Difference Between Zune and Ipod

For a very long time now, the ipod has been king of the portable music industry. Leading with by a very large margin against those who follow. The giant company, microsoft, has also ventured into the music player business with their device called zune in an attemp to overthrow apple’s ipod. Microsoft and Apple have a long standing rivalry especially in the PC industry making the battle a little bit more interesting.

The ipod has been around for a few years and have spawned more than a few versions to compete in different brackets. From the standard ipod, video ipod, nano, and even the ‘iphone like’ ipod touch they have the whole spectrum in the music player market covered. The ipod is very popular because of the following features:
● Controls ‘“ Ipod users simply love the simplicity and ease of use of the ipods clickwheel that allow fast searching of songs. More so with the touch interface in the ipod touch.

● Interface ‘“ The software in the ipod allows for very easy music searches that displays song lists and videos in a sleek and sylish fashion. It also connects seamlessly to apples itunes to quickly sync up music files.

● Music Store ‘“ Apple’s itunes store is one of the biggest reasons of the ipods dominance in the mp3 market. Providing the user with an easy and hassle free method of buying songs individually rather than whole albums.

● Design ‘“ The design of the ipod has become iconic and is already synonymous with music players. Even its simple with stereo headphones are now considered to be very stylish.

The zune, on the other hand, has only been around for a few years. And obviously some of its design aspects have been adapted from the ipod design with mixed results. Even though the backing from microsoft is huge, the zune has failed to live up to expectation by a large margin. Here are some of its notable features:

● The zune has an ipod inspired circular d-pad. But its just that, a circular d-pad and nowhere near as innovative as the ipod clickwheel.

● The software in the zune is an adapted version of windows ce and is actually quite good. The problem lies with syncing it to your pc. Multiple problems occur like stalling and crashing that has certainly annoyed a lot of people.

● One advantage of the zune is its larger screen. Good when you want to watch movies.

● There is also a seamless wi-fi feature for sharing music. Though its very restrictive and almost useless for now, it is a very good potential to improve upon.

As of today, the zune is nowhere near the status of the ipod and the zune bashers out there number in the thousands. But given the size and strength of microsoft, the zune might just become a contender in the future.

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