The real problem with the iPod is the copy protection (which is part of the reason its Mac only -- nice to see the other OS monopoly company caving in to the demands of big media corporations as well).

The iPod's copy-protection consists of a radio-button that, when checked, disables copy-protection:

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2001/10/29.4.shtml

Corey wrote:

The iPod's copy-protection consists of a radio-button that, when checked, disables copy-protection

Yes, but only for the pre-release version.

Read a little further on down the page you directed me to,

While this is the case with the pre-release version of iTunes 2 and the iPod, it may be changing with the final version. After the initial announcement, the iPod FAQ was changed to say that copying from the iPod to the Mac would not be possible.

...

In a nutshell: You can load up tunes from different Macs onto your iPod, but you can not then take files from your iPod and either automatically or manually put them onto a Mac. This directly contradicts our own experiments and seems to indicate a change in the software from iTunes version 2.0f13 (the pre-release version in our test unit) is in the works for the final version. Unfortunately, we likely won't know until the final version ships.

The question I have is why is Apple doing this? Gee, if Diamond could take on the music lobby to create the whole MP3 player market, why can't Apple?

Think different, Mr. Jobs.