I have owned a Zune, and to be honest, I really enjoyed it. If it had a disk mode or OS X support, I would still own it, and I would have already pre-ordered a Zune HD. But alas, Microsoft has no interest of expanding their market share to Apple users. It would appear that Microsoft also has no interest in the small, flash-based MP3 player market either because it is rumored that all other, non-HD Zunes have reached the end of their life cycle.

My Zune was a black 8GB flash model, and I loved it. The interface blew the iPod Nano away, it had really nice sound, and it was priced very nicely. Now the Zune HD looks even better. It has a 3.6 inch OLED screen, the NVidia Terga guts that will ensure beautiful video, a great touch screen and both the 16GB ($220) and 32GB ($280) units are too expensive. Like many people, I have an iPhone or some other high-end media player, and I want something to run with or beat up. That is the purpose of the iPod Nano or Shuffle, but there will no longer be a Zune to fill that niche.

I understand that competing with iPods, for whatever reason, is difficult. I am positive that only producing a media player that competes directly against Apples most popular unit, the iPhone / iPod Touch, is not the best way.

via Super Site for Windows