3. iHeart iTunes

If Apple sold the iPod at the lowest possible price point they could manage, which they're far from doing at the moment, they would still make serious amounts of cash from iTunes.

The problem with iTunes is that it works with the tootie fruitie company's players and not much else. This closed nature of iTunes is an injustice of the universe, right up there alongside packets of sweets you struggle to open, do so too forcefully and then watch, helpless, as the contents fly everywhere (do I sound bitter?); and parking tickets you get 30 seconds after the meter runs out. Honestly. It was 30 seconds.

This is an injustice so great that the French almost ran Apple right out of their fine country with the threat of opening up Apple's iPod standards clique. Then French legislators folded under pressure and the bill was watered down, but the row caused quite a stir while it lasted.

So long as Apple isn't being anticompetitive about it I don't see any problem. It's certainly not a unique tack to take - even the free open source business model is based on giving you one thing and then charging you more to support and grow it. Alright, so they don't charge you for the original purchase as Apple does, but the principal is the same.

Indeed, while our own Barry may not like iTunes, where would he prefer to get his music instead; from retail stores with sky-high prices? The DRM on iTunes is pretty lax compared to what the likes of Microsoft and MTV are coming up with for PlayForSure in URGE, their iTunes wannabe. Also, iTunes has the best prices and availability. And, best of all, it's simple to use for us techies and mere mortals alike. Ninety-nine cents for a song, cheaper albums and plenty of them... what more could you ask for?

The problem that companies like Creative have had in offering us PMPs, some technically superior to the iPod, is that they don't have an iTunes-like service to deliver content to their devices. For techies this can be annoying, as we have to find alternative, reliable services which cater to our needs.

For the non-techie masses, or 95% of the iPod "generation" (at a conservative estimate), not having something like iTunes, which is installed out of the box along with your iPod, puts legal digital music out of reach. Instead of wasting their time trying to find a legal download service to fill their Creative Zen with, they just start downloading illegally.

The fact of the matter is that most people probably don't care about any restrictions imposed on their music. Songs only allowed on 5 machines at any one time? I'm a technology journalist and so I might be able to breach that limit at times. Like when I'm doing a roundup of 6 computers. Find me any mere mortals with a need for more than 5 machines running the same songs and I'll eat my laptop.

These handcuffs have to be there, because as we experienced at the time when we were crying out for the music industry to give us legal downloads, people will steal music if it's readily available. They'd never steal a CD from a shop, but copying an unprotected iTunes file onto a friend's computer does not come with the same mental barriers.