Perhaps in the long term, the MSN Music Store will come to overshadow Apple's iTunes Music Store. But even if it does, Apple already made it's mark on the industry. Many analysts compare today's music battle with Microsoft's war against the Netscape Web browser, which was seen as a challenge to Windows. Microsoft feared that software engineers would gravitate to developing applications on Netscape, thus circumventing Windows. The same possibility with iTunes is throwing a shadow over Microsoft's media hub plans for Windows.
If you recall, when Apple launched iTMS, Microsoft said they saw no need to get into the digital media business. But alas, now they have changed their mind because Apple is threatening Windows' dominance by making the Mac the preferred platform for the digital media hub. Microsoft finally realized that this is what consumers are buying computers for these days! I said this two years ago, and most people flat disagreed with me. I was told the “average” consumer buys a computer to browse the web, read some email, write a couple letters in OpenOffice, and maybe “rip a few CD's”. Uh uh. Digital photography has overtaken conventional film photography. People listen to digital music, and buy it online, versus going to the store and buying CD's (and even downloading it for free off Kazaa). They make movies on their computers. They want to convert those old VHS tapes to DVD on their computers. And so on and so forth. So Microsoft jumps in with both feet.
This is just another chapter in the long saga of these two companies. Apple leads, Microsoft copies and follows Apple's lead. And this is one of the really cool things about being in the Mac world. As a Mac user you're always going to be enjoying technologies that the rest of the industry will finally catch up with in a couple years. Apple invents or implements it in an elegant and seamless way, Microsoft jumps on the bandwagon and uses their monopoly muscle and marketing prowess to copy it in a half-hearted manner and take it mainstream. Everybody else follows in Microsoft's wake with Apple creating the bow wave. It started from the first that Apple realized a GUI was better than green text on a black screen, realized that CD burners would replace floppy disk drives, and now realized that digital media was going to be the next driving force in personal computers. And Bill Gates thinks he (or more correctly, his company, Microsoft) invented personal computing?
Sorry, Billy Boy. We, Mac users, don't care about market domination. We like “Insanely Great.” And so do you. And that's why you're going to follow our lead into eternity.