Microsoft: Can the Zune HD Take Down the King?

By Peter Ha

Can Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest Zune, the Zune HD, take down the king? It depends on which king you’re talking about. As it stands, the iPod Touch is a whole different beast because of the App Store. What Microsoft has done with the Zune HD is nothing short of spectacular, but who is it really competing with? My BlackBerry can play videos and show me pictures taken on a recent trip. The HTC Hero and/or myTouch 3G can stream music from the likes of last.fm or Slacker. I can download MP3s from my iPhone. Everything the Zune HD does, I’ve been able to do with a slew of different devices that I already own.

You see, the features that the Zune team has been touting don’t interest me much. I don’t really care to see an artist’s bio, their pictures or anything of that nature. Sure, the modified IE browser is nice and works great, but I want to know how deeply integrated the Zune HD is going to be with other Microsoft devices like the Xbox 360. I don’t need to fork over extra cash for an HD dock to stream 720p content onto my TV. I can already do that through my Xbox 360, FiOS and whatever content is stored on my NAS. Tell me what the plans are for the next six months. Tell me when the damn thing is actually going to launch.

With that being said, please enjoy the short video that I took of the Zune HD in action. One thing I failed to capture was the on-screen keyboard. MS has taken a different twist, which may or may not be unique to the Zune HD, but it’s different than most other on-screen keyboards that I’ve seen. Unlike the iPhone (or any other device that lacks a physical keyboard) when you’re tapping away at the Zune HD’s on-screen keyboard; characters don’t pop up by themselves. Tap a character and its neighboring chums to the right and left will create a small arch with the center character popping up just a little more than the rest. It seemed to work well, but the firmware isn’t final so I’m unable to fully comment.

Image courtesy of Ben Patterson

“Intro” by The xx

The only other misstep I noticed was with the home button and Internet browser. When you’re navigating through every other feature of the Zune HD, a single tap of the home button brings you back to the main page, but when tapping the home button from within the browser it chorks hard. It takes two or three taps to get back to the home screen. But, again, the Zune HD I took a look at was definitely not final in any way.

Things are looking good for Microsoft and the Zune team with the HD, but I’m still waiting to hear what they have in store for the device because everything else is old hat.

Original post

Comments

[LongAAPL:]

It's ironic that the best thing Microsoft has produced in a long time is a dinosaur before it hits the market. If the video is accurate it looks like they have done a much better job of emulating the ipod with the new Zune than they have done emulating OSX with Vista. However, you hit on the essential point... the app store. The addition of e-mail, iCal, Addressbook, and all the thousands of apps on the iPod Touch put it on a different level from the mobile multimedia devices like the Zune. The Zune and the non-touch iPods days are numbered. Things of the past with shrinking margins.

Aug 11 01:06 PM

[jack dee:]

.

If MSFT launched a laptop fully loaded with free smartphone that made free calls worldwide and came with a $1,000 voucher to feed the third world. All for $49.99, tech crunch would still hate it. Somehow the color would not be right, maybe a button would feel "cheap", or it would just plain be uncool.

After all , MSFT is not a valley company.

Aug 11 01:14 PM

[rip:]

Hard to tell which article you read, since this one seems to rave about Zune HD. The only negative point the author makes, which is valid, is that the upgrade is years too late. Which is about right for Microsoft. They take years to catch up with innovations from Apple. Actually, the Zune team did it faster than usual. Problem here is that this is a solution with no market. The PMP market is mature and stagnant. If anything, its in decline as people move to smartphones.


On Aug 11 01:14 PM jack dee wrote:

> .
>
> If MSFT launched a laptop fully loaded with free smartphone that
> made free calls worldwide and came with a $1,000 voucher to feed
> the third world. All for $49.99, tech crunch would still hate it.
> Somehow the color would not be right, maybe a button would feel
> "cheap", or it would just plain be uncool.
>
> After all , MSFT is not a valley company.

Aug 11 01:53 PM

[frankz00:]

Short answer. No.

Aug 11 02:18 PM

[GetMeOnTop:]

Hmmm, Lets see. WHO CARES?????

Aug 12 08:35 AM

[boisterousbob:]

Not wishing to be anti AAPL I am long the stock, but I do think this Zune does something iphone/touch don't even try.

I will leave aside the irrelevance of HD media on a 3.5" screen, you REALLY can't see the content any better because of HD on a screen that small.

My iphone/touch (yes I own both) will not play 90% of the media in my library without conversion which is time consuming and error prone. This is part of AAPL's intention to fully control the user experience, by only natively supporting formats they are comfortable with. It is also in my view a serious drawback that prevents me from using the devices more fully.

If MSFT do the job properly with Zune, it will be trivial to get it to play anything in my library and I will then have the option to watch the same media on my windows PC, my television via XBox, or take it with me to watch on the Zune.

With its closed formats and tightly controlled environment, AAPL isn't even trying to provide me this convenience with iphone/touch.

While recognising the success and power of iTunes, I think there is room in the market for portable media players that simpy just play the darned media.

Sep 15 09:22 AM