Why such a success of iPod?

The iPods, like everything that is marketed by Apple, are super expensive compared to the competition, yet they tend to sell like hotcakes. Why? Did I miss something?
Santa Claus (in ooccurence the aunt of my daughters) were generous with my eldest, I had the opportunity to look into the operation of an iPod Shuffle and make me a review "goal."

The iPod Shuffle So, a small piece of metal (and electronics) of nothing, no screen, can hold 2GB of data, for the modest sum of 59.
59? !!! For the same price, competition offers 8GB mp3 player with color display, whose real direct competitor to Apple's iPod Nano, sold for more than three times more expensive - certainly with the touch screen. Short.

The iPod Shuffle is more expensive than its competitors. That said, it is small, discreet, lightweight, and very convenient for jogging, for example, activity for which it does not need to monitor. Its features are very simple to use, even if they are of course limited due to the lack of screen. A highlight anyway he can do random play (hence the name probably!), And even has a function "VoiceOver" that lets you know the name of the artist and the current song, the battery charge state, and the name of the current playlist (well, the playback algorithm is not perfect yet, but it's fun!). The iPod seems rather robust, and listening with my Sennheiser headphones, the sound seems rather decent quality. On that side, therefore, positive.

However, where I am a little taken my head, it's about the music facility on the iPod. Already, one must know that the only way is to go through iTunes. The manual is clear: we can not go through Windows Explorer or the equivalent on the Mac to make a simple drag and drop in the correct directory, you must imperatively go through iTunes. For PC owners like me, also impossible to pass through other software, such as Windows Media Player.
It seemed that Apple's philosophy was simple, and as such, it seems that the drag is what is simpler. Astonishing as it may not be possible. But it's true, I tried!

Well, let's! So I downloaded and installed iTunes. Upon installation, we propose to recover the music already on the PC. I realized the reason later: the iPod does not use the same type of music file other mp3 players, and thus, it retrieves files to convert and store them in iTunes. The problem is that it only does one mass conversion to installation. Afterwards, if you have the misfortune not to spend systematically by iTunes when recording a CD or download music, you will be good to make file conversion file, which is very annoying (yes, that too, I ' tried!).
I find it particularly unsustainable, because basically it is a way to force to go through iTunes to buy music online, while there are other stores in lines.
Besides, I do not find particularly terrible iTunes to play the music. I'm not a big fan of Windows Media Player, but I find it much better damn. In particular for reasons I will detail in a moment.
Not to mention the fact that as long as you have not created the iTunes Store identifier (which is theoretically not required), you are entitled to a message that reminds you every time you open iTunes, and more , you can not benefit from the information retrieval on the music present on the PC (track title, CD covers ...). For comparator, in Windows Media Player, there's no need to create an account on an online store for that. I find it particularly troublesome that to create an account on the iTunes Store, it is imperative to give his credit card number even if you do not want to order titles. In terms of parental control, I find it particularly unfortunate, because once the input card, I wonder if my daughter could not control at will. I hope the software will ask for password before validating the order. But that, I do not know, I have not been to test this part!

Synchronization: iTunes offers either synchronize all bilbliothèque PC automatically or manually choose, knowing that one can choose from 4 different ways: by genre, artist, album and them ... I do not know more. In any case, no possible way synchronization. And so, if we want to do only one title of an album on the iPod, it is not possible to easily. Or maybe I missed something and so it's not that obvious!
Important detail I've realized last night, being with family when my daughter took her gift, I used my laptop to charge the battery and install the CD that he also had a gift. Returning home, I installed iTunes on the PC for our children and plug the iPod. And there, a message informs me that if I sync with this PC, all data contained in the iPod will be overwritten. After checking in the online help, one can not actually sync iPod with only one computer. Eventually, through the home network, you can get music on up to 5 computers, but we are obviously obliged to connect to a single PC. I find it amazing. So far I have not seen a single data storage tool, be it USB, cameras, camcorders and MP3 Player that requires me to work with a single PC pain of my data disappear. Apple, this is the case !!!

In short, when I see all this, I see that to use an iPod, it must bear a lot of obligations imposed by Apple, the fact of not being able to connect to only one computer is for me the pompom. Definitely, use of an iPod is very rigid and not so easy as one would have us believe. As for me, I'll leave it to my old Sony.

In conclusion, despite the good quality of the product and its drive advantages in terms of portability, I find that the iPod is an MP3 player rather bad from the standpoint of use.