The New York Times' Andrew Sorkin demonstrated Microsoft's new Zune on CNN today. In what appeared to be an unrehearsed discussion of the Zune (the "heavier" "wannabe iPod killer"), they had some not-so-nice things to say. (Click here for video.)

When Sorkin described the limits of the social networking feature of the Zune (two users must agree to share music between their Zunes, and then the recipient of a song can play it only three times without buying their own copy), CNN said "Oh, wow--lot of fine print there."

CNN: "You can e-mail with this, right?"

SORKIN: "No."

CNN: "Can you pull songs off a network?"

SORKIN: "No."

CNN: "Who do they think is going to buy this?"

When the CNN anchor brought out her shuffle (which she was obviously excited about), Sorkin admitted "That's the thing--that's a lot sexier than this" and her co-anchor remarked "Isn't that neat? Oh my G_d."

After the CNN anchor described the Zune as "clunky", he asked "Why don't they get some decent design people?"

SORKIN: "No comment."

This is delightfully ironic. The only reason Microsoft put the unit into Sorkin's hands was to sell the freaking thing, and the whole episode spontaneously turned into an iPod ad.