The iPhone wouldn’t be what it is (teh AWESOME!) without the iPod functionality. Half the allure of the iPhone is that it is also your iPod, something a lot of people really love. It is also one of the hardest parts of the “iPhone killers” to get right. The iPod is all about software (the difference between and iPod and a portable drive are a few chips, a weird connector and a battery) and the iTunes Store. As some dunderhead once noted: To beat the iPhone you have to beat the iPod.

So far the only thing that has beaten the iPod is the iPhone and it isn’t a total beat down because the iPod is a “pay once and you’re done if you want to be” kind of deal. With that in mind it is interesting to see just how far people will go to make it known they use an iPod. Case in point: Barack Obama. You may have heard of the guy, he recently won the world’s most watched episode of “So you think you can Govern”

Winning that show is tough. People say scurrilous things about you. Out of all the attacks on President Obama none seemed to elicit the rapid, focused response to the accusation that he was a Zune user.

Which is all you really need to know about the state of the iPod and iPhone killers. People might get hyped up on the thought of a legit alternative to the iPhone but when a good bit of the iPhone’s allure comes from the iPod, and when Presidents go out of their way to make it known that a) they do NOT use a Zune and B) they use an iPod you kind of understand just how much mojo Apple holds over the mp3 player market.

The Zune can’t buy a break (but we are sure they’ve tried).