But Zune scares me. Not because it’s so great. (Though in fact it’s pretty good, mostly because Toshiba’s making it. See the recent Prizefight review of a Gigabeat by the beautiful Veronica Belmont of CNET, she of the sexy Connecticut accent.) What’s scary is that it’s Microsoft. We mock them for not innovating, for letting other companies create markets and then scooping in late with me-too products that don’t really work right. But ya know what? It friggin works. For the life of me I don’t know why. The Mac OS has been better than Windows, way better, for almost a decade now. Yet we’ve still got 3% market share. So yes, Zune scares me. I’ll never admit that in public, of course. We’ll say Zune is addressing a different market. (Read: frigtards.) We’ll spread some FUD about how the WiFi feature doesn’t work. We’ll create a few virus scares and bug reports. We’ll make sure Walt Mossberg says it’s a piece of crap. We’ll let everyone know how their online music store keeps crashing. We’ll do our best to fight it, in other words. But you know they’re gonna move a lot of units. Yes, it’s ugly. Yes, Microsoft has no taste. Only now, in middle age, does it occur to me that most of the world has no taste either. Go to a mall and look around.

Here’s the thing. I’ve spent my whole life fighting these guys, and we all know how that’s worked out. That’s why I’m scared.