I was recently offered the chance to test drive Microsoft’s latest version of their ‘wish I was an iPod’ MP3 player, the Zune and I jumped at the chance.
Despite what some people may think, I’m not *just* a fan of Apple products. I’m a fan of cool products in general and always like to at least try out the latest and greatest so that I know where I stand with my recommendations to friends/family/etc and so that I can accurately compare these products. I prefer to think of myself as a fan of a good experience rather than a particular company…but lately, Apple has been hitting most of the right notes for me so it’s easy to recommend them over many others depending on the product.
At first glance I thought the packaging was nice and simple but almost destroyed the Zune before I’d even opened it. A friend picked up the Zune box (middle in the photo above) and the little orange line on the bottom of the box is actually a drawer where you slide the inner contents out from. He picked up the box (it was standing upright) and the bottom fell out, Zune inside. Fortunately it didn’t fall far but was an inauspicious start to say the least.
As you can see in the photo, my Zune kit came with an AC adapter (basically a USB to wall outlet) along with ‘premium headphones’. The base Zune comes with basic headphones but the premium ones are truly decent. They feel and fit nice, do a great job of blocking external sound, and have a very long, rope-like cable which doesn’t feel cheap or plastic-y.
As you can see from the above photo, it’s pretty similar in size to the older version of the iPod Nano. Just a little thicker but the same width.
The first thing I noticed about the Zune was the large, clean font presentation. For such a relatively small device, it’s very bright and easy to read. The background in the above photo is my own photo (actually my wife’s from our trip to Hawaii) so it’s really nice to customize the background of something you will be using a lot - something Apple could learn from since none of their devices really support this kind of personalization. The iPod interface seems a little dated now in comparison, even on the new models…excluding of course the Touch and the iPhone.
The Zune just launched recently in Canada and has been available in the US for a number of years. Seems kind of strange to launch a product like this so long after they did in the US…and when compared to the iPod Nano (newer model), it may seem a little old to the uninformed consumer.
One thing that was initially a bit of a pain to deal with was the fact that they can only be setup with a Windows PC. I would have liked to use a virtualized version of Windows on one of my Macs but the Zune software complained of needing to do a Windows Update before installing…I wasn’t prepared to do that to any of my installs just yet so opted to use my wife’s old PC (she now uses an iMac) and install the software on there which was pretty straightforward and works fairly similar to iTunes as a media manager.
The menu system is actually quite nice and has a few nice little animated flourishes as you navigate around your content. I found the ‘touch pad’ navigational button to be quite sensitive and once I realized it behaves more like a laptop touch pad than a game controller d-pad, it was easy to get used to.
One feature I haven’t had a chance to play with is the wireless syncing and the ’social’ aspect of the device which allows you to wirelessly share your content with other Zune owners. A number of local friends are also participating in this trial so hopefully we can get together soon and try out these features. The biggest problem is finding other Zunes ‘in the wild’…I’ve never seen one other than on store shelves.
Music and video played back like you’d expect if you’ve ever used an iPod…no surprises there.
Another lesson Apple could learn from Microsoft is the Zune came preloaded with some sample content. What a novel idea! Show people how the various content types could be used before dropping them into iTunes.
One feature that actually surprised me was the FM tuner. I’ve always thought it was a useless feature on an mp3 player. It made sense to me that you’d never use it since you have your own music on it. But considering this is an 8gb model, perhaps not all your music. Plus there are times when you may want to hear the news or traffic. Unfortunately where I live at least, the best news/traffic station is on AM. Still not sure it’s a main selling point, but definitely a nice feature. I also thought it was cool that the tuner was able to pull down the station name and even the track playing from the source radio station which even pushed out weather updates during commercials which was a nice touch.
All in all, I think the Zune is a solid mp3 player when compared to the iPod Nano - at least the model I played with. Possibly even a better device depending on your needs and your computer setup (PC or Mac). The big drawback for me with using it is the Windows only nature of the syncing software which is the same complaint Windows users made about the iPod when it was first released.
Part of the marketing campaign is to track the conversations about this mp3 player. They’ve asked me to include a link to the tool they are using to do this so that you, the reader, can add your voice to the conversation. This is an interesting approach and I’m curious to see how many people actually participate. It’s not an easy thing to track and requires people to do something they may not normally do. If you’re so inclined, here’s the link:
So here’s my quick list of thoughts about the Zune after playing with it for a few days:
Positives:
slick user interface
personalization options
wireless built in
FM tuner
the premium headphones are really nice
preloaded with sample audio/video content including tutorials and even the Zune commercial so you can use it out of the box (kind of - you need to run ’setup’ first)
Negatives:
Windows only software install
form factor a little old when compared to Apple’s offerings
possibly a year or two too late to Canada
touchpad took a little getting used to due to sensitivity
poor design choice in package layout
I’ll add to this list once I’ve used it more and had a chance to further test some of the features.
In quite possibly one of my favorite Lab with Leo segments ever, Dave Olson chats with Leo about his multimedia publishing empire that started back in the 80’s and how now with the internet, it’s all coming back around, except this time, you don’t have to pay for copies on his parents ditto machine.
Dave, we have to hang out again soon….it’s been too long!
A few of us have been noticing that there hasn’t been as much chatter on the internet about Northern Voice during or immediately following the event. As well, the page views on Flickr seemed to be a lot lower than last year. Personally, I think it’s just that everyone hasn’t fully had a chance for it all to sink in yet. As I’m finding by new followers on Twitter, new contacts on Flickr and a bunch of new feeds I’ve been reading, it’s slowly gaining some momentum after the fact.
Let’s face it, a weekend of conferencing takes it’s toll on people and especially since most of the attendees have normal day jobs that they returned to almost immediately. It takes awhile to get your head around what you participated in and find a way to record or publish those thoughts. Not to mention taking care of all the things you didn’t tend to during the conference.
So in that vein, I thought I’d followup my somewhat brief recap with a few more cool things I’ve found since the weekend:
my pal, Duane Storey, pulled some awesome out of his hat with his amazing photo mosaic of all the tagged photos in Flickr he could hoover down. He called it 1600 reasons to love Northern Voice and I’m sure he’ll have to rename it as that photo number keeps growing as attendees get out their card readers and upload more shots to the Flickr stream. As Gene said in his post, if you can’t find yourself in those photos, you weren’t there.
I twittered about it a bit and mentioned it in my first recap but I keep coming across blog posts and photos of people that I wish I had a chance to either spend more time talking to or even just meeting at the conference. I guess one of the cons of going to a conference in your own town, with a lot of friends in attendance, is that you don’t get outside your circle as much as you would if you were somewhere you didn’t know many people. That and there is never enough time.
I wish I had an opportunity to chat with Stewart Mader whose presentation about Wiki’s I really enjoyed at last years NV and missed his this year. He’s been rounding up some great links and comments from other people as well as doing a great job liveblogging a lot of sessions
Another missed meet/chat was with Alan Levine who gave a great presentation on “50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story” in which he outlines some of the amazing web tools out there you can use to tell a story. Something he did with all 50 tools and the same story. Alan also managed to capture one of my favorite open mic sessions at the Opening Night party by Scott Leslie called Trackback Love.
Jeff Young was the guest tonight speaking about many topics and their legal implications online. There was a lot of interesting discussion about copyright versus trademark, what aspects of a design can be legally owned, and the legal rights of bloggers and what (or who) they blog about. Jeff also spoke about a number of legal differences between Canada and the US.
Since everyoneisdoing it, I thought I should do the same although I have a hard time putting them in some kind of order…so they aren’t!
Here is my list of the random things from last year that stood out to me in no particular order:
my iPhone - in case you haven’t noticed, I kinda dig this phone. Sure it’s not perfect but overall, it’s hands down the best cellphone I’ve ever owned (and I’ve owned a lot). It’s also the first phone that has made me stop looking for a better one. It’s been a lot of fun this past year sharing it with friends and helping others with theirs. You’ll notice it’s the only tech item on this list (shocking!) but it’s been hard for it to not be a focal point on this site and with many friends. This is a geek blog afterall so if I had to pick one tech item from last year, this is it.
Falling in love with photography again - I fully blame/credit kk+ for this. As I’ve said before, after attending Kris’ Photography session at Northern Voice something struck a chord that made me want to pick up a camera again for more than just snapshots. Kris’ passion for taking photos really had an impact. That lead to picking up my first DSLR (after years of point and shoot and film cameras) and reconnecting with a fantastic creative outlet that I had been into before I became a (computer) geek. Thanks Kris!
Friends - I don’t talk about too many ‘personal’ things on this blog but this past year has been an immensely rewarding year for meeting new people and forging new friendships on and offline (real life FTW!). Social media/networking/whatever has really changed how people communicate, meet, collaborate and generally be human. I’m still surprised how many friends from my past I’ve reconnected with on Facebook as well as how many real life friends these tools has helped stay in contact with in ways that I never expected. Everything including SXSW, Northern Voice, photowalks, tech events, Camps (how come I never see tents?) and meetups has put me in contact with some truly amazing people (way too many to list). I look forward to building on those friendships and making more new ones this year and beyond.
Buying our first home - my wife and I made probably the biggest financial move of our lives this past summer and it has been an amazing experience. Even when we were stressed out and woefully unprepared for our big move, our friends came through and helped in ways that I can’t ever repay. It has been a fanatastic experience being a ‘homeowner’ - like a really good rollercoaster that can make you sick and giggle like a schoolgirl at the same time. The commute isn’t that bad and has been totally worth it!
I know that’s only 4…I can’t think of anything else from last year that’s had as much impact as these 4 things have had on me at a high level at least.
So 2007 in summary: I’ll call you with my iPhone to invite you over to my house and take your picture.
The importance of social media to us as Canadians - extending our reach without needing to leave home to reach the larger audiences that have been the exclusive domain of the U.S. Mainstream Media distribution business;
White hat social media (long term community building) vs. black hat social media (increasing your conversion rate for marketing). The future of social media will be what we make of it and will reflect the norms we impose on it;
The continuing importance of face to face meetups like Third Tuesday to lift online social relationships to the next level.
There is no hockey game tonight so you have no excuse for not coming! See you there!
Third Tuesday Vancouver is tonight! 