Eliot Van Buskirk from Wired.com has has recently had a sneak preview of the new zune software, and wrote an interesting article comparing it to Apple's Genius. Apparently the new Mixview function makes Genius "look like a blast from the digital music's past."

While iTunes serves up a text list of recommended songs within your library and from the iTunes store, adding to the more basic recommendations its MiniStore feature used to make, Zune reinvented the recommendation concept by collapsing artists, albums and fans into the same recommendation engine, more accurately mirroring the way people think about music.

He goes on later to explain,

Granted, I'm not referring to the accuracy of one system's algorithms versus the other's; there will be plenty of time to compare them on those merits once the new Zune software is released. But in terms of breadth, layout and social utility, Zune sends Genius back to school.

To read more, check out the full article here.

It seems as though the zune team really got this new function right, and I don't know about you all, but I'm quite excited to give it a try in just 3 more days!