2. Paying a Premium for a Smaller I

Buying an iPod is not a cheap affair. What Barry terms an "icon of the twenty-first century" will set you back anywhere between $69 if you go for the slightly cheapo Shuffle, or all the way up to $399 if you go for the 60 GB, at the time of writing, 5G iPod.

Also, as Barry points out, the supplied ear buds are crap, the cases are overly expensive and so is just about everything else that's an official iPod accessory. There's not much you can do about cases around iPod launch time unless Apple starts to give out the dimensions to third parties a little earlier, so as they can make cheaper ones. However to slap Apple on the wrists for being a money-making business is a tad silly. It's a free market economy, and for all its disadvantages it's better than some of the alternatives.

The iPod Nano and Nike+ shoes supposedly work together to keep you fit.

Is the iPod itself value for money? On a pound for pound basis, no bloody way. However when people have money to burn, burn it they will, and the iPod is the Nike shoe of portable media players. It looks superficially better than the competition, it's the hip thing to have and despite the fact that two seconds out of the box it'll have fingerprint smudges all over the place, it's got what, for want of a better term, I shall describe as "spunk"; right down to the option to have two lines of text, from your name to a birthday greeting, burned onto the back by laser before it's shipped out.

Are you wasting your money buying an iPod, from a purely stylistic point of view? That depends entirely on you. To use the economic term, the "utility" you gain from having a stylish iPod is entirely unique to you. Personally the stylistic issues surrounding the iPod don't light my fire all that much. I do think it's a lot better looking than many of the other Personal Music Players (PMPs) that have crossed my desk, but I'm not quite so design conscious as some iPod owners I know.

However, I didn't buy an iPod so that I could say I have an iPod. I bought an iPod for iTunes.