If iPods had lips, they’d all be smirking right now.

Starting at midnight Pacific time, thousands of Zunes (only the original 30-gigabyte model so far) spontaneously began crashing. No one knows what’s causing it, but Microsoft – bombarded by complaints from angry Zune owners -- is painfully aware of the issue.

“Customers with 30GB Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware,” a message on Zune.net informs concerned users. “We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. The Zune Social might be slow or inaccessible. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!”

The problem won’t likely affect Zune sales much vis-a-vis Apple’s iPod, which continues to hold over 70 percent of the market, but the device certainly doesn’t need another black mark on its reputation. Nor does Microsoft, for that matter.

But that won’t prevent me from gleefully offering possible causes for this glitch (it’s an Apple blog, so I’m duty-bound):

Planned obsolescence Many have accused Apple of designing iPods to fail in two years or less to encourage purchases of newer models. My nearly 3-year-old fully functional fifth generation iPod Video says otherwise. But could Microsoft have built in a time bomb to zap the Zune? Unlikely. Even the folks in Redmond aren’t dense enough to engineer the failures to occur all on the same day.

Virus Nah. Everybody knows that malware writers only target products with the biggest market share. Right, Mr. Ballmer?

Z2K Some think the problem is akin to the Y2K issue that affected many computers as they greeted the year 2000. Although this theory seems a day early, the leap day in February may have caused the affected Zunes to think today was Jan. 1. But why would the start of the year 2009 cause a portable media player to crash in the first place?

iPod envy As Sherlock Holmes said, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." With no other answer making sense, the only possible plausible explanation left is that the Zunes achieved self-awareness, realized they were not iPods, and promptly expired out of utter despair.

Happy New Year!

UPDATE: The global Zune meltdown has inspired quite a few clever headlines. I am compelled to share:

The Day the Microsoft Zunes Stood Still (New York Times)
Zune Extinction Event: Microsoft Music Players All Freeze Up at Once (FOX News)
I Woke up this Morning and My Zune Was Gone (CNET news)
The Day Zune Music Died (CRN)
Worldwide Zune suicide? (MLive.com)
Some Zunes Expire Along With 2008 (PC World)
Another Reason to Buy an iPod (Cinema Blend)
Zunes of Death: Microsoft's Y2K9 Problem (Technologizer)
Zunesday (All Things D Blogs)

UPDATE 2: Microsoft tracked down the problem. Turns out it was a Z2K issue, after all; the Zune couldn't handle the leap year. From the Associated Press story: "Late Wednesday, the Redmond, Wash.-based company said the outage affected only the 30-gigabyte Zune models and was caused by a problem with their internal clock. Microsoft expected the problem to clear up as the clocks ticked over to Jan. 1, though users will have to jump through some hoops to get their Zunes back to normal, including letting the batteries die down completely before the devices will restart successfully."