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Taking a page from the Lee Iacocca book of success and twisting it slightly, Steve Jobs threw down the gauntlet and told the world "If you can find a better iPod, buy it." Aside from the fact that any iPod purchase, good, better or more better, involves one of Jobs’ products, but I digress…

In the wake of last week’s CES lovefest between Microsoft and MTV (Do they still play any music content?) over the supposed Urge.com — the anti-iTunes — Jobs rattled-off some significantly scary numbers from the competition to ponder — 42 million iPods have been sold with 32 miliion players shipped during 2005 alone and 14 million during the fourth quarter of 2005. And, on the content side, iTunes has sold 850 milion songs at a rate of three million songs each day, giving Apple 83 per cent market share in the legal download market. iTunes has also estabilished themselves as a one of the top five music sources — digital or brick & morter.

While the world continues to gush over all things Apple at this year’s MacWorld, the vast majority of iPod / iTunes users are driving Microsoft fueled systems — infuriating Billy Gates and his team to no end I’m sure.

Personally, knowing of all the options that are available — and a few that were in the wings until last week — I took Jobs up on his challenge recently and bought myself the flagship 5G 60 GB Apple iPod Video. What Jobs didn’t say was the biggest dilemma buyers will probably face will be the ultimate question — white or black. I went iPod retro and bought white.

Thank you Steve Jobs — thank you for freeing us to buy the best iPod, again and again and again and…

Chris Leckness (3531 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris runs a Mobilitysite, GotZune, and a few other smaller sites and blogs. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.