Zune Impressions

I got a Zune. It was a ship gift. If you look at the logo on the back of my Zune, it should be clear what occasion was being celebrated:

It’s pretty cool getting something like this. Lotus and Iris were also generous to developers when we shipped products — Iris sent the entire R5 team to the Bahamas. In contrast, during my four years at IBM the only ship gift I can recall receiving was an “I Survived Workplace 1.5″ t-shirt.

I’ve owned the Zune for a couple weeks and wanted to jot down my impressions. I’m not a typical “first adopter” but I think there’s plenty to like about the Zune.

It’s thinner than my 4G iPod Photo and slightly longer. The screen is bigger and brighter. I like the UI;l it’s flashier than the iPod but not just eye candy. It really takes advantage of the screen. Photos and videos make more sense on the larger screen. I haven’t tried to watch a movie on it but we loaded some short videos that we made (and a couple from Youtube) and they looked great. Music sounds a bit better on the Zune than my iPod. I can’t quantify it exactly. Just a bit crisper.

The Zune desktop software was easy to install. Overall it’s comparable to iTunes, maybe a bit less glitz than iTunes 7.0. Setting up Zune sync was straight-forward. It found my iTunes library and imported everything including playlists — that is, except for the small number of songs purchased from iTunes — iTunes DRM only works on iPods. The Zune handles multiple audio codecs including Apple’s non-DRM AAC format. The one notable item lacking is podcast support. For now, I’m letting iTunes update my podcasts and then syncing the Zune to pull them down.

I’ve owned my 4G iPod for a few years. My wife has an iPod nano and my younger son has a new iPod Shuffle. The Zune is comparable to my 4G iPod in size but pictures and videos are much nicer on the larger screen.

The phyiscal look of the Zune and the UI don’t come across well in photos. The tactile outer skin and slightly transluscent top are really attractive. And, as I said, the UI is slick. While I do like the iPod’s wheel, the Zune’s controls feel very natural. And I don’t accidently adjust the volume as I often do on my iPod.

What about music sharing over WiFi? I’ve tried this with co-workers. It’s cool but I’d like to be able to do more with the WiFi. At the very least, it would be great to be able sync over WiFi. Given how much Nintendo has been able to do with WiFI on the DS, I’m sure that there are other applications for this feature.

We got an XBox 360 for Christmas — it was quite a geek gadget Christmas at our house this year. One thing that’s really nice on the 360 is the integration with the Zune. Plug it into a USB port and the Zune’s music, photos and videos are instantly available. And it can charge the Zune as well. You can also plug an iPod into the XBox 360 as well and share music (except for music from the iTunes store due to DRM).