Updated 24 May, 2012, 11:12 am IST

iPod vs. Zune: Get, Set, Go!

20 Sep, 2006, 3:13 pm IST | by Aalaap Ghag

We'll drag the current king of digital audio players, the iPod, with the new kid on the block, the Zune, spec by spec, and tell you who will win.

Extendability
It's probably easier to count the number of birds in the city sky than to actually sit down and count the number of third-party, official as well as unofficial accessories that are available for the iPod. The usual speaker docks and car adapters aside, the iPod also doubles up as a breathalyzer, a toilet paper dispenser accessory and can also be controlled by your denims. As of now, the Zune only has three official accessory packs like the car pack, the home A/V pack and the travel pack, but you can't blame a device that hasn't even come into stores yet. The iPod has had half a decade's worth of a head start, so it's not going ahead of the Zune just yet.

iPod 3, Zune 3.

Maybe in the near future we'll do an actual comparison of the 6th generation iPod vs. the 2nd generation Zune, which would be a level playing field by then, since accessories from Altec Lansing, Harmon Kardon, Griffin, Jamo, Logitech etc. are lined up.

Compatibility
The iPod works on the Mac as well as the PC. As of now, the Zune seems to work only with PCs.

Besides the lack of support for a competitor's operating system, the Zune is also going against Microsoft's own PlaysForSure program, so any DRM-wrapped files you may have already purchased and downloaded from PlaysForSure stores like AOL Music Now, MTV's Urge, Napster as well as Microsoft's own MSN Music, will NOT be playable on the Zune. The Zune will only support music purchased from the Zune Marketplace, which in turn will not work with existing PlaysForSure devices that you may own, such as a Creative Zen or an iRiver, because the Zune Marketplace media will be wrapped with a different, incompatible DRM scheme. For most of the users who have an existing library of CDs and music on the PC that they'll be copying on to the Zune, this may not be a huge drawback, but for everyone who bought in to Microsoft's PlaysForSure initiative, it's quite disappointing.

Windows Media Player connects to PlaysForSure compatible devices to let you transfer music to and from them, but the Zune is not one of them. Microsoft's Windows Media Player doesn't support Microsoft's Zune? This makes the Zune pull the brakes, almost.

iPod 4, Zune 3.

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Tags: Apple , iPod , Microsoft , Zune , Comparison