
Welcome to the world of digital music!
I done bought me an Apple iPod Shuffle.
My hanging 512MB stick full of Amoeba Music laden CD rejects now serves as a daily commute companion. My fiancee did offer to spring for the 1G but after checking out the Shuffle at the San Francisco's retail store where the long lines was evidence of anecdotal popularity, I had to limit my dive to a small dip in this consumerism.
I had a 256MB Rio that the honey was constantly borrowing like my favorite dress shirts, so I knew 512MB was plenty, plus I could score another 512MB SD card for my mp3 playing Palm Powered handheld from the $50 she'd save. The MS Windows fuddy detractors could smugly dismiss this misguided purchase as caving to Jobs iPoo marketing where the mass hypnosis of the Apple faithful will compel them to devour any form of crap coming from the blanched pome de terre. But I haven't done Apple since System 7!
What the eBay snipping tech savvy review hounds fail to realize is the ultimate convenience that the iPod experience provides the user. Like a single minded RIM shot, Apple makes it bottom line easy to use a single function like piping music from any media to your ears.
What I found so remarkable in this new musical experience was not the single function convenience of the device itself, but rather the tight integration between iTunes and the client iPod. Soon I signed up for eMusic, another music subscription service that offers a basic plan of 40 songs for 10 bucks. Adding a base pool of independents to the 99 cent one offs from iTunes, I'm back in the day Napster more legal like.