Microsoft just released their Zune iPod killer player. But as usual they miss the mark. It’s like they’re sitting next to the smartest kid in the room during the SAT and cheating by looking at their answers but purposely answering some questions wrong to not get caught. I mean, if you’re gonna cheat then cheat. Even their Zune website looks un-cool and un-hip. They didn’t even get the domain zune.com either.
I think Microsoft is misguided in their most touted feature, sharing of your content with others in the room. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to waste my player’s battery by having everyone run the hard drive ragged playing tracks or videos. I suspect most people will leave theirs on private, especially if it takes a toll on battery life and/or makes their own audio skip while to cpu and music access gets overworked. And even if you’re listening to the same song you won’t be in sync with anyone else listening to the same song with their Zune without some tricky pause and starts. So it’s not like two people with Zunes can be dancing with each other listening to the same song in sync. Okay, maybe techno music might work since the way I understand it is that you have to search the person’s Zune for tunes, then download/buffer the tune into your own Zune. Plus everytime people want to share you need to stop everything and pair the network with them.
Steve Jobs, what you need to do is incorporate an FM transmitter/receiver into the next generation iPod. This will do three things:
1. People can transmit their audio to their car stereo, home stereo, anything that has an FM tuner.
2. People can listen to FM radio without buying that special FM tuner doggle for the iPod.
3. People will be able to share their iPod’s audio. This will be more of a killer app than Microsoft’s sharing. Imagine an iPod commercial where one person is playing music and everyone with an iPod close by is dancing in sync since they’ve tuned into that iPod’s audio. Or show some dude with a killer car stereo open their hatchback playing crappy music for people then a beautiful gal come by with her iPod who then sends music to the radio for some killer tunes…instant party. The gal becomes an instant DJ for the party.
The Zune’s screen, although bigger than the iPod screen, is the same resolution 320×240. And the Zune doesn’t work with the Mac.
Yawn…where’s my iPod?
