The Washington Post writes about the iPod and how with iTunes it holds nearly 70 percent of the market. When I bought my first (and only) iPod several years ago it was a luxury product. The iPod has kept key functions and design concepts while getting smaller thinner and more powerful.
Even though the new iPods are without doubt the best designed portable music players on the market I feel that Apple has not provided as much innovation as I would have expected. The consistent attacks on developers providing software to transfer music from the iPod to your PC (yes computers do crash) and refusing to let iTunes transfer to anything else than an iPod is a real pain. I only own an iPod but I don't like the way Apple is behaving at all !
When you look at Macs, PowerPCs, iMacs etc there is a real innovative strength that is sometimes breathtaking in new models. With the iPod, there is far less innovative strength in my opinion. It must be said, with such an awesome initial design, it may well have rendered innovative 'next steps' far more difficult. But when you think that the iPod is now capable of showing videos why restrict users with such a tiny screen ?
Adding the ability to have the full length of the handheld as a screen would have been a nice touch. Hopefully Apple will be back from the drawing board soon with a new dazzling design that will again be a really unique and luxury item among portable media players.