Creative Zen Vision: M

So, Creative has released another mp3 player. Usually, when the Singapore-based company releases something, people just kind of look at it, and pass it off as another failure, destined to end up in the crap/not-used bin. This one is different.
Creative's Zen Vision: M is a multimedia player that's fairly similar to the iPod in alot of ways.

I'll just make a bullet-list of things that I find interesting about this.

• It looks very similar to the iPod and is being called an iPod knock-off. I at first didn't think this, but now, it seems uncomfortably similar to Apple's player in terms of industrial design.
• For some reason the scroll-pad is white on all of the players except for the black one. And the white scroll-pads all look out of place on the non-white models.
• Take a look at that software interface, and you'll find that it looks almost exactly like the iPod's.
• The thing is absolutely huge compared to the iPod.
• It has alot more support for video codecs than the iPod does (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Xvid, WMV, and MJPEG to be exact).
  
• With the screen being the same 320x240 resolution as the 5th gen iPod's screen, what's stopping video made for the iPod working on the Zen Vision: M (since Apple uses mpeg 4 and not the proprietary quicktime format, .mov, for their video iPods). Although, the player doesn't have support the high-def, H.264 codec. :(
• Could Apple sue these guys? Since Creative already has a patent on the iPod's user interface, Creative could counter with that. It will be an interesting court-case.

Regardless of what Creative does, I don't think this player will sell. The iPod has just become too dominant in the market in order for a competing player to really gain any traction. Not to mention that the iPod is just a plain better product. It's better in more important ways, such as size and ease of use. And then there's the entire, seamless infrastructure behind the iPod, from iTunes to the music, video and audiobook store and the podcast directory. Every element of the product works seamlessly together. This allows for a much better product than just a decent hardware element and some half-assed software with more limiting usage rights.