Microsoft Releases Third Generation Zunes: The Secret Sauce Is The Software

While we all should know by now that Apple plans to release something later today, news that Microsoft had released the latest generation of the Zune sorta caught us off guard. Not that they weren’t rumors of an impending release, but announcing anything the same day, or even the day before, an Apple event is pretty much absurd. But here we are.

Right, so Microsoft has released the third generation of its Zune portable media player. If they look familiar, that’s because they’re the same as last year’s model, just with increased storage capacity. The clunky hard drive model comes with 120GB of space for $249, while the 16GB flash model comes in at $199.

The fact is that the hardware isn’t all that impressive, mainly because we’ve already seen it last year. And in the tech game, last year might as well be last century.
To be fair, though, the hardware is sorta irrelevant this time around, as Microsoft has made software the focus for Zune’s third incarnation.
When the software is released next week—only for Windows, by the way—you’ll be able to tag songs you hear on plain ol’ FM radio, making it easier to buy them through the Zune store afterward. Handy.
Also handy—finally—is the ability to wirelessly download songs from the Zune store. So whenever you’re near a Wi-Fi hotspot, you’ll be able to buy music. This feature is something like two years in the making, as the first generation Zune shipped with built-in Wi-fi way back in 2006, but it was only used to transfer songs to other Zunes and not wireless buy music.
You’ll also be able to wireless stream music from a PC to Zune now.
Who should buy a Zune? Tough to say, especially given the ubiquity of iTunes and all the audio/video content therein. It’s not as if they’re any cheaper than comparable iPods, so it’s not like you’d be saving money going with Zune. Maybe you just dislike Apple for some reason, or really like Microsoft?
Then again, considering damn near everyone already has an iPod at this point—the iPod was first released in 2001—it may be getting harder for Apple to convince folks to shell out another $200ish for another one.
We’ll see how that goes later today.
New Zunes arrive early with WiFi downloads, FM song tagging [Ars Technica]