Zune Music vs. iTunes
While the Zune store is, at the moment, minimally stocked compared to the iTunes store, it does offer a subscription service that iTunes doesn't: $15 a month to download everything you want. The store doesn't have any videos, movies or TV shows to download, at least for the time being, but you can upload your own video files to the device. Zune does support unprotected AAC files much in the same way that iPod supports unprotected WMA (Microsoft-proprietary) music files. One major plus to the Zune player noted by more than one reviewer is a more streamlined system for file navigation. It takes fewer screen changes and fewer button presses to get to the file you want. Of course, Zune doesn't have Apple's Click Wheel. It has buttons that look somewhat like the Click Wheel, but they're just buttons; and iPod's Click Wheel alone has won it lifetime loyalty from more than a few users.
Microsoft's Zune holds its own in the media-player world. But iPod is the product of Apple's single-minded dedication, and it shows. It looks sleeker, it's lighter, slimmer and smaller. iPod supports Windows, but Zune doesn't support Mac OS X. Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme, while far from perfect and arguably not all that fair, is play-oriented, not time-oriented, which most people see as a more logical way to track and limit usage.
The iTunes Store is such a tremendous plus for the iPod, it's hard to give it its due props. Not only does it offer an exceptionally broad range of media, but its payment methods are more straightforward than the Zune Store's. For Zune, you need to purchase chunks of points, and points don't match up to dollar amounts. For some reason, 79 points is the equivalent of 99 cents, which is the cost of a song at both stores. Both players automatically sync with their media-player software to download purchased songs, but early reports have the Zune software performing somewhat poorly compared to iPod's software performance. Especially when it comes to syncing, Zune's initial efforts are a bit glitchy.
Microsoft acknowledges that Zune is a first effort. The player only comes in one capacity: 30 GB. iPod comes in multiple capacities and form factors tailored to fit the needs of everyone who walks into an electronics store for any reason. But the division that created Zune is the same one that's been churning out new, upgraded versions of Xbox every few years, so we can definitely expect to see Zune upgraded sometime soon. For now, most industry experts agree that Zune is the lesser media player, but it does the job and even excels in some areas where iPod falls a bit short. One thing is for sure: The war is far from over.
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