I'll be blogging about Joost sometime soon, but I need an invite first. If anyone has an invitation to the beta I'd be oh so grateful.
I'm going to go all fanboy on you. You've been warned.
The Zune has gotten mixed reviews. People who have used them are generally impressed. People who haven't used them, hate them. Here's the dirty little secret... MP3 players are 95% the same. What's the difference between an iPod and an MP3 player from SanDisk or Creative? Umm... not much. The iPod is "cool", the others aren't.
So now the Zune comes on the market and some people are underwhelmed. News flash: It's an MP3 player just like the other 100 MP3 players on the market. It's not going to fold your laundry for you. But yet people talk about it like it's the worst thing they've ever seen. Here are the main complaints I hear:
It's not a click wheel!
If it was a click wheel, you'd say they were just copying the iPod. And who says that the click wheel is the ultimate interface for a device like this? Personally I LOVE the interface and the controls on the Zune. I think that's one area where they completely beat the iPod. I hated having to stare at my iPod in my car to switch songs. With the Zune I have memorized the menus and I can switch fairly accurately without ever seeing the device. (Two clicks right, three down, select - etc)
It's crippled with DRM! When I buy songs from the Zune marketplace, I can only use the songs on my computer and on my Zune.
Umm... hello? This is the same thing as iTunes and the iPod. I'd argue that the Zune Marketplace is better though because you can get a subscription for unlimited music. As long as you keep paying the $15 monthly subscription fee, you can listen to as much music as you can handle.
It's crippled with DRM! If I use the wireless feature to share a song with my friend, she can only listen to it three times.
Try to share a song wirelessly with your iPod. Besides, if you have a marketplace subscription, you just download the song that your friend sent you and now you have your own license for it. Problem solved.
But if I share a podcast, it shouldn't have DRM attached to it when it was free to begin with!
How many times do you listen to a podcast? I listen once and then delete it. I don't care if there is a 3 play limit. And if the 3 day limit passes, I can just download it for free again.
I can't sync wirelessly with my computer or download songs from the Internet straight from the zune.
Again, show me another player that does this. Even the new iPhone doesn't let you do these things. I bet the Zune will be releasing that functionality soon.
The Zune software doesn't support podcasts.
First of all, think about what percentage of MP3 player owners listen to podcasts. It's easy to see why this feature got left to version 2 of the software (or whenever it comes.) I installed Doppler to grab my podcasts and drop them in a folder that is watched by the Zune software. In 5 minutes, that HUGE PROBLEM was solved. iTunes isn't that great of a podcast reader either. Try to subscribe to a video podcast in a WMV format. It won't work in iTunes. If you want a video podcast for your iPod, you have to subscribe to a specially formatted feed. The Zune software will automatically convert the video to the right format for your Zune.
All MP3 player hardware is pretty much identical. You get varying screen sizes and different button combinations, but hardware is hardware. The Zune is already on equal hardware ground with everyone else (or they're better because they have wireless built in.) Microsoft is a software company. I'm willing to bet my $230 that they're going to enable some killer features through software updates.