I read this Inside the Circle post with a smile on my face because I have had a very similar experience myself.
A few weeks ago I was sitting at the bus, minding my own business, listening to my Zune. The guy next to me was listening to his iPhone when he turned around and asked “So. A Zune user huh?”. Now Zunes are pretty common around Seattle, so I pretty much just said “Yeah.” This he took as his cue to teach me a little lesson and he launched into a five minute rant about how much better he thought the iPhone was and how lousy the Zune was. I mean it was literally five minutes, which he ended with “And! The Zune doesn’t even work on a Mac!” I stayed quiet and calm like I had during his whole tirade, let a few seconds pass, then turned around and said “If the Zune is so bad, why do you want it to work on a Mac?”. At this point the bus pulled over, and the guy looked really flustered, reddened, and jumped off the bus mumbling something I couldn’t hear. I just laughed to myself and put on the last Justice album.
I have never gotten a straight answer from a Mac user on this. Why do they want Mac compatibility with a player they claim to hate? Honestly, I think the answer is simple. They’ve seen the Zune, they know its features, they know what it can do, and they understand what us Zune users already know. The Zune is better than their iPod when it comes to being a media player. It’s not a phone, but the Zune does what it does better than any other media player on the market. And it eats the Mac user up inside that they can’t use it.