I’m back in Old Blighty after a trip to LA-la land, having had a fantastic time sampling in bite size chunks of everything California has to offer, and a few events like Mobile Geeks of LA & Tuttle LA.
Initial observations - before I’d really even got there - included being impressed by the audio-visual system aboard Air New Zealand. The remote needs some work (finger breaking tough buttons aren’t exactly friendly) and the user experience could do with an overhaul as at the moment, selecting what to watch is a painfully convoluted process. In fact, are there any airlines that provide personalised touchscreen systems yet? Answers on a postcard please.
As the first few days of my trip past, one the biggest surprises came just after listening to Matt Singley rave about Zune and taking the time to watch a subsequent demo. I’m an avid iPod user, although if I’m honest, I hardly download music at all anymore.
I predominately use Spotify to build playlists of music I know that I love and Hype Machine to find new mixes or bands. However, Matt made a very good point. He pays $15 a month for unlimited downloads (with a hefty fair use allowance), and worked out that he’s saving almost $7,000 a year as a high volume user.
However, the songs are DRM protected and people have often said to him; ‘but what happens when you stop paying your subscription or want to move your music?’
His argument is simple; ‘when I’m getting such a good deal, why would I EVER stop paying my subscription?’
I see his point, and providing that Microsoft actually continue to run the service for years to come, he’ll be fine. A word of warning though, I would be slightly cautious about relying on one service alone so heavily, and am reminded of Jen Hanen’s woe after the demise of Nokia’s Lifeblog App.
I played around with the software, which I have to say is very well designed (we both noted that it’s probably been outsourced as it’s far too fluid for Microsoft, happy to be proven wrong though). One of biggest problems with the iTunes UI (user interface) is that it’s predominately list based. Whereas Zune is pretty much an iTunes copy, with the Genius bar becoming ‘Recommendations’, the same top artist/song lists and access to podcasts, it is much more visual.
One of the features I immediately saw the potential in was looking at what your ‘friends’ are and have been listening to. This integrates the same functionality as Lastfm, but for all of its potential for finding new music, I rarely look at what my contacts have been listening to on there either. Other than initial ‘I never had you down as an Abba fan’ amusement, I listen to specific suggestions directed at me, but don’t tend to trawl people’s libraries.
When I think about having this feature integrated into iTunes however, it becomes far more appealing. This is possibly something to do with the craving to immediately view and purchase that iTunes satisfies within me, instead of clicking onto another window from Lastfm.
Now, the first unsurprising flaw in all this is that there’s no software for Mac. I could mess about with parallels, but it’s a lot of work. I could do it, but while I’ve got everything else already in place, I don’t really have a strong enough desire to mess about with it.
Even if I could download the Zune software, I’d be able to upload and move music into on to my Zune library, but still wouldn’t have access to the Marketplace (Microsoft’s version of iTunes). Actually, I could access it by enabling ‘US’ as my location, but I wouldn’t be able to purchase anything. Oh, and I can’t actually buy the hardware either, it’s not launching till an estimates August 2009 in the UK, so I’d to have it shipped in from Europe or the US.
For all of its bad press, Zune has real potential based upon its software and purchasing model. However, it’s not making life easy for itself and I’m not going to abandon something so easy to use, for something that I can’t be certain will exist in five years. Those of you in the US, take a look, it might surprise you.