Before you scurry out the door to get that new "fatty" Nano or the iPhone sans phone, keep in mind what Apple has done to your muscle memory... First, they taught you to spin a touch sensitive dial that unlike the old dial telephones had no holes to spin with. Instead, you learned to move through menus via a finger twirl... It sounds obvious, until you find that special someone who has never used an iPod.. Then, you watch and listen as they try to figure the navigation out. They are confused. They are frustrated. They can't understand why this "thing" is so popular...

What gives?

Well it turns out Apple is about to hoist another new muscle memory onto the market. Via the iPhone and Ipod Touch, the pinch and flick will be a new set of muscle memories that embed their product line into your autonomic reactions. Those same learned skills that enable you to program your Tivo or change channels on that multi-function remote in the dark are about to form all new synapses that have tremendous effects on the market place.

So yes Apple may have exceptional skill at creating great technology, but a small piece of the puzzle is their ability to get you to learn new muscle skills to work their devices... And the skills you learn can even make other devices seem awkward. Try using a dial or any flat service after you have mastered the flick from an iPhone? Try even a non-iPod MP3 music player?

The Zune, clearly in my opinion and many others is an iPod knock off. It too has a dial, but it is not designed to react as the Apple Synaptics designed dial works.. Why Microsoft designed a device that looks extremely similar but reacts differently is not completely understood. But the lack of success the Zune has experienced may well be in some small part to adding a new device that to any iPod user doesn't seem to work properly...

Of course Microsoft may be doing the exact opposite, introduce a device that looks like an iPod, but behaves differently to stop the flood of iPod devices getting into the hands of more PC users. The "Halo" effect has been well documented, and I for one, will not add to it here. But as a neuro-musculature move it is intriguing to follow up on that idea...

The Apple new line of products will require constant practice, so that the neural networks and motor neuron/muscle group pathways become fast and effortless, requiring no conscious thought to achieve the fluid sequence of motor activity that produces the optimal behavior.

And that becomes the lock in.. Not so much DRM, but rather a set of specialized learned muscle memories that help embed the behaviors to a very external and very specific device. Learned neural networks based solely on patented mechanisms, that Apple has a lock on.

So the discussion on Digital Rights Management, is not nearly as powerful as the learned behaviors associated with using a particular music player... Zune may be an attempt to thwart your muscles from learning a new muscle memory... Thus changing forever your expectations of what a MP3 player should feel and react like...

Yet thousands of tiny ships have already set sail... Apple has you learning the flicks and twirls already. And market share in muscle memory has already proven a potent combination... Just a thought as I tap my finger gingerly into a QWERTY keyboard instead of an Alphabetic keypad...