Granted, the Zune's full-screen volume icons are easier to work with than the onscreen volume slider on the first-gen iPod Touch which also lacked a dedicated volume button , but that's about the only nice thing we can say about it. If you've been raised on nothing but iPods over the years, your brain may need an adjustment period to get comfortable with the Zune user interface.
We'll let the hard-core fans hash out which user interface works better, but for us, the difference feels like driving in Europe--the lanes may be switched around and the street signs use different symbols--but essentially it's all the same stuff.
That may sound like a cop-out, but when it comes to designing a user interface, creating something that's comparable to Apple but still maintains its individual spirit is about as high a compliment as you can get. To Microsoft's credit, the aesthetic of the Zune's interface is a bit more daring and informal than the tight, sterile icon grids and Rolodex menus of the iPhone and iPod Touch.
On the Zune HD, you'll find oversize main-menu text that recklessly rolls off the screen, album pages with band photos hung in the background, and a secondary main menu called Quickplay, which works like a messy desk drawer filled with all the stuff you use frequently play history, new content, and any songs, photos, videos, radio stations, or Web pages you've pinned for easy access.
In a side-by-side comparison with the iPod Touch, you'd swear that Apple's whole "I'm a Mac" campaign got its characterizations reversed. Features The set of features packed into the Zune HD are unapologetically focused on media playback and entertainment.
On the main menu you'll find options for music, videos, pictures, radio, Marketplace Microsoft's music download portal , and Internet. Some features, such as podcasts, audio books, and applications, are given main menu categories once there's content to justify it.
Music tops the Zune HD's main menu for good reason. More than anything else, the Zune HD is a portable music machine designed for curious fans with large appetites for new music.
Like most MP3 players, the music you sync the Zune HD with can be quickly sorted by artist, album, song, genre, and playlist, but the Zune HD's unique strengths as a music player are revealed once you dig down to a particular artist or song. For example, when you select an artist to play, you'll get a list of their albums set against a background photo of the musician or band, along with tabs that offer biographical information, additional photos, and a list of related artists all of which is pulled offline from the Zune software.
If the Zune HD is connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi, album listings will show an artist's entire album catalog and let you preview and download additional songs, or explore the music catalog of similar artists. Without the Zune Pass plan, the Zune HD's similar artist feature still connects you to Zune Marketplace, but previews are limited to 30 seconds and downloads are sold individually, much like the built-in iTunes store on the iPod Touch.
Another small feature that music fanatics will appreciate is the Zune HD's on-the-fly playlist creation and content management. The Quickplay menu found right off the main menu puts all your newest music right up front, along with your play history, currently playing song, and anything you've deliberately "pinned" to the menu.
In other words, all the media you've recently shown an interest in is placed into a concise menu, letting you jump right into the good stuff without rooting around in menus. To pin something to the Quickplay screen, you hold your finger on the item you want pinned, and a context menu will pop up asking if you want to pin the content or add it to your Now Playing list.
The latter option cues up the selection behind whatever you're currently playing, giving you a jukebox-like capability to throw playlists together on the fly. Entire albums, genres, or playlists can be thrown into the Now Playing queue, and a disk icon at the top of the Now Playing view allows you to permanently save and name your ad-hoc playlist.
A long story short is the Zune HD--more than anything--is a music fan's dream machine. However, when it comes to video, the results are more mixed. As far as the Zune's evolution goes, the Zune HD is the most video-friendly model yet, boasting a gorgeous 3.
Unfortunately, no matter how pretty your screen is, when it comes to portable video players and the video junkies who seek them out, format support is crucial. Granted, the iPod Touch is equally restrictive when it comes to video format support, but the larger selection in the iTunes video catalog, along with its over-the-air downloads and dozens of options for streaming Internet video make it a better overall choice for video fans.
There is one more ace up Microsoft's sleeve when it comes to the Zune HD's video capabilities. Compatible HD videos can be purchased or rented from Microsoft's Zune Marketplace download store, or created manually using a DVD ripper if you know what you're doing. It's also worth mentioning that videos downloaded using the Zune Marketplace on Microsoft's Xbox gaming console can be redownloaded to your computer's Zune software and synced with the Zune HD, although the process is far from automatic.
Radio has always helped to define the Zune HD against the iPod. And while there is some irony in the fact that Apple's latest iPod Nano is now imitating the RDS FM radio and song tagging capabilities that the Zune put on the map, Microsoft continues to innovate with the addition of an HD radio broadcast support to complement the existing FM radio tuner.
HD Radio broadcasting is still in its infancy, but most major metropolitan areas offer a handful of HD Radio channels. Aside from improved sound quality, HD Radio stations often offer multiple subchannels with additional content. Another advantage offered by HD Radio signals is improved broadcast metadata, letting Zune HD users view information on the currently playing song, as well as tag the song for download.
Overall, the Zune HD's combination of FM radio and HD broadcast support makes it one of the best radios we've used on a portable media player. The Zune HD's Web browser rounds off its main feature set.
The browser is a cleaner, leaner offshoot of Microsoft's mobile Internet Explorer browser, complete with a multitouch onscreen keyboard, and persistent icons for navigating backward, bookmarking, and Bing-powered Web search. Just like Apple's iPhone, the Zune's browser uses a built-in tilt sensor to orient pages in portrait or landscape views, pages can zoomed with a double-tap or pinch of the fingers, and scrolling is so smooth and responsive that it feels as if the page is floating on water.
The brand never managed to muster the cultural ubiquity of the iPod Apple attempted its own failed social network, Ping, around the same time , but with that emphasis on community, perhaps it was inevitable for the Zune to eventually mount a cult-like fandom. He always felt like there was a massive nation of Zune-heads out there who he would surely meet someday.
Leach believes the Zune has aged better than people might think. Simply and effectively. The Zune Marketplace offered a genuine streaming subscription — long before that became the dominant way people consumed music — which never caught on.
Woods tells me that solidarity among Zuners has never been stronger. He finds even more thrills in this strange afterlife, as the years have eroded away everyone except for the zealots. He can scour the earth in search of every last scrap of Zune memorabilia with the confidence that there will be an audience willing to upvote his efforts indefinitely.
He can strap an absurdly huge SSD on the motherboard, ensuring that it will never be replaced. He can post a Zune-stamped coaster, rescued from the deep recesses of the Microsoft trash pile, and trust that his friends will treat the discovery like the Holy Grail.
The Zune was mocked, lampooned, and chased out of the market with its tail between its legs. But it never truly died, not with fans like these. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.
And it's worth noting that although your Zune will continue playing all of your old music, anything you stream or download from Groove won't play on your Zune.
There are rumblings that some Zune power users might make an open source Zune client replacement. Assuming this actually happens, such a client almost certainly would do only the simplest of tasks, allowing you to manage what's already on your Zune and nothing more.
And that depends upon Microsoft making the data accessible. Perhaps that small beacon of hope is enough for you to hold onto the device. If you're finally ready to surrender your Zune and go with an iDevice, then connect your Zune to your computer and import everything into iTunes.
Only the music you paid for or used music credits to obtain will be allowed in, of course. Android and other devices are a bit messier, but essentially the same process.
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