The Zune seen as the anti-Apple
Who is buying Zunes, and why? After all, market share aside, more than two million of the things have reportedly been bought by somebody since the first version appeared in late 2006. Robert Schaltenbrand suggests that these consumers simply find the Microsoft product superior. That isn’t a surprising analysis, because Schaltenbrand is the Zune’s brand manager. But in fairness, the product offers some distinct features, like a built-in FM radio receiver. And there is Zune Social, meant to let owners share playlists and actual music. This last idea — and the community that it implies — has been heavily promoted: you and your Zune friends can wirelessly swap songs; settle into your seat in a cafe and you can find fellow Zunesters around you and compare tastes with them; and so on. But zune News says the most salient feature of the Zune seems to be that it’s not an iPod. Jesse Thorn, host of the public-radio show (and popular podcast) “The Sound of Young America,” is a Zune proponent, praising, for instance, its ability to sync wirelessly with a computer. Plus he was able to update his first-generation Zune with the improved software and firmware designed for the newer version — in contrast to Apple’s charging iPod Touch owners for upgrades, he makes a point of saying.
Turns out Thorn has always resisted buying an iPod, having been put off initially by the price and later by the ever-growing number of “self-satisfied people carrying a ubiquitous object.” That sounds hostile, but Thorn is actually quite good-humored. On “Jordan Jesse Go,” another (less formal) podcast he co-hosts, he and his friend Jordan Morris regularly joke about the song-swap feature, inventing the term “rocket up your Zunehole” to describe the practice. Thorn also seems to take pleasure in examples of product-design oddities, like the inclusion of brown among the device’s first-generation color choices.