iPod vs. Zune: January 2008 High End MP3 Player Roundup

Software & Music Stores

The right to call a device great lies not only with the quality of the device itself, but how it interfaces with its host computer. It seems like everybody has their own idea of how to best do this, with wildly different results. When Apple came on to the MP3 player scene one of the things that set them apart was the tight integration between the iPod and iTunes compared to the poor music management applications that most other MP3 players of the time used, and since that day they have set the bar for what a good music management application should be like, and how a media player application should interface with a MP3 player device. If the music management/media player application isn't any good, then no matter how good the MP3 player is the device is going to be a tough sell.

Since then the quality of the music store associated with the management software has also become an important part of the equation, only for the importance of this to wane very quickly in the last few months. With all four of the major record labels having agreed to sell music without DRM(Digital Rights/Restriction Management) protection in partnership with Amazon & others, the kind of tie-ins between MP3 players and their manufacturer's associated music store isn't nearly as important as it was even three months ago. We're not in any way fans of DRM and given a chance to buy music with DRM we will take it every time, even if it's a bit more painful today.

The current legal situation among the various stores is best described as a mess, so we'd recommend avoiding the Zune and iTunes stores at this time. To date Amazon has signed up more labels than anyone else for DRM-free music, with all four major labels selling 256kbps MP3s through Amazon; meanwhile there is still music from those same labels on the Zune and iTunes stores that comes with DRM and at a lower bitrate. At this point it doesn't make sense to shop at the Zune or iTunes stores unless they carry something that Amazon doesn't, the lack of DRM is more important than the lack of integration.

Unfortunately the DRM-free spirit hasn't caught up with everyone yet. Some of the smaller labels still haven't signed agreements to sell their music without DRM and no one is selling video cotent without DRM, which means it's still not completely possible to break away from the manufacturer's store. Until the day that DRM-encumbered media is completely phased out, the music store associated with a device is still an important consideration.

iTunes

Apple has a certain love for ignoring common UI practices, something we've noted before with Safari for Windows and something where iTunes doesn't disappoint either. The application is right at home on a Mac where the UI conventions are right at home with everything else Mac OS X does, but it doesn't fit with Windows for obvious reasons. This doesn't make iTunes a bad application right off of the bat, but new users will spend a bit of time sinking before they learn to swim.

iTunes pre-dates the iPod as it was conceived as a media player, so it should be no surprise that it has a very strong media player presence to it even today. It feels like media player applications are often like politics: everyone has their own opinion, so we won't say too much about iTunes in this respect. In spite of whatever preferences we have for our favorite media player, iTunes works well as a media player.

The real meat of the issue begins when we talk about how well iTunes interfaces with the iPods we're reviewing today and how easy it is to use iTunes at this task. Apple may not have stuck to any of the Windows UI guidelines for the Windows version of iTunes, but the UI they came up with never the less is a solid one. Sending music over to an iPod is as easy as either dragging it over or synchronizing playlists.

Switching to iTunes as a music store, because Apple has the first-mover advantage they can lay claim to the largest selection of music and video files, and had plenty of time to work out the kinks. They were also the first to offer DRM-free music with iTunes Plus, but have since fallen behind Amazon. What's in their favor right now is the design of the store, and their larger selection of music and videos.

In terms of design, Apple is once again the player to beat. Fundamentally the iTunes store is just an embedded HTML-based store (with iTunes including a basic web browser to use it) with Apple having done a great job integrating it so that this fact isn't obvious. That said browsing the store does look & feel like a web browser which is to Apple's benefit. The store also functions as iTunes' podcast browser, which is a bit of an oddity on first glance but the concept of a single podcast being equivalent to a single song in an album works out well in the end. Pricing on the store is generally consistent, with most songs at $0.99 and most TV shows at $1.99; pricing on movies tends to vary however.

Besides laying claim to the largest selection of music among any of the online music stores, the iTunes store's other ace up its sleeve at this moment is video (movies and TV shows). Apple has most of the major studios on board, who are slowly testing the waters for online movie and TV show distribution while trying to not end up in same situation as the record labels. TV shows are purchased, while movies can either be rented or purchased with purchasing working exactly as it does for music, while renting comes with an odd 30days/24hours timer; rented movies can be started at any point within 30 days of rental, but must be finished within 24 hours.

Looking just at the timer on rentals, its clear Apple didn't come in with the bargaining power here that they could weld against the record labels. Even though the traditional video rental store analogy breaks down here since we're dealing with portable media players, 24 hours is still too short no matter how you go about deciding what would be long enough - it's not even a whole weekend. Furthermore the purchase/rental options for movies are wholly inconsistent, some movies can be rented, others can be purchased, others can be rented and purchased, but there's no way to tell for any of this without doing some advanced searching or pulling up a specific movie. The lack of consistency for the iTunes' movie store defiantly weakens what could be a major advantage for Apple.

Zune Software

With the Zune software package, Microsoft has gone in a notably different direction from Apple. iTunes was the media player that was expanded to be a store and sync with iPods, while the Zune software was built in the opposite direction. It's first and foremost a library management tool to synchronize media with the Zune, followed by a store, finally adding a media player. Perhaps this is because Microsoft already has the Windows Media Player or because they felt that the Zune software shouldn't be a media player application too, but either way the most immediate difference between the two is that while iTunes is a bonafide media player, the Zune software treats it solely as an afterthought. You can play some media with it, but for better or worse you're not going to want to.

In terms of design, it should come as no surprise to Windows Media Player users that Microsoft has decided to forgo its own UI conventions for the Zune software package. Structurally the Zune software is a mix of the Zune's own interface and Microsoft's designs, and frankly it's hard to get a good feel on it. The fundamental design is column-based with the UI going through great lengths to downplay this with few dividers among the columns and no row highlighting. Complimenting the UI is ample amounts of polish and effects; everything zooms around or fades in and out compared to the much more mundane iTunes UI.

But the fact of the matter is that Microsoft has attempted to be too slick for their own good here. The fundamental column design was the right choice, but then downplaying the columns wasn't. The downplaying results in a lack of contextual clues as to what's going on and what's important; the net result is that while it doesn't make the Zune software hard to use, it makes it harder than it should be. Polish is important because it attracts eyes in the first place but it should never supersede functionality which is exactly what happened with the Zune software package. We suspect the team that developed the Zune software UI wasn't the same team that developed the Zune device UI, how else do you explain the device UI being so good and the software UI being so bad?

Moving on we have the Zune marketplace, which is tightly integrated with the rest of the Zune software package and shares its same flaws as a result. Other than the flaws the UI inherits however, the Zune marketplace brings about no other great UI flaws of its own. It's easy to navigate and to its credit does a better job of displaying the download status of purchased items than iTunes does.

In terms of fidelity Microsoft beats both Apple and their web-based competition, DRM-protected songs are 192kbps WMA files (iTunes: 128kbps AAC), and DRM-free songs are whopping 320kbps MP3 files (iTunes: 256kbps AAC). Microsoft also enjoys the distinct advantage of the synergy between all of their products (the Zune software, the operating system, and the file format) making it possible to let many applications supporting WMA also play DRM-protected files from the Zune store, something Apple can't offer and something critical to Microsoft since the Zune software package isn't really a media player in the first place.

Given that Microsoft has a successful content distribution operation with their Xbox Live service, the lack of content on the Zune marketplace is odd. Certainly we don't expect them to be able to match Apple's music catalog due to their late start, but their video catalog for the Zune is almost non-existent when the Xbox Live service has a sizable catalog for movies and TV shows. You won't find any of that video content here for the Zune, the only thing you'll find are music videos. We'll cut Microsoft some slack here, the kind of licensing deals required to build any kind of decent video catalog are notoriously difficult to achieve, but still, to have nothing? The Zune marketplace needs movies and TV shows, and it needs them yesterday.

Microsoft does have one final ace up their sleeve however for the Zune marketplace, and that's music subscriptions, something Apple has never offered. For $15 a month, users can purchase a Zune Pass which will let them download virtually anything from the Zune's music catalog (we've been told there are some tracks that are not available on the pass, but we didn't find any) and then freely play them on any authenticated computer or Zune for the entire month. The music then expires should the Zune Pass not be renewed. If you're familiar at all with services like Real's Rhapsody or the new Napster then the idea is the same, with Microsoft using this as a weapon against the iPod in particular rather than every MP3 player on the market. We're not particular fans of this model since you don't get to keep anything in the end, but we can certainly see why it would be useful in the right situation.

Unfortunately we find ourselves having to end our look at the Zune marketplace on a very sour note. For whatever reason, Microsoft has decided to go with a point system for the Zune marketplace (the same one as with the Xbox Live in fact) with users needing to purchase blocks of Microsoft Points which they then spend on music and music videos. The problem here is two-fold: first and foremost there's no good reason to be using a point system. We can guess why Microsoft did it (micro-transactions are relatively expensive) but that doesn't excuse the fact that their competition (Apple, Amazon, etc) didn't have to resort to such a thing; Apple for example gets by on bundling all transactions for an account together and running them through at night. From a design perspective, a point system is a bad choice: it adds unnecessary steps to the process of buying something from the Zune marketplace.

Our second and far greater complaint about the point system however is that it's by its very nature exploiting customers. Microsoft Points aren't even at a $0.01-to-1point ratio, each point is in fact worth $0.0125, meaning each song that costs 79 points is really $0.9875. Points are arbitrary in the first place, so why are they worth anything other than a cent? Furthermore in purchasing points in blocks, eventually when customers quit the service they will not have been able to spend all of their points which in turn means Microsoft gets to pocket the unspent points/money for themselves.

Ultimately there's no nice way to word this: it's exploitation of the customer, plain & simple. A point system in no way helps the customer, but it is definitely in favor of Microsoft. We can not in good faith recommend using the Zune marketplace to purchase songs as long as Microsoft is using such a explicative system, as a consumer it doesn't make any sense to put ourselves in a losing situation like this when there are better stores out there.