Ken - not intended to be a flamewar... just my pet peeve (well, one of many) when one company steps up to make their trade name a household word for an entire industry.
iPod, iTunes, iCar... whatever it is, Apple has a history of jumping on a lot of bandwagons, putting out a highly marketable, product-placement ready piece of equipment that is (IMHO) usually overpriced or underfeatured, but it's sleek, cool, etc and it sells (PowerBooks, iBooks, iPods) and glutting the market and hailing themselves as a pioneer. Best Buy/Future Shop this season here both had huge iPod displays... an entire rack for everything Steve Jobs thought of in the shower one day... knit iPod cozys, holders to fit on your dog's collar, docks for your boat, car, plane, bicycle.
So other manufacturers who put out a good solid product without dancing silhouette commercials get buried under the hype.
Lisa's got a Creative MuVo I think it is. Excellent little thing... it's easy to use, it's about the size of a pack of gum... thick enough not to crack in half, and if you want a USB drive, you disconnect the drive from the player and can use it separately. Good product... (surprising coming from Creative!) but they won't get news reports hailing them as the Jesus Christ of the portable music set.
Just that mindset that Jobs can say one day "Intel sucks" and 300 Mac owners all agree... then the next day "Intel is the future" and all 300 Mac owners agree again - is infuriating.
Bren R.
