed Microsoft’s programmers to start fresh and create a streamlined, simple, spartan program dedicated to its task. Really spartan. There aren’t even any menus. (How unlike Microsoft.)
But it’s also bad, because the new program pointlessly duplicates Media Player’s functions. Now you have to learn two different programs and maintain two different libraries. (How Microsoft.)
The online Zune store is better now, too. It now lets you swap song suggestions and 30-second clips with your friends, and it finally offers podcast subscriptions. (Microsoft must absolutely hate saying the word “pod” every time it touts this feature.) And unlike Apple’s store, the Zune store offers an optional $15-a-month all-you-can download plan, although you lose your entire music library when you stop paying.
If you’re tempted to align yourself with Planet Zune rather than Planet iPod, you should ask two important questions.
First: How do I know Microsoft won’t dump me the way it dumped people the last time around?
After all, the Zune is not Microsoft’s first effort at an iPod-like universe of player, software and music store; that honor goes to the PlaysForSure format. And everybody who bought into it must be feeling just a tad rejected at this point. When it introduced the Zune, Microsoft shut down its PlaysForSure store and further development efforts. Whatever songs you bought in the PlaysForSure format won’t play on the Zune.
The second question is, How much will I miss the richness of the iPod economy?
Microsoft hasn’t had nearly as much time as Apple has had to cultivate a culture of add-ons and flourishes. So its player, its software or its store can’t rival the abilities of Apple’s.
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