“Don’t hate the playa’, hate the game!” Isn’t that how the saying goes?

Over the years there have been plenty of people that took turns finding fault with and taking pot-shots at the various incarnations of the Apple iPod. While I suspect that some of the hatin’ came just because the iPod was getting so much love from so many people – and because it’s always fun to hate on the popular kid – the time has come to hate on a new playa’…literally.

Exhibit #1 Exhibit #2 (warning – foul picture and language)

As everyone knows by now the Zune came out this week, and so far the tech journalists’ reactions have run the gamut of “wait & see” (NY Times) to “Excellent” (C|Net).

It’s with some amusement and a small bit of disbelief that I’ve been watching respected bloggers and reviewers debate the worthiness of the Zune as a Johnny-come-lately digital music player. It is almost as if they question the audacity of Microsoft to try to steal any of the iPod’s market share. I mean, you can almost hear them saying in a back room somewhere, “How dare they?”

Hmmmm…it almost feels like 2000 again, but that time the discussion was over Microsoft’s Johnny-come-lately Pocket PC platform. Pundits took great pleasure in talking about its shortcomings and the audacity of Microsoft to think for a moment that they might steal any of Palm’s market share. I think we all know what happened there….

So is the Zune the perfect digital music player? Of course not. But then, neither is the iPod. Both use proprietary stores, both use DRM, both have limitations, but both also have features that will appeal to certain users. In its present incarnation, the Zune shows promise. Its screen is beautiful and it sounds at least as good as the iPod (possibly better, depending upon who you ask) – but it will have to overcome several immediate hurdles right out of the box. The least of which is the iPod’s current strangle-hold on the Playa’ market. Can it do it?

I suspect that John Q. Public will most likely wait until version 2 hits the streets (or until their current iPod dies) before they even consider the Zune…assuming that there are enough early adopters who try and like version 1 for there to be a version 2.

I’ve covered the unboxing and the software on this site already; in a few weeks Jenneth and I will cover every aspect of the Zune’s hardware and describe our experiences ad nauseam; we want to use the heck out of our players before we make any snap judgments one way or the other.

If you can’t hold out that long and want to see what all of the fuss – both good and bad – is about, they are offering free shipping at Amazon.

Your thoughts…??