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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

The moon has only four major phases, but as the Zune -- that satellite around Microsoft's gravitational pull -- enters a familiar fifth phase, what some consider a pale reflection of the iPod has made few waves despite inspiring its share of romantics. Zune began as a new salvo against the iPod as Microsoft grew frustrated in its attempts to make in... roads versus Apple's soaring digital media device with its abysmally named and convoluted PlaysForSure rights management scheme. PlaysForSure had actually achieved some level of acceptance on digital music players and even handsets, but as Steve Ballmer has explained, devices that sell in the tens of millions of units per year -- as opposed to hundreds of millions like PCs and handsets (Kin notwithstanding) -- can be a good opportunity for vertical integration of hardware and software.

And so was born Zune, welcoming us to the social with its chunky profile, brown color option, "double shot" facade and the quirky and later abandoned WiFi-based song-squirting sharing feature. Its next major iteration introduced the "squircle" -- a rounded square clickable trackpad that surpassed the click wheel just as Apple was gearing up for the game-changing iPod touch: strike two.

Continue reading Switched On: ZuneForSure

Switched On: ZuneForSure originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 07 Aug 2010 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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