Aaargghhh! Ipods!

Or "The lord Jobs giveth with one hand, and taketh away with the other."

A little background:

I'm an ipod rebel, lurking in the shadows with my Cowon G3 and Samsung Z5. I've lived this way for a couple of reasons.

1. Value. You can get more, for the same price. Both of the DAPs I have owned (above) get significantly better battery life than any ipod. The Cowon had FM radio, a microphone, as well as line-in and radio recording.

2. Compatibility. I run Linux, so itunes is not a possibility. Both DAPs simply functioned as flash drives when plugged in. Ipod support is getting better under Linux, but it's only recently that it's become a plug and play experience.

So, we have a new Nano and the Touch. For the price, the Nano seems pretty good, but I would say it's nothing more than competitive. The Touch, on the other hand, gives you a tremendous amount of hardware for your $329 CAD. No one else has anything in a competitive price range, let alone anything that is actually likely to take proper advantage of the touch screen (Cowon Q5, I'm looking at you).

So, the ipod Touch has allowed an ipod to land on my most wanted list, by convincingly hitting my number one point in DAP purchasing: value. I was pretty damn excited watching the announcement, and the price and release schedule was much more aggressive than I had predicted.

Of course, we learn today that Apple has decided to lock out 3rd party applications from managing the ipod's media database. It's not the end of the world, because it will be circumvented, but at this point, the only effect will be delaying adoption of the new ipods by Linux users.

It's really a boneheaded move on Apple's part, and while I certainly hope to see them take steps to ameliorate the situation, history has shown that is unlikely to happen. Apple is only interested in selling ipods for the purpose of selling media through itunes, which means no matter how good a deal the hardware may be, it's subsidized through the purchase of media through itunes, which is something I have no plans to do at this point, so I will not be purchasing one. I would much rather give more of my money to someone who is putting together good hardware for the purpose of selling good hardware.