A Study in PMP (Personal Media Players)

I own both an iPod and a Zune, (5g Video and First Generation, respectively) I paid about the same for both on the ebay/woot after market. From a technical stand point my Zune far outreaches my iPod. Out of the box the G1 Zune had Wi-Fi, a faster processor and larger screen. But the iPod is the clear market dominator, so there is a virtual sea of third party “stuff” that will work with the iPod and not the Zune. Case in point, my car’s radio head unit works with my iPod, Bose makes my desktop iPod “Dock” with speakers, and because of the economy of scale, stuff like charges are much cheaper than comparable stuff for the Zune.

However market dominance in third party add-ons is not the only reasons to pick a device. So let me compare the two devices on a one-two-one scale.

Both devices play DRM free MP3s, and nether play open source OGG file. Both devices require trans-coding of Video to play it on the device, Apple uses MP4/H.264 while Zune uses the Windows Media format. The trans-coded files are roughly the same size and quality once finished, both can be played back on their respective platforms (Mac/Windows for the iPod and just Windows for the Zune), and both can be played via the “extension” options for the Desktop, (Apple TV for iPod, Xbox 360 for Zune).

The Zune has a larger screen, which makes viewing video much easier. I watched most of the first season of House MD while on the plain to Africa last fall on my Zune. The video screen on the iPod is more like an afterthought, or perhaps it was kept small to keep continuity with the earlier non-video iPods.

The Zune also has Wi-Fi, but that Wi-Fi is COMPLETELLY useless. You can use Wi-Fi to “Sync” your Zune, or to “Squirt” crippled music files to another Zune User, and that is all, nothing more. The Zune has an FM radio. The iPod is completely without any wireless connectively, in or out.

Real World battery life on both devices is about comparable. 2 to 3 hours of Video, 4 to 6 hours of Music. Both devices can store and show resized images synced for the desktop. This is where I was caught of guard with both units. I have 100,000+ images socked away on my systems. This amount of pictures can easily fit on the available memory of both devices, but both iTunes and Zune Desktop “resize” an image to make it fit on your device’s screen (which makes the image smaller in both pixels and bytes). However the resizing/coping process takes a few moments per image, and with the amount of images I have, the process took most of a day.

The Desktop Software is where the two devices really diverge. Both iTunes and the Zune Desktop take an “all your media are belong to us” approach to your music and video libraries. It’s more fare to compare Zune Desktop 2 to iTunes rather than Zune Desktop 1. ZD1 was a joke, ZD2 is more like a farce.

iTunes benefits from it’s long standing install base, so the software guys at Apple have some experience, feedback, etc, on what iTunes needs to be. Microsoft’s ZD2 chose to live in a cave and ignore the lessons learned by Apple.

<aside> To be fair to Microsoft, a cooperate lawyer was most likely standing over the shoulder of each programmer, everyday, to make sure that ZD did not look or act like iTunes, just to avoid a lawsuit. A note to Microsoft, patent law in this country needs serious reform, and that will only happen when a) congress does something (unlikely) or b) corporate titans fight it out to prove that software and basic concepts are not patentable. Microsoft, take the hit in the court room, your save money in the long run, have a better product, and we just may have a better society. </aside>

ZD2 just seems so illogical to me, and they also have made it Pink. Now I’m not opposed to the color Pink, I have a seven year old daughter, so most of my house is Pink. However I do want my Windows apps to look like Windows apps. ZD2 goes out of its way to look “cool”, but in reality it’s user interface is just annoying.

In the end it was the uselessness of the wifi, and the sad shape of the Zune Desktop which made me chose to use my iPod as my daily PMP. Ironically the Zune has the greater potential, so if the hacking community will rewrite the Zune OS I could very will see myself switching back to the Zune hardware (less the Zune Hardware).

With just some very basic software changes the downsides of the Zune could be over shadowed by the additional benefits. With full and complete Wi-Fi the Zune could easily become a Wireless Streaming Content receiver. The Zune could also have some basic information apps like weather, stocks, traffic, etc. While the physical interface is somewhat limited, Microsoft could do an online system very much like they used for their SPOT technology. A user could, from their desktop, go to MSN and select the content and apps they would want to use from their Wi-Fi Zune. Then when connecting from the Zune the user would have a more limited, but completely mobile, access to those previously selected items.

With better Wi-Fi access the Zune could become a great and easy Wi-Fi Network Attached Storage. All of the hardware and processing power are there, this is just simple software changes.

The Wi-Fi angle on the Zune still bugs me. Why not have used Bluetooth? You could accomplish the same limited “Syncing” and “Squirting” but also have added Bluetooth Stereo headset support. While this article has been limited to the Zune G1 vs. the iPod G5 Video, the same question hold true for the newer iPod Touch.