Apple more or less has a monopoly on the online music buying market. They have like 70% or something along those lines. Their biggest competition for music downloads is likely torrent sites. So it makes sense their device would dominate the market. MS really has NO idea at all how to advertise, which is a bummer for such a huge company. Apple on the other hand is very good at advertising, and they play the simplistic game, so they don't confuse users as much. People like us (people who read ars) can make educated informed decisions on electronics when we buy them, but the masses will flock to whatever is already dominating the market.
I gave my iPod to my father and that thing just sits in a dock and he plays music from it sometimes. I have a zune that was a gift and I use that at the gym since it is nice and small. If I am on the road, I use my droid x, which has about 4-5GB of music loaded into it, and pandora if I want something different.
Also, just because they are ditching the zune, doesn't mean they won't release some sort of "windows 8" type device that is a music player running the Win7(8) phone interface, but doesn't have a cell radio in it.
In the short term, MS needs to consolidate their media software so I don't have to ponder over why I should use Windows Media Center Vs Windows Media Player Vs Zune player as my main media player.
