We love our toys, with all their buttons, settings, features, and firmware.

But let me offer this perspective: It’s just hardware.

It gets replaced every year.

Most player makers are hardware-oriented. Their strategy depends on buyers repeatedly making the choice to stay with their product, when the new lines are released each fall.

Part of Apple’s brilliance is their success in drawing an emotional attachment from their users, that compels them to return to iPod again and again when they’re at that decision point. (And, it doesn’t hurt that they make great products.)

Competitor products don’t have Apple’s cachet, so this strategy has worked extraordinarily well for Apple.

And each fall, Apple breaks new ground when it releases its updated players. It has to. Competitor offerings will catch up, and if you don’t give your users a new reason to stay, they’ll switch.

We’re seeing that now with iPod Classic. It has stagnated woefully, and my perception (anecdotal as it is) is that Zune hard drive players are filling the void with new features you can’t get in an Apple hard drive player.

It suggests that – other than your tiny investment in DRM’d content from iTunes Store – there are no real barriers preventing people from switching from Apple to competing products.

And that’s the downside of a hardware strategy.

So, contrast that with Zune’s approach. The notion of connecting people with music from other music lovers is part of Microsoft’s drive to redefine how people interact with digital media. This new ground has the potential to be as compelling as any “Web 2.0″ community phenomenon out there. It draws people in, and they in turn draw others in.

In this strategy, people become entrenched in the Zune environment, and their attachment grows as more users invest in and add to that environment.

It’s not transient like hardware. It doesn’t get discarded every fall with a replacement offering. People stay in – because going outside means leaving behind the investment and rewards of being part of that environment.

I don’t want to trivialize the importance of hardware, or the engineering genius behind great player hardware like we see from Apple. But I’m placing my long-term bets on Zune’s strategy.

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