Name that Zune: iPod killer or iPod wannabe?
By JIM THOMPSON
I've spent the better part of a week using the brown Zune media player that Microsoft loaned me by way of Dwight Silverman, and now it's time to pay the piper with a few words about this new gadget. As a two-time iPod owner and a big fan of Apple's media player suite, I have high standards. In many ways, and in some surprising ways, the Zune suite lives up to those standards. In other ways, the Zune is an exercise in aggravation, irritation and frustration. Here's the lowdown.
As I wrote last week, the Zune appears more attractive firsthand than it does in photos. Nevertheless, it's nowhere near as sexy as the iPod. Whereas the iPod's construction puts me in mind of the shining chrome and lustrous enamel paint of a classic sports car, the Zune's fingerprint-resistant case reminds me of the cheap plastic toy cars I used to play with as a kid. Furthermore, the real style critics in my house, my wife and daughters, unanimously but independently chose the word "ugly" to describe the Zune. They were especially critical of the Zune's brown color.
But color and finish become irrelevant when the Zune is powered on and its big, bright display lights up with the very appealing Zune user interface. Its display has the same resolution as the iPod's but is nearly half again larger in size and dominates the Zune's face. The display is not only larger than the display in my 60 GB fifth-generation iPod but also has richer color and is brighter (current iPods also have brighter displays than mine). The Zune's large display now sets the standard that media players will be judged by.
The Zune's user interface is a pleasure to use. I've never been a fan of any user interface designed by Microsoft, from Windows 3.1 all the way up through Internet Explorer 7, but Zune's UI is a pleasant surprise. The Zune uses a system of hierarchical menus similar in structure to the iPod's, but because the Zune interface takes advantage of all four directional buttons (the Zune lacks a scroll wheel), it's able to use both horizontal and vertical navigation to get two levels of menus on the screen at the same time. It is an effective and pleasant way to nagivate the Zune's menus. I especially like the Zune's themes, and the ability to choose my own photo for the UI background.
However, the Zune user interface is not without a few irritating misfeatures. For example, when playing a video, clicking the center button brings up a display overlay with information about the video. But there's no readily apparent way to dismiss the overlay. Clicking the center button again doesn't remove the overlay, but pausing then resuming the video playback does. Another irritating misfeature is the Zune's "menu amnesia": when I leave a menu like the Artists list, the Zune forgets my position in the menu. Upon returning to the menu, the Zune always forgets my previous position and returns to the top of the list. This is highly annoying in contrast to the iPod, which remembers the last visited position in its menus.
