The Microsoft Zune has not has an easy introduction to the iPod-dominated digital music player market. The much-maligned music player is perhaps best known for including brown among its color options. Microsoft included WiFi in their original Zune, but the use was of questionable utility at best. Instead of using WiFi to do something obvious like connect to the internet, a genius at Microsoft decided it should be used only for “squirting” songs to your friends, so they could listen for 3 days or 3 plays (whichever came first). Aside from the restrictions of a system that sounds like a car warranty, the obvious problem with this scheme is that it requires someone with another Zune who has similar music tastes to yourself. If if it just required another Zune, that would be a tall order. I have yet to see one outside of an electronics store.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m a fan of competition. Though I generally like Apple products, I think it’s appropriate for the company to work for its success. The new Zune still doesn’t connect to the internet (unlike Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch), but does allow for wireless syncing. Initially, this didn’t seem like a particularly brilliant idea either. I’m still not convinced its essential for a music player, but it makes a lot of sense for a device like the iPhone. I like to keep my iPhone in my room when I’m sleeping in case I get a call, but it’s not necessarily convenient to keep a computer in the same place…and it’s easy to forget to sync before leaving. With a laptop, this is particularly important, since it’s not practical to leave a sync cable attached as can be done with a desktop. Hopefully Apple will add this functionality in a future update.