Gizmodo Writes
As expected, last weekend’s rumored Zune Originals store turned out to be true. A group of 18 artists (including famous Barcelona artist Catalina Estrada) have produced 27 unique designs called the Artist Series for the Zune Originals store.
I don’t know what y’all may think about the Zunes, but this new iteration of the player is downright pretty. Now I personally like my minimalism to be mixed in with a dash of intricacy. That’s why the iPod never quite worked for me. The player I currently own is the Cowon iAudio X5
Very elegant player. It suffers a bit in the navigation department because the joystick is subject to physical wear and tear, and there’s no way to vary the scroll speed. And of course, Cowon stopped supporting the sucker a few months after I bought it (thank you Rockbox for keeping me alive).
But respect goes to Microsoft for making a player that’s got the retro thing going for it. I applauded the choice of brown in the original, even if it wasn’t as well implemented as it could have been. The little Zunes come in some nice colors. Lame choice on the just-black for the big bad 80gb Zune though. It could have looked good in that olive, or a deep red.
So I gotta say, I’m digging the retro look. I’m liking the fact that these engravings will be free for a time period (it’s very tempting!), and I have mad respect that Microsoft is updating the old Zunes to have all the new Zune bells and whistles via Firmware (while it seems that Apple has to keep relying on others to do their work for them).
Ah, c’est la vie.