It is truly amazing to have 6,000+ songs in the palm of your hand; I couldn't imagine not having an iPod for portable access to music. I also can't understand why people here are so overly critical of iPods but with 70+ million units sold in a relatively short amount of time the market has spoken. While an iPod doesn't sound great through my high end SET system, my iTunes lossless database through a usb dac does. Internet radio with 128k streams also sound decent through my usb dac, possibly better than lossless through my iPod out to my stereo. My rambling point is that iTunes sets up the infrastructure for a computer based audio system that then supports an airport express, a squeezebox, usb dac, iPod etc.
A future generation iPod with a digital out would be another story.
A future generation iPod with a digital out would be another story.