> *cool factor" is a huge part of it's success. The white earbuds, instantly > recognizable. There are cheaper music players out there with a larger > capacity, and yet the iPod outsells all of them combined. It's a > pop-culture phenomenon, much like the Sony Walkman was in the 80s. And much like any other fashion statement / fad (an expensive one at that), it has limited lifespan, which was my point. The end of which is easily measured by the appearance of a U2 iPod. Hey, even I got an iPod. It sits in a draw now, because I ran out of patience with things like not being able to delete a track directly off the device, and the sheer pain of attempting to sync it under linux. Its been replaced by an iAudio device, which has double the capacity at half the price, functions as a portable drive, and supports lossless compression codecs. I compare the iPod to the Radio Shack, IBM-PC/Jr, and other x86 systems of the 80s. They started the market, but died because people wanted to configure machines to their spec with their set of features. Increasing capacity for cellphones and decreasing size of wearable/pda systems will just accelerate this. The future of portable audio is an mp3 player on your cell phone, accessing tracks from a wearable server, make no bones about it. > I frequent a lot of online discussion groups, and this one has, by far, > the highest tolerance for a lack of basic civil discourse. There's a > lot of good information here, but this petty rudeness really gets old, > and isn't necessary. Where on earth did this come from? Please lighten up, this is a mailing list. Cheers Kon ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.