I'm not diputing the overpriced part. And not disputing that there are other perhaps superior players out there. But really Apple pretty much created the bandwagon. Sure Rio was there first, and Creative and others not far behind. IRiver makes some cool players. But all of these companies are benefitting from the iPod phenomenon. The market was stagnant until the 1G 'pods came on the scene. Heck one of the real problems is that none of the pretenders can do all of the 3 parts well: 1)Must-have design 2)Cool features and 3)MARKETING! Ever see an add for an iRiver or a MuVo? How much of the general populace has ever heard of these companies much less their products? Sure there is a bit of the Evil Genius to Jobs but ya know that's the way it is. I've had 5 or 6 players and the only one I really liked had a fatal design flaw. So I finally buy an iPod and it works fine for me. And please don't tell me you buy into the "it's success makes it suck" crap. I personally couldn't give a rat's tuckus how many other people in the world own something. If it fits my needs I'll buy it. I'm a professional computer geek which means by definition I have no sense of style and further could care less what the world thinks of me. If I was an add-on manufacturer I would turn 100% of my capacity to iPod merch and completely ignore the rest. I would nod sympathetically when competitors tell me about their warehouses full of add-ons for the now-defunct Rio products and iRiver parts never sold to an unknowing, uncaring public. It's freaking business and they are out there to make money. I'll tell you what: If my 'pod breaks I will give serious consideration to whichever player you think is superior.
As far as computers go some people make the mistake of assuming I am a militant towards or against one platform of another. Nope. Like 'em all, as far as what they can do for me. Maybe you have had bad luck with Apple. But hell I can point out flaws inherent in countless computers from Dell, IBM, HP and others. Think the iBooks are the only ones with power supply problems? Dell probably replaced more PS's for its Inspiron 8XXX series laptops in the last quarter than Apple has in the entire life of the iBook line. Their Latitude D600's had nearly 35% hard drive failure rates for while on machines less than a year old. And believe you me there is no such thing as a perfect OS. Any of them. OS X could be. Stability of Unix, Mac GUI and ease of use. All it needs are the ba-jillions of periphs you can get on the PC plus all the high-end games and power apps. Maybe OS-X86 will be the one true OS that brings balance to the galaxy.
