-r.

It doesn’t have the key feature I want: cheaper per gig than an equivalent ipod. It has lots of features I don’t want (DRM on Creative Commons music) or don’t need (wireless). It may have features I might want (divx playback)

Frankly speaking ipod is much better

The one advantage all the “Plays For Sure” crowd had was the promise that they all supported the same standard. Of course the fact that it didn’t work half the time didn’t help(!!) but Zune doesn’t even have that. Everyone is going to have to chuck out all their existing purchases again or go through painful, lossy conversion routines.

Add to that the fact that the Zune is bigger, bulkier and heavier than the iPod in a market segment that that craves slim svelte portability and MS is repeating the formula that caused Rio and the other early MP3 players to lose out to the iPod originally.

Some of that bulk is used for features like wifi that will be useless while Zune holds a minuscule marketshare – and most commentators don’t see that improving quickly. If you do actually find someone to share with, they can only play the song 3 times or for 3 days whichever comes first – as someone else said: “that’s not sharing – that’s teasing” and only if the copyright owner has allowed the file to be marked “shareable”. Music library sharing in iTunes on a PC or Mac over wifi or a wired network has no such limitations. And the battery-drain of wifi doesn’t bear thinking about – 12hrs of battery life with wifi turned OFF is not sounding good at all with the iPod doing between 14hrs (iPod 30GB), 20hrs for the 60Gb iPod video and 24hrs iPod Nano. What battery life does it have with wifi on? I dread to think.

The 20% larger screen is still only 320×240 resolution so images will look more pixelated than the iPod and the fact that the Zune store will only be doing audio to start with means that the player’s supposed video prowess is mostly useless out of the gate as well.

Then there is the pretend click wheel which is really just a bunch of regular buttons and I can see many very disappointed users the first time they get there hands on one. 2,000+ accessories for the iPod ecosystem and Zune has an almost impossible task competing on that score as well.

Then there are the colour choices. Brown. Hmm, I’m afraid the “cool factor” just keeps getting further and further out of reach. Then there’s the price – $35 more expensive than the iPod Video (if Walmart is correct), let alone the Nano, a form factor where the Zune doesn’t even compete.

The story just keeps getting worse. Frankly I can’t see Zune getting any sort of traction. Actually, I think Apple is the only one to benefit as in one fell swoop Microsoft has killed Apple’s main opposition, the “Plays Fer Sure” ecosystem and demonstrated that Apple’s vertically integrated model is the best after all.

-Mart