Just last week I highlighted the mini Zune player because it’s so useful on a small touchscreen device. I use this daily to stream music from my Zune Pass subscription, but there’s this little bitty bug that’s worth a note. I’m not bashing the Zune software team here, but want to point it out because usability issues can hurt the market both for Zune and for UMPCs.
The above pic shows the mini player after I’ve streamed a full album, which is how I usually listen. Yes, you also caught me tracking my expected arrival from DHL too.
Notice the ‘pause’ indicator? Well, I didn’t pause the album, I simply listened to the whole thing, so it really should be a ‘play’ indicator. I can tap all day long on the ‘pause’, but of course, that does nothing. If I want to listen to the album again (another typical usage pattern for me), I have to maximize out of the mini-player, press ‘play’ and restore back to the mini-player. That’s three taps when it should be one and it’s not leveraging the quick and easy efficiency of a touch screen. Bummer! If someone on the Zune team is reading, I’d love to see this get on a list of fixes for the next Zune software update…
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