Zune's Wireless Almost Totally Worthless

mikesd81 writes to mention an article at Engadget exploring what the Zune's wireless is good for. It turns out that, at least for now, that's not much. From the article: "You can search for and find other Zunes nearby. You can send songs / albums for the 3 x 3 trial. Songs past the three days / listens are deleted at next sync, but catalogued on your PC for record-keeping should you want to purchase them later. No word on whether Microsoft is going to keep track of which files are traded. You can send and receive image files for 'unlimited viewing.' (Oh, so copyrighted images aren't worth DRMing?) You can't: Connect to the internet, Download songs directly from the Zune store via WiFi, Sync to your computer via WiFi."

Comments

Of course, for the iPod, people look the other way

[shaneh0]

Today on Slashdot, more of the same: Microsoft Sucks, Apple and Google are gods gift to technology, and legions of antisocial haxors just line up to suckle on Steve Jobs' iRod.

It's all about how you spin it. On one hand, the Zune can only share songs under the "3/3" limitation. On an iPod, there is no such limitation. Why? Because *you can't use the iPod to share songs, period.* If I plug my iPod into someone elses PC and try to access the library, I will get a friendly iTunes prompt asking if I want to attach my iPod to that PC. If I say "yes" it nicely deletes all the music from the iPod. If I say no, it gives me no access to my content.

The only way to change that is to use a hack, like the WinAmp ml_ipod extension.

Why would apple do that? Aren't they the most awesomest bestest company? ....It turns out, that apple needed the music industries backing just as much as Microsoft does.

If people weren't so stupidly biased, the headline would read "Zune sharing is crippled, but still waaay better then what you can do with the iPod"