The news today that the new Zune's from Microsoft were outselling Apple's own enigmatic iPod on Amazon.com got me wondering if this was some sort of trick by Microsoft to create artificial scarcity and repeat their smash of the Xbox 360 or if the player had finally caught on with consumers.

Introduced only a week ago, by this morning Microsoft 's heavily discounted, 30-gigabyte, $134 Zune digital media player was ranked the No. 1 bestseller in the Seattle online retailer's list of top-selling MP3 players in the "Electronics" category. Apple's four-gigabyte iPod nano was No. 2, followed by Apple's 80-gigabyte iPod "classic" at No. 3.

Last week, the Redmond computer giant introduced a new 80-gigabyte Zune player, but they're hard to find. Amazon's site on Monday said they're "temporarily out of stock" and no future shipping date was listed. Microsoft's own Zune site said the 80-gigabyte player can't be ordered until "early December."

In more ways than one, the new Zune's take a strong set of differentia from the first generation and execute more effectively while adding features that truly make it a hipper product. USAToday had a review recently:(read more)