And the winner is..... iPod!!! http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/fortune/zune/7.html Seriously, does anyone here have a Zune??? What do you think about them??
What's even more ridiculous - if you have ever bought a song from one of the previous array of Microsoft-sponsored music stores, you CAN'T PLAY IT ON THE ZUNE! You have to buy it all over again. Absurd. I'm sure Microsoft's partners are unhappy about being screwed over like that...
The technical details of the players are meaningless. The failure of the Zune was sealed the moment they decided to rent music rather than sell it via the iTunes model. The horrible software and what one assumes will be the usual Microsoft quality control are just more nails in the coffin. Apple will pull it in hand over fist for a very long time because they accurately perceived the market for digital music fulfillment. Their end-user-friendly approach to DRM is what ultimately sells, and will continue to sell iPods.
Simba, I respectfully disagree with a point in your post. I think that Apple has positioned itself as a cultural phenomenon and the iPod is a symbol of that. That's why Apple has the portable media player market cornered and most likely, will have it permanently cornered. Almost everyone I know has an iPod, but it's not because they download music off of itunes.com or because iTunes has a user-friendly interface. They have an iPod because it looks cool, it 'works cool', it's cool to use one. I would never buy an Apple computer. Just not something I'm a big fan of, but, I have an iPod.
On the contrary, I never used a mac and detested them, but once i got an ipod i started to like Apple and decided to give the new Macbook's a try. And i am simply amazed by the Mac OS. Its very cool. On the plus side I can boot up windows to play games on. I think many people will look into other big ticket apple items, b/c they trust Apple. Heck now that they have windows on their intel CPU Pc's, i think Apple has HUGE potential.
Archos 604 Wifi. its a good unit... but it doesnt matter... the widescreen iPod will have the same features, tighter integration and more restrictive pairing with a single computer (a bad thing) and will sell by the boat loads. but look at what you can do with a simple little media player... surf the web, use it as a PVR, sports camera... pretty amazing.
