Small minded hatred? I can list countless FACTS where both iPhone and iPod falls short of competitors products. So far I see nothing but iToy fanbois supporting a product with no substantial reasoning at all.

bobjones2007, who you have now decided to speak for, has absolutely no defense to offer, because it doesn't exist. Your simplified dismissal also illustrates that you will shoot down comments with absolutely no hope of being able to support your views either.

So lets start with their first farce, the iPod.
MP3 players from Samsung (Yepp for example) had very powerful, clean amplifier circuits that drove full frequency response to whatever headphones you could find to properly reproduce it. They ran from a single AAA battery, that lasted about 10 hrs and was replaced in seconds. A 4-pack of rechargables meant you could run constantly and always have music. The Yepp, as with most others, would playback REAL file formats, FLAC, WAV etc. with bitrates as high as you wanted 1400kbps etc. and would let you manage and transfer files in true USB stick fashion, on ANY computer without installing proprietary software.

iPod has a limited life, non replaceable battery. When the battery dies you have to recharge the whole device and face downtime in the process. As with any rechargeable system, the battery eventually lose life and you either have to have a new one installed at the Apple store or go out and buy a new player, which was most common because they faced manufacturer driven obsolescence.

IPods then insist that you install Apple's proprietary software in order to manage your music, making it only accessible to those who share similar devices. You can't just plug in someone's USB port and trade a bunch of music back and forth with drag and drop simplicity.

Then iPod's insist that you listen to very low quality, poorly compressed music that is incredibly lossy, flat and lifeless due to their focus on MP3 formatting.

THEN iPod provides you with substandard playback quality, poor DAC converters and no frequency adjustments, perpetuating the lifeless sound of iPods.

Due to intense marketing efforts and side deals with every electronics manufacturer they can find, iPod becomes a proprietary yet popular format for kiddies who want to be like everyone else in school and music is now dummed down and lost for real listeners.

So that's how Apple's marketing has made a substandard and comparatively useless music player into the most popular music player, not by pioneering or doing something others didn't but by trend marketing.

So how about you put your money where your big mouth is and actually support your defense of the low end garbage that you call me a hater for taking to task?

I know you can't so you'll flame me instead, as that is all you have to hang on to. Instead of playing the teeny-bopper trend defense, how about some solid facts that you feel make iPods a better music player than others that were on the market years prior to iPods?


Shall we then move on to iPhones?