Something just struck me reading Microsoft, The Jekyll And Hyde Of Companies from Techcrunch. Duncan Riley reports from the floor of the Mix conference in Las Vegas.

As part of the press package was an 8GB Zune which Duncan tried to use:

As part of my press accreditation I received a free 8gb Zune. They don’t sell Zunes where I come from so I had no negative expectations for it because I’d never seen one before. So I bring it back to my hotel room and on the screen it tells me I have to visit the Zune site to make it work. Great, get to the Zune site, tells me I have to download software to make it work….which is only available for Windows, not OS X (my laptop doesn’t have a copy of Windows on it)…..Zune=brick

What struck me is that Microsoft is up against a powerful group of people who are predisposed to Apple products. If we were to poll what machines journalists use on the road today I bet you will find that a significant number of them use Mac notebooks and an even greater number have experience with Apple products such as the iPhone or iPod.

Microsoft is facing a major headwind even before the first byte is published……