Monday 28 September 2009

Zune 4.0 and the Zune HD

Now, I may or may not have posted about Zune before, frankly I can’t remember.  But I have been using Zune occasionally when I want to see some WPF porn, now though it is not an occaision.  The guys over at Zune have made an evolutionary update to the loved software making it more compelling than ever before.  iTunes is a mess.  Originaly it was fast and indeed one of the best media players around, but Apple in their infinite wisdom decided to make it look like their OS, this was not only a down fall for Quick Time (a mess in it’s own right) but also a mistake they carried forward to iTunes, making it slow and unresponsive.

Zune is different.  It is built entirely on WPF and looks, what can only be described as, the most sexy application that Windows has to offer (baring some of thirteen23’s creations)  This mass market application uses all sorts of nifty animations and is a wonderful thing to use.  It is instantaneously responsive due to the way WPF is DirectX based, so is almost processed in hardware rather than through many abstraction layers *cough WinForms*

While WPF does have issues, like the perquisite for the rather hefty .NET 3.0 (and above) framework, it is almost perfect.  The UI is very much modelled on the Hardware devices that Zune make, notably the latest Zune HD – Microsoft’s answer to the iPod touch.  While a Zune device has tempted me in the past this one seems a very very attractive offering from the company.

 

Being a bit of a Microsoft fan boy it pains me to say that the iPod touch is an extremely good device, and it is as Apple say a Pocket Computer not to mention a great mini games console.

The Zune HD however is not designed with Apps as one of the core features.  The Zune HD is a pure lump of music playing genius, no pun intended, with a great UI and such similarity to the PC software you would struggle to find a fault with it.

So, for some screen shots…  obviously you can find many pictures of the Zune HD itself on http://zune.net, there are few screen shots of the fabulous software.  So without further ado, here is Zune 4.0

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