Asher Hawkins Of Forbes Likes The Zune

[David Tucker]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/12/19/ipodtouch-zune-smackdown-tech-personal-cz_ah_1219ipodzune.html' target='_blank'>http://www.forbes.com/technology/20...19ipodzune.html</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>&ldquo;A 120 GB iPod Classic goes for $249, though its screen is roughly two-thirds the size of the Zune's. As far as music goes, when you're strolling through town listening to your tunes with your device in your pocket, will you really care which of the two you're using? The sad fact is, many would. The level of brand loyalty Apple enjoys today was prompted by increasingly aged innovations. As I see it, the main reason people turn their noses up at the Zune is that Microsoft is seen as uncool.&rdquo;</em></p><p>If that isn&rsquo;t the truth, I don&rsquo;t know what is. <a href="http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/12/19/ipodtouch-zune-smackdown-tech-personal-cz_ah_1219ipodzune.html" target="_blank">Asher Hawkins did a side by side comparison</a>&nbsp;of the Zune and iPod Touch. This is a comparison that at first glance seems a bit unfair given the very different nature of the two devices. When Asher admits to having been an Apple customer since age 5, then I didn&rsquo;t exactly expect an unbiased look. I give Forbes credit for their professionalism though! Asher was very positive about the Zune in comparison to the iPod, even questioning why someone would choose a classic over the Zune 120.</p><p>Other than the fact that Asher was pretty positive on the whole thing, the most interesting comments came in regards to what you use day to day to listen to your music. And I agree completely. There is a difference of course between today&rsquo;s MP3 players and yesterday&rsquo;s CD player market. If you had a CD it would (usually) work in any player available.</p><p>Because of DRM and varying file formats, that&rsquo;s of course not as easy anymore. I would guess, however, that most people who have their own music collections have them available in MP3 so that they can listen to them on any device they choose.</p>

[Janak Parekh]

Perhaps Asher deserves a little credit for her(?) balance, but this is an absolutely terrible article. It omits both the Zune's and the iPod touch's biggest features: Zune Pass and the App Store, respectively. The former makes the Zune a terrific music-exploring device, while the latter makes the iPod touch a mobile computing platform to compete against Windows Mobile.

In fact, it may be the worst comparison article I've read on these products, period.

--janak

[David Tucker]

Well, given that both devices have been compared and reviewed extensively by everyone, I found Asher's thoughts in general more interesting than a feature comparison. We've had plenty of those.

[Janak Parekh]

Well, given that both devices have been compared and reviewed extensively by everyone, I found Asher's thoughts in general more interesting than a feature comparison. We've had plenty of those. But, by discounting their key features, you're making an utterly worthless comparison. As many readers noted, a more apt comparison if music is your only use case is the iPod classic vs. the Zune. If she preferred the Zune as an MP3 player then, that's fine. But she considers the iPod touch expensive while discounting the features that make it a premium product.

--janak

[David Tucker]

What are the key features of the Touch exactly?

[Janak Parekh]

I don't understand your question? :confused: You're not seriously implying that it has no features that differentiate it from the Zune (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/), are you?

--janak

[David Tucker]

The author was pretty clear that they didn't think WiFi enabled browsing was very important in an MP3 player and I tend to agree. Other than that they also stated that the 8 GB model was pretty limiting on actually using the other features and even 32 GB wasn't that great for large amounts of video & other media.

What exactly on there is different about the touch than the Zune other than web browsing and a bigger screen. The screen is the nicest feature of the Touch. But with limited memory unless you're willing to shell out $400 then using it isn't much fun.

Its an MP3 player. And a nice one. It plays music and movies just like the Zune does though. What on that page makes it so special, exactly? My question still stands. You gave me a feature page of features almost exactly mirrors the Zune.

[Janak Parekh]

David,

Either you're:

a) willfully ignoring the fact that the touch is a full-powered mobile device, with email (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/mail.html), web (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/safari.html), PIM (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/calendar.html) (with synchronization), installable applications (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/appstore/) ranging many classes of software, including games (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/games.html) thanks to its rich API on top of a full mobile OS, all of the above with a fast CPU, an excellent GPU, and a touch screen that provides rich UI interaction;

b) don't think these are worthwhile differentiating factors from a Zune;

c) genuinely unaware of what the recent iPhone/Touch OS platform contains. (The iPod touch contains nearly all of the features of the iPhone, excepting the phone but with the Nike+ integration (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/nike.html).)

If it's (c), I strongly suggest you try a touch out at some time, either a friend's or at an Apple Store. It is a completely different, far more extensible platform than the Zune, something more competitive with Windows Mobile 6.1 Classic or the Android platform. The difference between the latter two and the iPod touch is that the touch also contains a first-class music and video playing app, comparable to the Zune in most aspects except for the aforementioned Zune Pass/subscription music platform. The iPhone/iPod touch are precisely why there's been rumors of Microsoft adding the Zune interface to WM.

If it's (a) or (b), then I'm afraid we have nothing further to talk about. I am all for the Zune succeeding as a device, but calling the touch and the Zune as roughly equivalent featurewise is simply incorrect, incomplete, and misleading, and a disservice both to the touch and the Zune.

--janak

[David Tucker]

If I'm shopping for an PMP then I don't care about anything other than the features that facilitate its use as a PMP. Its like when someone tells me their phone's camera is better than mine. That may be true...but it doesn't matter to me since I'd just as soon have no camera.

Same with most of those features. If you REALLY need mobile email or web connectivity you won't be using a Touch with only a wifi connection. You'll have a phone that does keep you connected. That makes those features superfluous at best. And if you don't need the features enough to have a data enabled phone...I seriously doubt most of those people would choose to hunt down a wifi hotspot just to get their email on the go.

You present the Touch as basically not an MP3 player. I don't think that's how Apple markets it.

[doogald]

I think that most people who are buying an iPod Touch - and I understand that they are very, very popular (they currently sit number 1 and number 2 on Amazon, with the black 8 GB Nano third) - are not buying it merely to be an MP3 or video player.

You present the Touch as basically not an MP3 player. I don't think that's how Apple markets it.

Then maybe you missed the ubiquitous ad? (http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/gallery/ads/)

[edit] My son has a Touch, by the way, and it really is a very nice MP3 player as well.

[Janak Parekh]

If I'm shopping for an PMP then I don't care about anything other than the features that facilitate its use as a PMP. The original article says nothing about comparing the PMP features of the two. The comparison is between the devices themselves.

Its like when someone tells me their phone's camera is better than mine. That may be true...but it doesn't matter to me since I'd just as soon have no camera. It is nothing like that, since most phones have a lousy camera. The touch has an excellent application suite.

Same with most of those features. If you REALLY need mobile email or web connectivity you won't be using a Touch with only a wifi connection. You'll have a phone that does keep you connected. That makes those features superfluous at best. Says who? I have at least two friends who bought a touch to use as a mobile Wi-Fi terminal, amongst other things, and they enjoy it immensely as such. The ubiquity of Wi-Fi hotspots in a city like New York makes this not only possible, but practical. Some people don't want to be (or can't afford being) tied into a two-year contract with unlimited data, which can get expensive.

This is still ignoring, though, all of the apps and games that can be run on the touch without any network connection. When I'm on the subway and out of data connectivity on my iPhone, I frequently make use of not only the iPod, but also applications like eReader to read ebooks or games (of which I have about 15 installed). I also have an excellent RSS reader, called ByLine (http://www.phantomfish.com/byline.html), which has top-notch offline support and syncs with my Google Reader account.

You present the Touch as basically not an MP3 player. I don't think that's how Apple markets it. What doogald said, and look at all the links I added in my previous posts. If you think calling it an "iPod" is poor branding, that may be possible, but it is nevertheless selling like hotcakes. But Apple is definitely marketing this as much more than a MP3 player. If you hold one with firmware v2 or later and turn it on, it's immediately obvious that this is the case, given that most of the icons on the main screen are not music or movie-related.

--janak

[Jason Dunn]

At the risk of inflaming this multi-quote argue-fest any further, I have to jump in and say that there's really no comparison between the Zune 80/120 and the iPod Touch. The iPod Touch is, for all intents and purposes, a PDA. The Zune is an MP3 player. The Zune 80/120 doesn't address any of the needs of someone who would buy an iPod Touch over an iPod Classic, and if someone said they wanted to buy an iPod Touch, I'd never recommend they look at a Zune - unless they said that the ONLY reason they wanted a Touch was for large screen video playback, music, etc. But I suspect most people going for a Touch also want the applications and games part of it, which the Zune has no answer for (the bundled Zune games don't amount to much).

[jdmichal]

Jason pretty much beat me to the punch, to say that the Touch is a PDA, not a PMP.* I think this is the basic point that Dave was making also; either you're looking at PDAs or PMPs. But, in my experience, mix-and-matching product classes for comparisons is ALWAYS a bad idea. The best you can do is compare them using the intersection of their feature set, to which both groups always complain about features X and Y not being in the comparison.

* With the understanding that most PDAs also include PMP functionality.