I've been a closet Microsoft fanboy almost my whole life and as you can imagine, I've been pretty disappointed over the last few years. Aside from its enterprise offerings, Microsoft's products have been pretty flat and predictable. In the meantime, we've seen two platforms really take off that being Apple and Google. Apple has superior design and user experience than anyone out on the market, and Google has great engineers who can churn out very functional and useful web-based products. Meanwhile, Microsoft quietly has been pocketing gobs of profits that nobody seems to be paying attention to. Their platforms still dominate the market... they just aren't as exciting. I don't know if it is a branding thing or a marketing thing... I really have no idea because I honestly always thought (aside from IE) they had good products. Anyway, it is what it is, so I'll get to the point of this article.
I hate iTunes as does most of the rest of the world. One common item that almost the entire tech community agrees with is that iTunes is a terrible software product that they really want to get rid of. Even the most hardcore Apple fanboys are pretty disappointed with iTunes. Problem is.. they can't get rid of it because they have some sort of Apple device that they need to sync with iTunes. I'm in the same boat.
I bought an iPod nano several years ago for listening to podcasts and audiobooks. I found that podcasting is the best way to get news that matters and actually affects my life and have been addicted ever since. The device is functional and does what I need it to do. However, I think I'm going to buy a Zune.. or Windows phone touch.. or whatever Microsoft's iPod Touch offering ends up being. Why? iTunes sucks and the Zune software has absolutely blown me away in just a couple of days. I'm now carefully planning my escape plan from Apple's iron grip.
The Zune software is a little difficult to handle at first. Not because it is poorly designed, but only because the user interface is different than the normal view that you'd see in any ordinary program. It only took me about 5 minutes to get it and I really love it now.
The Zune software does almost everything better than iTunes. As a podcast listener, the first thing I noticed is that the Zune software immediately found my existing iTunes podcast library and recognized them as podcasts and showed them to me in the Zune podcast section. It's like they knew people were going to have iTunes info on their computer and it just picked it up and pulled it right in. How about music? Well, it found all my music, too. It grabbed everything from where the iTunes library would normally hold its music. Even though iTunes creates a bunch of sub-folders, Zune grabbed everything in the my music folder. Now, I actually don't keep my music there, but the software easily let me point it to the location for my music actually resides. It even let me remove the 'My Music' folder so whatever junk is in there doesn't get picked up in my Zune library and turn it into a mess. The music showed up INSTANTLY! In iTunes, I had to specifically point it to a folder whenever I added music onto my computer. EVEN IF I copied the music to my iTunes library. When I dropped a folder in the location where my music resides, Zune recognized it almost instantly and it was added to the Zune music directory. Overall, the UI and the way it handles your music is far superior. Here are a few other points that make me very happy.
- The Photo display is the best I've seen in any software product on the market. It recognizes your photos based on the folder you have them in, and during a slideshow, it fills the entire UI with a photo. Simply moving the mouse brings up unobstructed controls to let you move on or exit the slideshow.
- Video is the same way. It sees your video files and then when you play them, the UI disappears and all you see is the video. Very slick looking. Again - moving the mouse brings up the controls that you need to stop, exit, etc..
- The marketplace is amazing. For podcasting, the controls and viewing of the podcast directory is much slicker than the cold iTunes interface. The directory is full with everything you'd find on iTunes. This reminds me.. I need to get my michiganexpats.com podcast in the Zune marketplace.
- Purchasing music - I don't actually have much experience with this, so I'll have to defer. But $15/mo for unlimited listening and 10 songs to keep seems decent. I really don't listen to music that much, though. However, this brings me to the Zune failpoint.
- Internet Radio isn't there!!!! That is the only thing missing from the Zune software. I got so sick of the way iTunes did internet radio that now I'm actually doing it in windows media player which, I'm sad to say, is actually a better experience.
So, I'm fully convinced that the Zune software is far superior to iTunes. I encourage those who do not yet have an Apple device to NOT BUY ONE. There is FINALLY an alternative. If I could go back, I would have purchased a ZuneHD instead of an iPod. But now, I'm stuck. So I say to you all, my friends. You have an option now.
Or do you?
With the hoards of people out there who despise the price and slavery that comes along with being forced into a 2-year contract, Apple has proven that there is a market for an iPhone sans phone - Hence, the iPod touch. But it's still an Apple product. So you are still a slave. When Microsoft releases its zune-type companion with the Windows Phone 7 OS, I will likely purchase it immediately. I will be free of Apple's way of doing things and I'll have great software paired with a device that does what I need it to do.
The release of Windows Phone 7 could possibly be Microsoft's playing "The Empire Strikes Back" card. I think Microsoft is too late and I don't think they will succeed with this, but at least this time they can claim that they actually have a better product. For everyone's sake, I really hope they succeed.
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