Swoon for Zune?

Engadget has a fantastic walkthru of the Zune. After watching that (twice), I think the Zune may have some staying power.

Here's what I like:

• Track flags - Yes, I happen to like this idea. Good job Microsoft.


• RDS - I don't really care for radio in my portable music player, but if it is in there, it's great that it makes use of identifying data that is available.


• Progress Bars - Ok, they don't work any better than an iPod, but they look snazzy!


• Pre-rated music - Just like Amazon and Netflix, items are pre-rated based on what the rest of the world thinks. This might help organize your music, and hopefully the pre-ratings get better as it knows more about you, like Netflix does.


• Backgrounds - This could look really bad, or it could be a nice way to customize your player. I say thumbs up.


• Brown - I like the brown color. No one else seems to, but I do.

What I don't like:

• Search everytime on wireless sends - This is terrible. If we've learned anything from Bluetooth, it's that recently and frequently used devices are good to remember. It is just silly that you have to search for the wireless device to send to every time you choose to send a file. Sending 10 items back to back? Looks like the Zune will make you search 10 times. Yay.


• No wireless sync - I don't really care that you can't buy music wirelessly. I'm more concerned that a (mainly) infrastructure technology is being used for peer to peer activities, and is not being used for wireless syncing. Unless I'm missing something, I have a Wi-Fi network, but I can't use it to sync with my Wi-Fi enabled Zune? What's up with that? If I want to burn my battery, that's my business. Microsoft must have other plans for the Wi-Fi. If they don't, why didn't they use Bluetooth 2.0? I'm curious to know the techincals of the search procedure that Microsoft is using. How does a Zune make itself discoverable and how do the other Zunes go find it?


• Cluttered - It isn't too bad, but the heading chains across the top are confusing. I still don't see what they're trying to tell me.

Track Flags

Podcasts are continuing to evolve as a marketing tool. Puma is using music to spead the word about their frangrances. Beatport regularly puts out a wicked mix made from new releases. Even Apple releases a podcast once a week with new tracks that they'd love for you to buy.

For the most part, these marketing vehicles are doing their job. I've been moved to buy many tracks that I heard for the first time on a podcast. The problem is, they are too hard to buy.

Podcasts are certainly a step up from the old way. Downloading a DJ mix and then searching for a tracklist is a pain. Some will have a .cue sheet, but even then, you have to have software capable of handling that .cue sheet and doing something reasonable with it. For those keeping score, iPods don't know what a .cue is.

When I'm grooving away to Beatport Burners, I frequently think to myself "I need to buy this." If I'm at my computer, I can make use of the brilliant links that you can build in to podcasts, but I'm never at my computer when I'm listening to podcasts. I'm always listening on my iPod, usually at work. That means I get to play the game of writing notes to myself on scraps of paper, or dropping entries in my Google Notebook. Surely there is a better way.

We need a solution for flagging tracks on our iPods. Microsoft's Zune is already rumored to support bookmarking of shared tracks. If Apple wants to justify the development time, they can mark this in the increased iTMS sales category, but certainly we'd have reason to flag tracks other than as a future purchase reminder. I can see flagging tracks to use in iPhoto slideshows, for use in a DJ set of mix tape you are working on, or even as one you'd like to email Jimmy about because you think he'd like it.


My suggested implementation borrows on UI that most users are already familiar with. First of all, I borrowed the flag icon from Mail.app. Most users are familiar with flagging important emails for further future action. I also needed a UI gesture that could be performed on the iPod. Apple already lets you click and hold on a track to add it to an On-The-Go playlist. All they need to do is support that same gesture while on the track ID screen in a podcast.

1. From the default podcast screen...button click to enter track ID mode.


2. Click and hold. Flag icon is added to verify this track is flagged.

Later, back in iTunes, you can create a smart playlist with flagged tracks. If they had a link associated with them, you'd get the typical cirlcle-arrow icon to go to that link. If a link was not assigned, you'd at least have the information about the track that you'd normally scratch down on paper.

Here's hoping for this in iTunes 7!