Digital DJ (via Thomas Hawk)

That is a sweet DJing set-up.

Ha, great to see a dev of a popular app come out and not mince words regarding Apple.

Interesting article… not that Apple isn’t trustworthy… right?  RIGHT?

So… here’s the deal: my Zune 120’s hard drive gave up the ghost. A trip to Best Buy to use the my replacement plan to obtain another Zune 120 proved fruitless; all Zune models were sold out in the area and the 120 showed as discontinued in their system. I asked what my options were, and they told me to go back and pick something.

After some back and forth, I wound up going with the new 160GB iPod Classic.

It wound up coming down to a case of numbers: after having used my BlackBerry Storm (with a 16GB card) for a month as my main music player, I realized that I needed more space. With the Zune 120 now out of the picture, I had to decided whether the Zune HD was going to cut it… and at 32GB, I don’t think it would. Microsoft jumped the gun with discontinuing the Zune 120 so soon; there is demand for larger capacity devices, without paying almost $400 for a 64GB flash device (iPod Touch, I’m looking at you).  We’re at a crucial point in the disparity between available high-capacity flash memory-based device prices as opposed to hard drive-based.  Microsoft should have waited another year before bailing on the hard drive model; it’s possible that, after last year’s lackluster hardware update, Microsoft didn’t want to just up the drive space again to 160GB with little else to show (since the firmware for older devices received only a minor update).  The Zune HD looks nice, and in my limited hands-on experience, has a fluid UI, but 32GB just wasn’t going to be enough right now.

So, I’ve had the iPod 160GB for almost a week and a half.  It’s a nice device; I chose the black, which comes in a slick, aluminum-like body that gives the device a great feel.  The iPod is incredibly thin for a hard drive player; I’m amazed that they could fit that much space in such a small body.

So how does it stack up after having used the Zune range for the past couple of  years?  Here are some thoughts:

• As decent as the screen is, it in no way compares to the Zune 120’s 3.2 inch screen.  Definite downgrade in this department.


• The iPod’s sound quality is good, probably the best iPod I’ve used.  However, it falls just shy of the Zune.  The Zune’s soundstage is richer, the low-end deeper.  The iPod does have the advantage of having an EQ built-in to tweak the sound (which is something I haven’t used extensively).


• The Zune’s Twist UI is still my favorite interface; the iPod’s interface looks stale next to the Zune’s, with one caveat.  That caveat is:  Cover Flow.  Cover Flow is slick way to browse your music on the iPod (I’m not sold on it being used on the desktop).  Maybe it’s a quirk, but I love Cover Flow.   Combined with the Click Wheel, it makes the iPod easy to navigate.


• The iPod handles multi-CD albums flawlessly; the Zune would list tracks 1,1,2,2,3,3,etc., ignoring the CD number tag.  This drove me crazy, as I would have to work around it in a number of ways.  The Zune HD has fixed this; why it was not back-ported is a mystery.


• The iPod / iTunes also has an interesting option to mark an album as a “compilation,” which is perfect for soundtracks. When you check off this option, “one-off” artists or duets, where the artist may show up as “Moby/Gwen Stefani” (for example) in your listings, do not appear (they only show up under the album).  This prevents cluttering your device with pairings or artists you either don’t care about, know will never occur again, or whom you just won’t buy but they happen to be on a soundtrack.


• The latest version of iTunes is okay; pretty fast on my system and looking better than previous versions (but still not as slick as the latest Zune desktop software).  Setting up and syncing my iPod was a breeze, which part of the beauty of iTunes + iPod.


• A firmware update was just released providing my iPod with support for Genius mixes.  I have not had a chance to test this feature yet but hope to soon.


• One minor but neat visual feature:  when on the main iPod screen, the right side will display album art from different artists on your iPod floating around and fading from one to the next.