iPod Problems, Apple?

If there would be only one question you could directly ask Apple, as a company, or even if you could ask "his Steveness" for some information, what would you like to know? Speaking for myself, I could easily go for "why remove FireWire," but I won't. The engine that really pushed Apple through the first years of this decade and helped it grow so much is, without any doubt, the iPod. Now, Steve Wozniak says the iPod is getting closer to its final hour, and so my question would be - "iPod problems, Apple?"

Now, let me explain, it doesn't really matter I did it before. My opinion is that Apple's iPod hit the market with its innovations exactly when that was needed, but after a few well chosen moves, it stopped. For example, look at the new iPod Nano. An accelerometer? Was that really needed? Still no microSD slot, still rather short battery life, still lack of support for various audio formats popular within the audio enthusiasts community(APE, FLAC).

One thing is certain, and I have nothing bad to say about it - Apple's marketing division is brilliant! They managed to grab a huge market share without having the best product available, and even without offering the best price to features ratio, but this seems to lead to very interesting problems. If we look at the iPhone 3G problems, then I don't think there's any lawsuit going on, one that has been started by a competitor claiming that Apple is monopolizing the market, but when we talk about iPod problems...

...Apple just found themselves under fire once again, this time having to fight a Taiwanese media player manufacturer, namely Luxpro(never heard of it, by the way). They accuse Apple for controlling 80 percent of the music downloads through iTunes, which sells songs only playable on iPods, while forbidding its devices to play music purchased from other online sources.

Previously, Apple attacked Luxpro in 2005, demanding them to stop selling the "Super Shuffle" player, and that lawsuit was finally won by Luxpro, after changing the name of the device into "Super Tangent."

Now, Luxor says Apple leaves customers with "no choice but to purchase music from iTunes." Even more, Apple has "sought to monopolize the worldwide MP3 player market and crush legitimate, smaller competitors," at least according to Luxor. They have the market share numbers from the US to back their words, since 90 percent of the hard drive player market and 70 percent of the general market are being held by Apple.

Just my 5 cents - why in the world would a smart consumer pay for iTunes music and use an iPod, when he/she could get audio CDs for about the same price, even cheaper, turn them into MP3 files, and then easily play these tracks on any possible media player one could think of? There's the freedom of choice, there's Apple's marketing division(hail&kill!), and then there's the customer.

I see no monopoly issue here - as a potential buyer, anyone could check online and see if there's no better choice from Creative, Cowon, or even Luxor, to suit one's needs. Anyway, my past experience says a lot of people first buy, and then think about it, so Luxor should find some really smart people to take care of advertising its products properly...