Testudo, since you have placed yourself in the role of prophet over the future of digital music, where do you think it's headed? And, when you post here, you are somewhat critical of Apple, what do you think they should be doing?

"as though it would have been a flop? Apple is the future of legal downloads and the odds of any one catching up anytime soon is minimal. "

I hope Apple doesn't have that mindset. I think the competition is only getting started. I still think there is room for subscription services if done right and MSN and the Xbox 360 and PS3 have yet to put their full weight in.

Apple is on top, but it will take more innovation to stay there.

Testudo, since you have placed yourself in the role of prophet over the future of digital music, where do you think it's headed? And, when you post here, you are somewhat critical of Apple, what do you think they should be doing?

I'm not placing my role as prophet. All I'm saying is "The iPod is a fad" and "It can't last forever, no matter how much you all think it will."

The Sony Walkman was a fad, and while it still sold many years later, it was also met with hundreds of competitors that basically made it a commodity. When you said "I need to get my walkman", you didn't necessarily have a walkman, just a portable radio/tape deck, like my Emerson POS that's 20 years old if a day, is huge and clunky, but still works - as I was using it yesterday. But I've never called it an Emerson so-and-so. Its either a 'radio' or a 'walkman'.) Once the iPod fad wears off (where its no longer the 'it' product), then the consumer space will be filled with more non-iPods then iPods, because people just want a music player, cheap. And at that point, Apple and the iTMS are in for some serious problems unless they decide to license fairplay out to iPod competitors (to keep iTMS sales going) or license WMA formats for use in the iPod/iTunes (to try to forestall iPod sales' drops).

Not to mention the fact that at some point, the populace as a whole may finally demand a set standard for DRM (or no DRM, as it all may be), rather then having to fight through the logjam of "what player will play my music?" and the more infuriating "What do you mean that if I want to buy this great new player from Rio, I can't play any of my legally purchased music on it that I got from iTMS?" [And don't give me the stupid "Well, you can burn it to a CD and re-rip it." because no one I know wants to spend their days burning and ripping music (If I wanted to do that, I would've just bought the CD)]. All this DRM (Apple, MS, RIAA, etc) is going to come to a head at some point (oh, wait, I said I wasn't a prophet....).

And I have no idea what Apple should be doing. Never claimed I knew. I would like to see them agressively create, update, and price their computers (PowerMac G5s are a joke in terms of a 'pro' machine, all other lines are a joke on their inflexibilities and their impressions on being overpriced). But then, since Apple has generally been moving away from being a computer company, I guess we should just be happy they bother to sell us a compute at all, right. Who needs four drive bays, or a couple of optical drives, or 5 or 6 PCI slots, or 5.1 surround sound, or USB ports (3 USB ports on any computer is a huge joke, esp. in this world of peripherals - one for the keyboard, one for the UPS, one for the printer, damn, where's the scanner get plugged into? What about the flash drive, or external hard drive?)

But that's all just me being completely unrealistic to think Apple should

When the Sony Walkman TPS-L2 first came out, I jumped on it. It was about $229 if I remember right back in '79 or so and I used it to death until such time as it fell out of its case and fell down the stairway at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International airport a few years later. It got replaced with another Sony after that. Looking around the house a few days ago, there is a water resistant Sony Walkman Sport, an AM/FM Walkman, and just a cassette Walkman. There are no clones. Why? My guess is that when I buy things I use them to DEATH and the cheap stuff doesn't last. My wife is the same way, the cheap imitation stuff is generally not of a quality nature. This might explain why there are at least three iPods in the house - they just work.

Not saying that another brand might have some desirable features or be cheaper, but its the integration and user interface that people buy the iPod for and the fact that it is the IT product now.

There will be a backlash but the sales will still be high enough that it will be popular for many years.

By then they will no doubt come up with something else new and stylist and interesting.

iPod and the music store have reached a point of no return, if apple keeps up the good work they will grow past Sony or even MS. I wish :)

People tend to stick with there known good working brands and apple is now among them, apple can release anything living-room orientated and it will sell (according to price and function). There's no stopping this unless they'll produce total c*** like Philips, Philips in europe totally lost consumer trust on anything but CRT TV's and is now in fast pace going downhill. I see a good future for Apple :)

The iPod user interface isn't so great. The shuffle's simpler controls are actually better than the finicky click-wheel design, and the iPod only looks good because nobody's really pad any attention to the MP3 player user interface they way they have to things like casette decks, CDs, and radios.

That is, the click wheel isn't great, it's just that everyone's so terrible that the click wheel looks good in comparison.

I spent way too much time fiddling with the controls on my iPod, accidentally brushing the oversensitive clickwheel because I'd forgotten to flip the "disable" switch, and so on. I gave my iPod to my daughter and got the so much more practical shuffle.

For something you're going to control by feel (I can do that with a CD player, why not an MP3 player?), here are the design principles you need to follow:

1. No more than one function per common control. 2. Controls organised in common groups.

The d-pad style in the shuffle is great, much better than joysticks. The on/straight/shuffle switch is a mistake, it's to hard to reliably settle on linear order. For navigation through menus, a 3-button or jog-wheel side controller is fine, you don't need separate forward/back buttons if you don't need to use the menu to select things like shuffle or step through songs.

You need back, play-pause, next, volume-up, volume-down, mode, power-sleep, menu controls, and maybe balance... though that's rarely something you need to tweak frequently.