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Microsoft’s second attempt at dwindling some of Apple’s dominance in the portable media device market arrived today. The Zune is a repackaged Toshiba Gigabeat box that works with The Urge Music Store, a collaborative effort with the MTV Networks. Ironically, noon of Microsoft’s previous “play for sure” file types will play on the Zune.

I will hand it to Microsoft. It usually takes them three or four tries, but they have historically been able to dominate whatever market space they chooses to enter. Only the future sees the result of this endeavor.

I dropped by the local Best Buy and saw a sales person pushing the Zune really hard to a few people. He was touting the potential of the device, rather than its current capabilities. I had to interject just o keep him honest.

I doubt this effort from Microsoft will be the one to make a dent in the ipod’s side panels. Battery life, bulk, lack of computability with previous music libraries, wifi not enabled, and a few other little quirks will hinder this device. Not to mention brand name recognition. “Microsofts iPod” is what it is being called anyway.

This cleverly and creatively photoshoped pic about sums it up:

Apple upgraded its line of entry level MacBook computers to Intel Core 2 Duo processors and released them for sale today.  This sets the table for Mac Mini upgrades to come within the next few weeks.

 

  

Windows Media Player 11.0 was released today. This is Microsoft’s media engine that will run inside of Vista, the update to Windows XP due in November.

I installed it and I can say that it is another rip-off. Oh sure, the Urge music store interface looks a bit different, ok not really. OK, the play button is on the bottom instead of the upper left. Oh yeah, it is black and not a “metal-like” interface. They did attempt to do the whole “reflective artwork” style in the marketing.

Not that iTunes 7 is perfect; WMP 11.0 is a hog. They added views with album artwork, like iTunes, but it is just not as slick. Some of the new visualizations are pretty cool.

Check it out for yourself here.

Today, apple upgraded its line of MacBook Pro laptop computers to Intel Core 2 Duo processors, offering up up 39 percent greater speed.  In addition to the processor bump, FireWire 800 comes standard in all three models, with addition gains in hard drive size and minimum RAM configuration of 1GB.

Other spiffs include dual-layer burning, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, infrared remote for Front Row, and an option MegaSafe Airline Adapter.

All of this with no increase in price.  Details here.