This week, Playlist is running a series of features on the Zune. Yesterday it was the turn of the software and syncing. It turns out that Christopher Breen’s experience reflects that posted by Engadget when the product was launched.

What’s interesting in this feature is the following screenshot:

There’s an Options menu, which is more like a generic menu, plus the inevitable ‘More Options’ option – a Microsoft favourite. Oh, and you can find Help there too. Based on this review, I’d agree that the Zune software is intentionally different from iTunes. Indeed it tries not to be anyway like iTunes. Is this because of patent issues? Take the Auto playlist window:

Look where the ’+’ icons are, and where the corresponding ‘Remove’ button is. It’s an extraordinarily bad piece of interaction design.