Wow Chas, you really hit the nail on the head with that one... (sorry, there's no sarcastic emoticon available)

Normally I think your posts are very logical and on track with the reality of things in general, but you've definitely crossed a line on this one, taking you into plain ol' silly land my friend..

First off, you really need to retract part of what you've said. Please find anything in my post which states me saying that iPods suck. I beg of you. Right, and now that you've combed the thread thoroughly, you can apologize.

What you don't understand here is that these smaller Korean or Chinese companies don't have the same market power in the States as they do in their home lands. They also don't care nearly as much about the US market as they do their own Asian market. I used to admin a forum for DAP's and was in touch with suppliers and manufacturer's for some of these companies, and know first hand that their bottom line is much different than what you want to think.

People buying DAP's and other assorted tech in Asia are a lot more interested in small, feature packed and integrated tech which also includes TV amongst other things. They like the ability to customize and they also don't like proprietary formats. But getting back to the States:

Apple is a financial monster. They're also a marketing beast. No company with the same interests as Apple may have (I'm excluding MS for now) has nearly the same amount of marketing resources. I'm not saying that Apple doesn't produce fine products, else I'd not even be typing this, but you're failing to understand that there is more to an Mp3 player than what the mass public might be interested in.

As there are people whom invest a lot of time and money into things like cars, or boats or even guns... there's a group of people whom more than anything, love the tech we're talking about, and in that smaller world, it's the audio quality which matters most. We're ultimately talking about an very small percentage of people here, so it's also understandable that you don't care about this topic and only know that the iPod plays music and sounds pretty good to your ears.

I've put in many an hour with multiple Mp3 players using different sources like amps *tubes.. Mmmm* and headphones, which cost some pretty serious cheddar... And you can believe me or not (you've clearly already chosen not to), but... most iterations of the iPod are not even close to sounding as good as my scrubby iRiver IHP 140 or Rio Karma or even my cheap ol Sansa Fuze.

So go ahead and poke fun at my expense, I really don't mind. I wasn't trying to convince YOU of anything. And even if I tried, it seems as though you're not very open minded and think that every Apple product trumps every direct competitor, based on nothing but sales figures. Sales numbers are great and all, but they do not absolutely define the quality of an product. Don't think so ? Fine, then why not go and use Windows ? Its sales numbers greatly out number those of OS X, so obviously it's a better product, right ?

Anyway, I'm going to bow out of this while I still have the chance. I'd love to give you the benefit of the doubt and would like to think that you could actually see the truth in what I've said, but somehow I doubt it's going to happen. So, that's it for me.

Move along.. nothing to see here !

Doug