Digital Leon`s World

Tomorrow the new Zune player launches. So far the reviews have been pretty good. There is a nice summary on gizmodo.
Overall I think this is going to be an interesting battle. I wasn’t impressed with the first Zune. It was too large, the syncing software was absolutely terrible, and it’s killer feature was crippled by the music industry. (The Zune can wirelessly sync songs with other devices however the experience wasn’t very good and the songs would expire after 3 days or 3 plays) Overall I was pretty underwhelmed by it as a device. I think if Microsoft had released the Zune 3-4 years ago I would be singing a different tune. But otherwise it looked pretty poor compared to the current ipod offerings. The device had one redeeming quality and that was the large screen. Microsoft has been trying to make a play for mobile video for some time – the problem is video sucks batteries down like a hungry vampire. Despite it’s warts I considered getting one to use as a mobile photo album for my photography business. Then the Iphone came out and put that temptation to bed. That said the Zune 2 looks like a vastly improved product. Interestingly enough Microsoft marketing and PR has focused the inevitable comparisons to the Ipod classic instead of the Ipod touch. Pointing out that Zune sales are great for “Hard drive based digital music players.” Even though Apple’s clearly moving their products toward solid state memory instead of hard drives. But the question is – will Zune be successful?
Things working in Zune’s favor

• There’s still money on the table. Apple has sold quite a few Ipods but there’s still room for growth.
• The screen is large compared to the Ipod classic, but smaller than the Ipod touch and Iphone. The resolution is also equal to that of the ipod classic but lower than the Touch and the Iphone. Some people may be excited about the video capabilities – this is only a plus if the battery life is decent.
• The form factor is smaller and is closer to the current batch of ipods – eliminating the largest (no pun intended) barrier to Zune.
• The record companies are moving away from DRM. Amazon.com now sells DRM free music, Itunes sells DRM free music(well some of it) and so will the new Zune store. This levels the playing field quite a bit and is good for everyone.

Problems from my perspective

• Microsoft is too focused with competing with the Ipod classic when they should be focusing on the Ipod touch and the Iphone. The ipod classic is clearly a transitional product – apple’s moving to solid state in a big way. With 64GB solid state hard drives on the market it’s only a matter of time before we see ipod touches with high capacity drives.
• Apple has momentum and great marketing and incredible brand recognition with the ipod. Also Microsoft marketing is usually terrible and the company rarely commits resources to marketing like other companies do. [update] – The first Zune television ads are terrible.
• Zune doesn’t offer improvements that leapfrog the Ipod in terms of capabilities. If you compare the Iphone to other cell phones – Apple blew away the competition in terms of experience. With Zune 2 the improvements aren’t nearly as compelling. There is potential but it’s unrealized at this point.
• Can’t sync on the Mac – I don’t blame Microsoft here at all. While Apple’s market share is increasing at a rapid clip it’s still less than 10% of the total industry. Owners of new Macs can install virtualization software which is expensive. ($100 for parallels and $400 for vista ultimate if they don’t have a copy of xp – or they can buy XP for $200) Rebooting the machine into windows to sync isn’t practical. I still think Microsoft should have given an intern the project of porting the Zune software.
• I have a ton of Itunes DRM’d Music – This is totally my fault – and in the early days of the Itunes store I was diligent about removing the DRM but I have long since fallen behind. 90% of the new music that I have purchased in the past few years has been through Itunes.
• Wireless syncing is cool – but is it that useful? – My current music collection is less than 20GB and doesn’t change very often. I wouldn’t get a lot of use out of this feature. Now maybe college kids downloading a constant stream of music will get better mileage.
• Still no Wireless purchasing of content – oddly enough I’ve purchased a lot of music on my Iphone in the local Star bucks getting my daily fix.
• Sharing music is still crippled by DRM. And as i understand it if I’ve received a song I can’t share it with someone else. There was a nice viral marketing potential here that’s unfortunately lost.
• Complete lack of interesting services that could take advantage of Microsoft’s unique ecosystem of products. Windows, Xbox, Windows Mobile, and Zune are all wireless devices that could in theory work together to create an amazing experience. Unfortunately Microsoft is not an experience/scenario driven company and those are 4 separate divisions that sit in 4 separate campuses.
• No video content on the Zune store. Adding video content to your Zune is a manual process. If you already have content in a Zune friendly format then you’re probably fine. However quite a bit of content on the internet is in the Divx codec which is unsupported. (and to be clear the ipod doesn’t support it either) so the only way to get video on the device is to transcode other material from another format. This is a time consuming process. So if you want to watch a DVD on your Zune – prepare to spend hours transcoding it into a Zune friendly format beforehand. note – You can buy and rent videos on the Xbox but there’s no way to share the content. Again speaking to my point about a lack of consistent service offerings.

That said having more people come to the table is a good thing. As a consumer I benefit greatly when companies vigorously compete for my dollar. As far as media players go – Zune is the only competent competition to the Ipod. And with the record companies backing away from DRM that will make it easier for avoid vendor locking and allow users to change players at will. I do hope that the Zune syncing software is a lot better than the 1.0 release though.

Lack of Mac support will keep me from buying one of these devices – but I’ll definitely check it out in the store. The big question is can Microsoft evolve their service offerings in a way that will allow Zune to be a big success? Interesting integration with the Xbox 360? Cloud based services that allow me to access content anywhere on any Microsoft enabled device – phone, smart watch, web browser, etc. Before leaving Microsoft I asked these questions and I unfortunately never got a good answer.