Creative takes pot shots at iPod mini

Late last year, Creative Technology CEO Sim Wong Hoo vowed he would
wage a war against Apple's iPod. Creative's distaste for one of last year's hottest inanimate objects was
evident at their CES presentation of the Zen product line.

"When you go to a Web page you don't want to go around in circles like the iPod mini do you? No, you move up and down.
When you navigate the Zen, you move the same way," said one of Creative's presenters at the Las Vegas, NV presentation.
Perhaps a vast oversimplification of the complexities of interface design, but hey. Of course there is the fact that you're not navigating a web page, you're navigating your music collection. Come to think of it, if there were a scrollwheel component to my trackpad for navigating web sites – I would probably dig it! One elegant movement to scroll instead of hand to mouse, cursor to scrollbar, click, scroll.

Creative goes on to knock the iPod mini's lack of removable battery and less battery life as compared to the Zen's reportedly 12-hour battery life. Now here, they have a point. You can replace the iPod's discharged battery yourself,
but it does require some voodoo. I would love to see the iPod with a more easily replaceable battery.

Creative feels they have what it takes to give Apple's iPod a run for its money. Its new players are set to be unleashed this month (4GB and 6GB models), with a 1GB flash-based player to be released Q1 2005. Anybody have experience with the Zen line and want to testify? Is Creative a contender, or are they blowing smoke?