Apple is scared. And for good reason.
The iPod is the soul of Apple's entire business. Apple has been relatively successful at winning converts from Windows to Mac OS X, for example, in part because its whole product line basks in the glow of iPod's success, hipness and ubiquity.
Apple has recently and preemptively lowered the price of iPods, announced an iTV set-top box -- which will ship later than Vista -- and is probably working feverishly on a bigger-screen, wirelessly enabled iPod.
All these efforts may not be enough to save the iPod from the Microsoft consumer media juggernaut. Microsoft has the money, the clout, the partnerships, the mind share and the market share to drive Vista, Soapbox, Xbox and Zune into lives of hundreds of millions of consumers.
The iPod rules -- for now. But Microsoft can't be dismissed as just another wannabe. And nobody knows that better than Apple.
Mike Elgan is a technology writer and former editor of Windows Magazine. He can be reached at mike.elgan+computerworld@gmail.com or his blog: http://therawfeed.com