Well, not an original idea, the iPod. This competitive product comes with 20GB minus the Design, USB instead of FireWire and at the same price. This means that the competition will catch up soon. - Discuss

Totally by chance, I touched my first iPod today. (Whooohoo). Here some first impressions: Nice looking, I didn´t have the chance to try the software, but the menu looks spartanic. The back design reminds me of a Quantum hard drive case or a PowerBook battery. Despite being bus powered by the FireWire connection, there is an external power supply for when you are away from your computer for longer than the 10 hour battery live. The box it comes in is spectacular, rather like the things you get when you buy expensive jewellery - sort of telling. The display has a sticker with an anti-piracy slogan on it which says "Do not steal music". Hmm. Tog will like it. I do not like ear plug headphones and I don´t know how they sound because I wasn´t allowed to turn the thing on. One thing that puzzled me was a switch right beside the FireWire plug that I couldn´t figure out. The display is crisp but boring. The font on the display is good old "Chicago", so after being expelled from Mac OS X it now gets its revenge. So far a quick look.

Update: I plain forgot the most important thing: iPod is rather heavy for its size. I do not complain, but people will expect it to be a lot lighter, along the lines of mobile phones, so they will be surprised when they first hold it.

One more Update: You can install a Mac OS on iPod and boot from that. You can also use the iPod with Windows. It just acts as a FireWire drive and you can put data on it. - Discuss

A cool feature would be iPod to iPod (i2i) synchronisation. A new dimension of sharing songs. Meet your friends, plug in a FireWire cable and share the joy. This would have to be an unauthorized hack, I presume. Let´s see if we can get Steve to give us the infos to get the code going... Updateable Firmware, my ass! The longer I think about it, the cooler the thing gets... Definitely has potential. Other applications: Instant to-Quicktime conversion directly from you Camcorder; digital Fotoalbum to carry around with you (lacks the video out, though)... - Discuss

One might wonder why Apple releases a *groundbraking* new toy and then decides to market it exclusively for Mac owners. Obviously I don´t know the answer to that, but I think the marketeers saw that as a way to create a feelgood factor for Mac owners that now can be certain that at least in this hip area, the game runs only on Mac. Let´s see if they are willing to pay the price. I can´t wait to touch this thing. - Discuss