There’s an excellent interview of Steve Jobs conducted by Steven Levy over at MSNBC’s Newsweek website here. The interview was conducted with the fifth anniversary of the Apple iPod right around the corner on October 23rd. Most of the article is about the iPod of course - how he knew they were onto something cool, how they managed to broker deals with all the music companies, and if he was worried about the iPod being too popular or too common.

Finally on the last page, there’s a question about the Zune and whether he’s worried. I’ll just quote the entire article here from the Newsweek article:

Microsoft has announced its new iPod competitor, Zune. It says that this device is all about building communities. Are you worried?
In a word, no. I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.

Come on - you have to love that answer. Straight from the hip and honest and you know what? He’s kinda right. As much as I think wireless is cool.. you have to wonder if it’s going to be really useful. Ok so maybe if I’m sitting in a cafe in a busy city but if I’m living in the middle of Kansas.. will I really care about wireless when all I can do is send radio waves through the cows around me?

Food for thought as we near the Zune launch. In any case, Apple and Jobs certainly have nothing to worry about and rightly so. It’s up to Microsoft and the Zune team to make it happen.

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