So, today is the official release for Microsoft’s much-heralded Zune music player. True to form, Microsoft has made what is probably a serviceable product that misses what made the iPod such a phenomenon. I’m no anti-Microsoft crusader, but their software design has often seemed clumsy to me. With the reviews of the Zune, we see another example of their tone-deafness, along with some problems with the industrial design and the music store.

The software: Engadget has a roundup of the installation process, which seems generally concerned with making sure that the Zune isn’t installed on another computer, and also features a great deal of embarassing photography. Where Apple lets the iPod speak for itself, Microsoft has a barrage of marketing photos and taglines designed to make you think it’s cool. This will never work with the intended demographic, which is presumably exactly the same as the iPod demographic. “Welcome to the social”? “Release your inner DJ”? It’s painful. Plus, the process apparently takes something like ten steps, meaning you have to look at the marketing materials many times over.

The industrial design: the rubberized plastic seems like a good idea, and the screen is larger than the iPod screen, but that’s as far as it goes, it seems. The device comes in brown for some reason, as Anil Dash notes. Not a color that excites desire in many. The iPod-like circular control at the bottom is not a scroll wheel, but just a way to encase four buttons. And given that the Zune is larger and heavier than the iPod, one would expect more features. It does offer two things the iPod doesn’t–radio, and WiFi. But the WiFi won’t work with your computer, or any WiFi network–it will only connect with other Zunes, in order to offer or receive up to three songs for up to three days or three plays. This intentionally crippled feature will offer nothing to the many people who won’t be around other Zune users very often.

The music store: finally, and most importantly, Microsoft betrays a critical misunderstanding of the reason iTunes, as distinct from the iPod, is so successful–it’s easy to use, and it’s predictable. The Zune allows you a wide array of options–you can buy music, or rent it on a subscription service (that will take away your music if you unsubscribe), all at rates that change according to what the record companies want you to pay. And you first have to buy “points”, which you then use to buy music.

It seems to me that a portable music player should be simple to update and use, and that it should be easy to buy music for it. It seems that Microsoft has taken the relatively simple model of the iPod and iTunes, and added just enough–compromises with the record companies and clumsy user interaction–to make their player second-rate.