I'm a happy owner of a Zune 80. Although I have learned to live with the Zune software I fully agree with those who say that iTunes is superior. Prior to my Zune I owned iPods and was pretty used to iTunes which is a great software. The Zune software on the other hand, is dumbed down, can't read tags properly and lacks many of the features I took for granted with iTunes.
Despite the slick interface I'm surprised by how quick and efficient the Zune software is.
I'm pretty happy with my Zune 30 but the software is terrible. Between photos/music/video I have a ton of files and every time I open the software it brings my new core2duo machine to its knees. Itunes doesn't do this.
On top of that there seems to be no way to customize things (such as when/how often to update podcasts). I can't get a nice straight forward listing like I had on iTunes. Oh, and its just generally flakey. Crashing all the time and it doesn't always start when I plug in the zune.
Finally, it often goes off in to la-la land when I dock/undock my laptop. It doesn't like the multi-monitor setup I think.
-I doesn't read ID3 tags in the same way as iTunes. Although I haven't been heavily affected by the problem some of my songs are still messed up in terms of tags and album art. -You can't drag & drop album art. -Editing multiple of songs simultaneously is not possible. -Poor customization for the list view.
Although iTunes was a slight memory hog it was simple but advanced.
iTunes sucks balls. It doesn't automatically remove artist names from song names until you play them. Whenever I add the My Music folder it feels it needs to rescan all 13k songs over again, and it reverts said artist names back to the front of song names. It uses twice as much memory as Winamp. It doesn't support FLAC without downloading plugins, and even then it doesn't transcode FLAC to put it on your iPod like Winamp does.
Winamp and foobar are much better than iTunes. Needless to say, I use Winamp to put music on my iPod now.
I agree about the ID3 tag thing, ecpecially not being able to edit them.
The Device itself is so good that it more than makes up. Plus can't you use iTunes instead of the Zune software now? I thought there was a hack for that.
I agree with Ben. Winamp is much better at playing audio on the PC and especially geared up for power users as well as a luddite. Ben: I havent tried syncing ipods using winamp (does it work with iphone?) so cant comment on that. I just wish someone would get justin frankel back to nullsoft so that they could be even better.
@Abuzar : It's more like "What can both WMP 11/iTunes can do that the Zune software can do"
As much as I love the Zune, the software is too dumbed down for me. I've been giving WMP 11 a try, and it's way more advanced than the Zune program, with a ton of options on customizing and editing bits of media in your computer. It's also very extensible with a supported developers site, so there's tons of skins, codecs, visualizations, etc. to download.
iTunes in comparison to WMP 11 is pretty sad, except for the content in the iTunes store, which is mainly about it.
If they'd just drop the slick and fluid Zune Marketplace in WMP 11, and add Zune syncing from there, that would be a big win-win.
Zune program is good enough for beginners and people who just only care about syncing. But that's not everybody.
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too bad itunes > whatever ms makes
That's a pretty bold statement, considering how poor iTunes is in terms of performance.
I think iTunes is decent at best, and I use it daily with my 80GB iPod. Doesn't seem to run well on anything except for Macs.
But for you to dismiss every thing Microsoft is to release in the future as being worse than iTunes, that's a little bit silly.
The Zune software is a bit better than iTunes. iTunes is so slow. You have obviously never seen how fast a Zune syncs up compared to an iPod.
Zune software may work better than iTunes on Windows, but Zune software doesn't work at all on Macs.
Just saying.
I know to each his own, but the Zune software is a complete pain in the ass. So much of a pain that I ditched my Zune.
I'm a happy owner of a Zune 80. Although I have learned to live with the Zune software I fully agree with those who say that iTunes is superior. Prior to my Zune I owned iPods and was pretty used to iTunes which is a great software. The Zune software on the other hand, is dumbed down, can't read tags properly and lacks many of the features I took for granted with iTunes.
Despite the slick interface I'm surprised by how quick and efficient the Zune software is.
Well I don't have a Mac so it works out fine with me.
What features does iTunes have that the Zune software doesn't because I don't seem to recall any.
iTunes would make so many more people happy if it was able to play avi and divx files. I personally think that's one of its biggest downfalls.
I'm pretty happy with my Zune 30 but the software is terrible. Between photos/music/video I have a ton of files and every time I open the software it brings my new core2duo machine to its knees. Itunes doesn't do this.
On top of that there seems to be no way to customize things (such as when/how often to update podcasts). I can't get a nice straight forward listing like I had on iTunes. Oh, and its just generally flakey. Crashing all the time and it doesn't always start when I plug in the zune.
Finally, it often goes off in to la-la land when I dock/undock my laptop. It doesn't like the multi-monitor setup I think.
Abuzar:
-I doesn't read ID3 tags in the same way as iTunes. Although I haven't been heavily affected by the problem some of my songs are still messed up in terms of tags and album art.
-You can't drag & drop album art.
-Editing multiple of songs simultaneously is not possible.
-Poor customization for the list view.
Although iTunes was a slight memory hog it was simple but advanced.
@Justin
I'm pretty sure there are more people in the world with PCs than Macs.
Just saying.
iTunes sucks balls. It doesn't automatically remove artist names from song names until you play them. Whenever I add the My Music folder it feels it needs to rescan all 13k songs over again, and it reverts said artist names back to the front of song names. It uses twice as much memory as Winamp. It doesn't support FLAC without downloading plugins, and even then it doesn't transcode FLAC to put it on your iPod like Winamp does.
Winamp and foobar are much better than iTunes. Needless to say, I use Winamp to put music on my iPod now.
I agree about the ID3 tag thing, ecpecially not being able to edit them.
The Device itself is so good that it more than makes up. Plus can't you use iTunes instead of the Zune software now? I thought there was a hack for that.
Also, iTunes music store uses shitty encoding on all their music. Amazon is much better with LAME VBR V0.
@John
itunes on windows eats up 800+MB of ram. that hardly counts as "working"
I agree with Ben. Winamp is much better at playing audio on the PC and especially geared up for power users as well as a luddite.
Ben: I havent tried syncing ipods using winamp (does it work with iphone?) so cant comment on that. I just wish someone would get justin frankel back to nullsoft so that they could be even better.
My iPod Classic syncs, and I know it has the option for iPod Touch, but I have no idea about iPhone.
Zune software may work better than iTunes on Windows, but Zune software doesn't work at all on Macs.
Erny
http://www.baliglobalmarket.com
@Abuzar : It's more like "What can both WMP 11/iTunes can do that the Zune software can do"
As much as I love the Zune, the software is too dumbed down for me. I've been giving WMP 11 a try, and it's way more advanced than the Zune program, with a ton of options on customizing and editing bits of media in your computer. It's also very extensible with a supported developers site, so there's tons of skins, codecs, visualizations, etc. to download.
iTunes in comparison to WMP 11 is pretty sad, except for the content in the iTunes store, which is mainly about it.
If they'd just drop the slick and fluid Zune Marketplace in WMP 11, and add Zune syncing from there, that would be a big win-win.
Zune program is good enough for beginners and people who just only care about syncing. But that's not everybody.
WM11 is definitely better than Zune or iTunes. I don't care much about the stores, so that might be a deal breaker for you.