A Sufficient Hardware Foundation For Future Firmware Perfection?

Continued from 'Welcome To The Social'….

What else could you do with a Wi-Fi-enabled portable audio player, that's not currently possible? Sync with your PC, for example, either via an intermediary router or direct peer-to-peer connection. Share not only music tracks but also videos. Build a viral interactive community with other like-minded Zune owners. Directly download multimedia content from the 'Net, versus relying on an intermediary PC. Or, pair with your Xbox 360; Microsoft's Zune team, led into battle by former Xbox evangelist J Allard, will undoubtedly leverage its Xbox Online success to cultivate potential customers. Heck, dispense with downloading, and direct-stream audio and videos over Wi-Fi instead. What else can you think of?

As-yet unrealized potential was one of the key topics of discussion between my wife and I as we perused Zune and compared it to the iPod. Bottom line, Zune is fundamentally a rebadged, Wi-Fi-appended, software-tweaked Toshiba Gigabeat S, the latest example of the mutually beneficial relationship between the two companies. Harnessing an already-existing hardware design for a first-generation Microsoft platform (again, akin to the gen. 1 Xbox) enabled the company to rapidly get to market, in time for the all-important holiday shopping season.

But will Zune's existing feature set, coupled with tantalizing rumours of firmware-upgrade enabled features to come, be enough to create a Christmas consumer preference for it over the iPod juggernaut? If so, where's the long-term money to be made; higher-capacity HDD Zunes, lower-capacity flash-based counterparts, and/or Zune phones? Apple thrives on treadmilling existing customers with tempting new hardware designs every year or so; conversely, what will motivate firmware upgrade-contented Zune owners to buy new gear? And are Wi-Fi enabled 'community' capabilities, supplemented by Microsoft DRM-enabled features like subscription rental plans, long-term defensible or will Apple be able to match them?

Bringing up subscription plans leads to the other key issue I want to discuss in this writeup, that of digital rights management support. Before I do, though, here's some links to other Zune coverage that'll whet your appetite until I fire up the software for myself:

• Ars Technica did a solid writeup
• Engadget and Gizmodo have given Zune extensive focus in recent days
• Blogs from Microsoft employees include Zuneguy, Zune Insider, and Zunester.
• Another excellent portal is Zune Thoughts, run by Jason Dunn, whose Digital Media Thoughts, Pocket PC Thoughts and Smartphone Thoughts sites I've also referenced in the past.
• And, if you need a good chuckle, check out Joy Of Tech's comics from late July and earlier this week, along with Penny Arcade's early-October thoughts on Zune's Wi-Fi capabilities (and limitations).

First off: is the iTunes FairPlay DRM a defensible 'lock' for Apple, considering the company hasn't (and likely won't) give Microsoft a license that'd enable Zune to play content purchased at the iTunes Store? As my last-year article pointed out, estimating the percentage of content sitting on an average iPod owner's system that's purchased from the iTunes Store, versus ripped from CDs, is a contentious issue. According to a two-month-old study, the amount of music bought online is still quite small. And if even more recent survey results are to be believed, a high percentage of current iPod owners seem open to considering whatever hardware's most trendy next time they're ready to buy, not just what's available from Apple at the time.

Continued with 'DRMs and CLMs'….