No USB for you!

So after two more reformats, I've now given up on using USB 2.0 with my iPod. It's supposed to work, but it doesn't. What it does do is corrupt my iPod database. Why it does this when every other USB device I have works fine with my new USB card is a mystery, but I guess I'm stuck using Firewire until I figure something else out. Yes, I realize Firewire is marginally better than USB 2.0, but the problem is convenience, or lack thereof - my PC only has rear Firewire ports (it has front USB), which means either reaching around in back of my entertainment center to connect the cable every time or just leaving a bare wire sitting on top of my machine. This just doesn't seem like something that fits into the whole Apple philosophy. (What would fit into the Apple philosophy would be wasting another $40 on the piece of white plastic that they call a "dock", as this would allow me to have that bare wire connected to something at all times... and I'm seriously contemplating such a move.)

As for my thoughts on the iPod itself, I can see it becoming a life-altering device. I see people with these things on and running at all times - including when they're conversing with others - and I can already see why. Having thousands of songs at your fingertips is a sort of power that is just difficult to give up. Already I have lost two nights' worth of sleep just sitting up and listening to the thing on shuffle.

Objectively speaking, though, and I say this as someone who's always a bit more forward-looking than most, it still feels like an immature device. I'm apparently among the few people who feel this way, but it has quite a few rough edges - from the plastic casing that immediately scratches itself up when put in contact with tissue paper to the hard drive that vibrates noticeably in your hand to the ugly interface (it may be simple and user-friendly, but it ain't much to look at) to the pretty poor battery life, there's a lot of room for improvement here. To me, it feels like a work in progress.

The iPod's reputation as the best all-around and most refined overall player out there suggests to me that the competition must be pretty atrocious. I'm curious to try out players like the Creative Zen Touch and Dell DJ to see just how bad they can possibly be. The iPod is certainly not a bad player, but if I separate the experience of owning a hard-drive based music player from the experience of owning an iPod, it's not the product itself that gives me pleasure - it's the music it contains. It seems to me that whoever produces a player that gets in the way of the music the least is who will have the best player on the market, and for all I know that could be Apple right now. But this is not the best that music players will ever be.

At least I hope it isn't.