Right On Technology

The biggest fight in the foreseeable future in the tech world is clearly going to be in the realm of portable computing devices (such as Microsoft’s new HD Zune, but more on that in a minute). Right now, clearly the 800 lbs gorilla in the room is Apple and their various lines of Ipods and Iphones. The question is, can anyone come along to challenge their dominance? Up until now, the answer was a pretty clear no (the Palm Pre was close, but no cigar).

Enter the soon to be released Microsoft Zune HD. For those of you not familiar with the Zune, it is the red-headed step child of the MP3 player world. The also ran that could never do what Apple’s devices could. However, now they have a product that is possibly worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Ipod. Cnet recently got to feel and play with one for about an hour, and reports are very good.

Apparently the Zune will have a very Ipod Touch kind of feel, very minimal, sleek, and of course mostly a touch based machine. The real nice thing about it is that you can sync it with your Xbox 360, especially movies, television shows and music that you purchase from the Microsoft Marketplace. The Marketplace has become a very nice feature, it’s not quite Itunes yet, but it’s very close. You will also be able to playback movies at 720p on the Zune, or dock it to your television and playback movies via the Zune on your TV. This is a feature that has been sorely lacking in the gadget world and essentially gives you portable movie playing ability.

One of the best features of the Zune is the fact that you don’t have to deal with Apple’s “walled garden” and very closed system. It is very easy to transfer any MP3 to the system, or you can subscribe to Rhapsody, which allows you to access unlimited number of songs for a low monthly subscription. Imagine having the entire Itunes catalog available to you for $15 bucks a month and you can add/remove songs whenever you like. That is what Rhapsody is, and the future of music I think (even Itunes will get there eventually).

Finally, the Zune will have wifi capability. The wifi capability will allow you to connect directly with the Marketplace and surf the Internet. Reportedly the browser is quite fast, maybe even a rival to Safari on the Iphone. If so, that is very good news indeed.

The big questions still left are flash and battery life. So far, there is no flash support, which means that sites like YouTube or Pandora are out (ouch). However, they could patch it at some point and add it. However, since Microsoft owns Silverlight, my guess is they want to some how use that technology, they don’t want to encourage anyone to use Adobe or other 3rd party apps. I have high hopes for the Zune HD, and I’ll definitely be getting one when it comes out, any competition for Apple is a good thing.