It's not enough to pay extortion to the music industry - no, MS had to be even stupider. On the hit parade of "how many dumb things can we do at once", there are these two:

• The Zune introduces a new DRM scheme that is unrelated (and incompatible with) PlaysForSure. Using the old MS standard? You're screwed
• On Windows, and used to Windows Media Player? Too bad for you - it doesn't work with the Zune, either

Or, as the NY Times put it in a review:

Microsoft’s proprietary closed system abandons one potential audience: those who would have chosen an iPod competitor just to show their resentment for Apple’s proprietary closed system.

To make matters worse, you can’t use Windows Media Player to load the Zune with music; you have to install a similar but less powerful Windows program just for the Zune. It’s a ridiculous duplication of effort by Microsoft, and a double learning curve for you.

So how is the Zune? It had better be pretty incredible to justify all of this hassle.

On that score, the review sounds positive - it looks like the Zune hits the usability mark well. On the other hand, the WiFi thing is just weird: it allows song sharing with other Zunes, but not with anything else:

It all works well enough, but it’s just so weird that Zunes can connect only to each other. Who’d build a Wi-Fi device that can’t connect to a wireless network — to sync with your PC, for example? Nor to an Internet hot spot, to download music directly?

That's a feature that a dominant player like the iPod could make use of, given the ubiquity. The Zune? Putting in WiFi drains battery life and adds a feature that's just stupid. It would be truly cool to be able to buy new stuff w/o having to lug my laptop around - but no, couldn't have that. Most likely, MS' pals at the RIAA had a fit over the idea. The way the sharing feature is implemented is bound to irk anyone who uses it, too:

This copy protection is as strict as a 19th-century schoolmarm. Just playing half the song (or one minute, whichever comes first) counts as one “play.” You can never resend a song to the same friend. A beamed song can’t be passed along to a third person, either.

What’s really nuts is that the restrictions even stomp on your own musical creations. Microsoft’s literature suggests that if you have a struggling rock band, you could “put your demo recordings on your Zune” and “when you’re out in public, you can send the songs to your friends.” What it doesn’t say: “And then three days later, just when buzz about your band is beginning to build, your songs disappear from everyone’s Zunes, making you look like an idiot.”

That's not the way to build interest in a cool feature - it's a way to convince people that your device is broken, because a feature that looks like it should work won't. At a high level, this demonstrates how DRM is a bug, not a feature. At a usability level, it's a flood of user reported errors waiting to happen, all of which will have to be answered thusly:

"No, really - it's supposed to work that way"

Yeah, that will make customers happy. This also sounds like a problem for a second mover attempt:

The Zune store is also missing gift certificates, allowances, user-submitted playlists and so on. And believe it or not, the Zune store doesn’t let you subscribe or download podcasts. (Maybe Microsoft just couldn’t bring itself to type the word “pod.”)

Most likely, Apple's bozo attempt to own the term "pod" is getting in the way. However, it's a hole for customers looking to buy a Zune to replace their iPod. Listen to podcasts? You're on your own again, copying mp3 files from the net and hand pushing them. That's a lot of things, but useful isn't one of them.

Perhaps, as per common MS form, when they get to Zune 3.0, they'll have a real competitor. For now, I think I'll stay with the iPod.

Technorati Tags: zune, microsoft