Looney Zunes

As already stated, I am a recent iPodder. I pride myself on being fad-resistent and only bought one when it suited my purpose. However, I always appreciated the aura that Apple built around their devices. As a technologist who can enjoy stylish items, it was good to see a company willing to spend time making their devices look good. After all, most households own a computer and the beige boxes (which I own) aren't exactly works of art that you would want have on display. Think back to cool science fiction movies like Gattaca and you can see what we needed; Apple provides that. For me, though, I want value for money and that's why I will continue to buy my PCs from small computer shops and then hide them in my study.

So Microsoft figures it is time to give Apple a run for its money and along comes the Zune. I won't describe it because you must be living in a cave if you haven't heard about it. Odd name, but odder still is that it appears that the obvious domain name, www.zune.com, is already taken. Surely that would have been a marketing showstopper. Also, my curiosity lead me to check out the related store. It doesn't appear to be that easy to find. I first Googled "zune store" but there really wasn't anything apparent. So it turns out that it is called Zune Marketplace, off the www.zune.net site which under Firefox looks like something a 12 year old created, a white page with images and some text. This is being a bit picky, but exactly what generation is "Welcome to the Social" supposed to appeal to? Sounds very 1920s to me. I did like this cheeky dig at the marketing campaign. Nonetheless, the Xbox survived to the second incarnation (although gamers are a pretty fickle demographic) and it will be interesting how the Zune performs.