No sooner had the dust settled on Steve Jobs' announcement of improvements to the iPod range than Microsoft replied with details of its Zune portable media player.

The Zune has been subject to much rumour and speculation over the last few months when news of its development leaked in July.

Microsoft has told us that the Zune will be a 30GB player with a 3in screen. The main attraction of Zune is its wireless capability enabling two players to interact with each other.

Carefully laid plans for digital rights management are in place. You can share songs between Zunes but will only be able to listen to a protected track you've received three times over three days. After that you can highlight the song to purchase at the Zune Marketplace online music store.

Surely Apple has something like this in the works themselves but even if not it'll take an awful lot of effort to dislodge the iPod from the top.