This might sound kind of weird, but here it is: the iPod and the Zune aren’t rivals anymore.
And not just because the iPod outsells the Zune about a gazillion to one, either. No, it’s because the iPod and the Zune no longer serve the same audience.
That’s a surprising development. After all, when the Zune had its debut in 2006, it couldn’t have been more iPoddy if you ran it through a Xerox machine. Same layout, capacities, prices and product line (a big one and a Nano).
But in the last few days, Apple and Microsoft both unveiled new music-player lineups (what a coincidence — just in time for the holiday shopping season!). And Microsoft, it turns out, has added something truly new to the Zune: differentiation. The Zune has become a sensational music-discovery machine.
Over all, the players themselves haven’t changed much except for colors, capacities and prices.
The huge exception is the iPod Nano, which has undergone its fourth redesign in four years (8 or 16 gigabytes, $150 or $200). It’s now a truly gorgeous, incredibly thin aluminum stick, in your choice of nine vivid, reflective colors. It maintains Apple’s design theme for 2008: tapered edges, as seen on the MacBook Air and the iPhone.
The front and back are gracefully curved, including the glass screen. But even at its thickest point — in the middle — the 1.3-ounce Nano is the thinnest iPod ever.
Apple also rotated the screen 90 degrees, so menus and song lists fit better. And thanks to a tilt sensor like the iPhone’s, the Nano’s screen image rotates when you turn the player — great when you’re looking through photos. That sensor also permits a bit of whimsy: when you shake the Nano hard, it skips to a random song.
The Nano can now speak its menus, song names and on-screen messages as you navigate. That should assist anyone who’s blind and anyone who insists on fiddling while driving.
In short, this Nano is yet another a home run.
The iPod Touch (8 to 32 gigs, $230 to $400) gains a metal back, tapered like the iPhone’s, and a small, feeble speaker and volume keys on the left edge. (What was Apple thinking when it designed the original Touch without volume keys? Sheesh.)
The tiny, screenless iPod Shuffle (1 or 2 gigabytes, $50 and $70) comes in brighter colors, and the iPod Classic — the big one, with a hard drive inside ($250) — goes from 80 gigabytes to 120. The 160-gig version has been discontinued.
The new Zunes haven’t changed at all except in color: blue, pink, red or black for the Nano-like model (4 to 16 gigs, $130 to $200 ) and black for the 120-gigabyte model ($250). But next to the sleek, shiny iPods, Zunes still look like dark, Soviet-made bricks.
Clearly, what Microsoft spent the year working on was software. Generously enough, it’s giving a free upgrade to owners of earlier Zune models — all six of you. (Was that too mean?)
Once the time-consuming upgrade is over, the player’s new software offers better looks (also, at last, a clock and a couple of games), and the new Zune jukebox software for Windows is clean and focused.
Microsoft hasn’t made much effort to match the iPod’s universe of functions. The Zune store still lacks movies, downloadable programs, gift certificates, monthly allowances or any way to rate podcasts to guide fellow visitors. And the player still has no stopwatch, alarm clock, volume limiter, calendar, address book, note pad or external-hard-drive mode.
Yet for hard-core music lovers, it’s a gem. The Zune blows the iPod off the map in music discovery and downloading.
Now, Microsoft’s shift in direction isn’t totally altruistic. Many of the Zune’s new talents don’t make sense unless you subscribe to ZunePass, Microsoft’s $15-a-month music-download service.
I’ve always hated subscription music services. Sure, they let you download all the music you want for a flat fee — but the day you stop paying, it all vanishes. You’ve spent all that money, and you’re left with nothing.
(You can also buy Zune songs individually, as on iTunes. But you have to pay in Microsoft’s own bizarre currency — “points,” not dollars — a cheesy effort to mask how much you’re actually spending. You also waste money, because points are sold only in quantities that aren’t evenly divisible by a song’s price.)
But if anything can make subscriptions look enticing, it’s the new Zune software.
For example, every Zune has a built-in FM radio. When you hear a good song, you can click the center button to capture it, provided it’s a station that broadcasts song-title data. In a Wi-Fi hot spot, the Zune downloads the song from the Zune store immediately. When you get home, the downloaded song gets copied back to your PC. (Even wirelessly, if you like, because the Zune can sync over Wi-Fi.)
It’s addictive, awesome and completely natural. What better way to discover new performers and songs than listening to the radio?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/technology/personaltech/18pogue.html?pagewanted=2
