Microsoft Zune appeared not too long ago and since then the informationen has been coming in rather fast from pretty much all directions. Already much is known about the player, but there are still details left to be uncovered. Some of these have now been revealed by iLounge. First of all; the wheel that is fitted to the front is not a wheel but just four buttons: menu to the left, scroll up and down in the middle, play/pause to the right and we of course also have a hold button, but this has been placed on the top of the player. The user interface looks positive though.
This is more less identical to iPod’s GUI from what it seems, but with some tweaks then. The effects when browsing are apparently quite good, with the possibility to pick your own background. You can’t help think about whether MS is intruding on Creative’s patent here, but we will simply have to wait and see. While you scroll down the list the operating system will display a letter for how far you’ve come down the list.
Picture by iLounge
The player will also have an FM-radio, which feels like a must considering the high price. The player will also bring Wi-Fi support and according to iLounge there will be a possibility to exchange music between players, but that this music will only work for a limited amount of time. A day or so and we pressume that you have to have access to a Wi-Fi net for this to work.
From what it seems the unit will also be able to communicate with Xbox 360, I.e. if you have a Wi-Fi adaptor to this and have a harddrive. the latter is yet something we pressume, but it feels like a given.
Some less impressive news consists of the fact that the player will be bigger than most other competing players, which is understandable considering the content, but you still want it to be portable. And then we have the case which will be all plastic, which far from uncommon these days, but the last time plastic inspired a quality feeling must’ve been in the middle of the 80’s when plastic was considered cool.
Except from that iLounge seems far from truly impressed by the overall product and that MS would be able to threaten Apple with this player is rather hard to believe, but we should perhap take these subjective opinions with a pinch of salt until futhers.
