Excited about Zune
I’m in the market for a digital audio player. I have an iPod nano already but the capacity for me has been an issue. When I first got it, I thought 4 gigs was plenty, I’ll just put music on it that I’m into at the time and change it when my mood changes. I didn’t realize back then that my music listening mood was so fickle. I want to listen to a big variety throughout the day and it changes from hour to hour. Sometimes I need music to concentrate to, sometimes I need music to give me an energy boost, sometimes I just want to listen to something I haven’t heard in a long time but it just popped up in my head for no reason.
So iPod is an obvious first choice for an mp3 player, but then I hear rumours about the Zune and it has peaked my interest.
Now, I wouldn’t normally think much of Microsoft attempt to take on the iPod but I think this is going to be different and mainly because they have Jay Allard supposedly running the Zune show.
He’s the same guy who’s brought us the Xbox and Xbox 360. Coming from someone who isn’t that big a gamer, I’m damn impressed with the Xbox 360.
I figure if the guy can take on Sony and I think bring them down(We’ll see how the PS3 actually does when it comes out), he’ll be able to take on Apple and their iPod. Also, the iPod hasn’t really seen any real innovation since the original product. Yeah it’s gotten smaller, a color/video screen, bigger capacity, but those were pretty predictable changes. There really hasn’t been anything ground breaking since it’s lauch.
From what I’ve been reading about the Zune, it sounds like it’ll cover most of what I want in a MP3 player, we’ll just have to see how they implement it. Here’s my dream list.
It needs to have at least 20-30G, video that supports divx/xvid codecs, good battery life, an FM tuner because sometimes I like listening to the radio, wifi support so that I can transfer new songs wirelessly or listen to an internet radio station, maybe an FM transmitter built in so that I don’t need a separate add on to stream music to my car.
The wifi capability of it has so much potential for the product. Imagine having it automatically download new podcasts every day at a set time without you turning on your computer or having to doing anything. What if it had widgets on there you could program, you could have it fetch RSS feeds that you could read later, you could have it download the weather, fetch your calendar for the day. It would almost be like a scaled down PDA. You could set up friends list and preview what your friends are listening to. The possibilities are endless with this product beyond it just being an audio/video player.
Hello Microsoft, are you listening?