Go ahead, Apple. Yuck it up.

I've been sitting in front of the computer now for several hours importing CD's into iTunes so I can put them on the fancy new iPods that my girlfriend and I got for Christmas. Yes, I said Christmas because that's what we were celebrating when we got them. If you don't celebrate Christmas, you don't have to say it. Anyway, we got the nifty new iPods that play video, which anyone who read my first post will know that I sort of maligned when they came out. I have relented! They are really cool. I have somewhere around 48 videos, 3500 songs, and 83 photos on that thing now. And more being added as we speak, or type...or read, whatever! Much as I hate to admit it, I am hooked. Don't get me wrong, this is not totally new to me. I've been using iTunes for years, and I've had an ancient 2nd generation iPod for a while now, which I've always thought would do me just fine. Then I started getting frustrated with the limited 10Gig capacity of it. How spoiled am I? 10 gigs of music and that's not enough. Jeez. Anyway, I was wanting more space, then one of my friends got the iPod Photo when it came out. Higher capacity AND a color screen? Ok, I was jealous. But I still couldn't justify spending $400 bucks on it. Around this time my girlfriend started saying she wanted an iPod Mini. Fast forward to the release of the 5th generation iPod Video. I thought it was a bit ridiculous at first. I thought it would lead to nothing but trouble with people trying to watch videos while they're supposed to be paying attention to something else, like, say...driving. And it may still come to that, that remains to be seen. But once I actually went into Tekserve and to play around with one of these things, I was impressed to say the least. The picture quality is actually pretty good, though detail in dark areas is not so good. I feel like I'm missing out on a lot watching episodes of Surface on this screen because the darks band and pixelate pretty badly. However, when the image is not really dark it looks fantastic. Plus the storage capacity of these is up to 60 Gigs now. That's pretty amazing. So Christmas time rolls around and I decide I'll finally get my girlfriend that iPod mini she's been wanting. It doesn't take long to discover that the Nano has replaced the Mini. Damn. The nano is ridiculously small. There's just no reason for it to be that small. It seems very easy to break, and even easier to lose. So eschewing the Nano, I decided to spend the extra $50 and get her the 30Gig iPod Video. I get it home and decide to load it up with some music that she likes and some photos of us, and I even made a little video and put it on there. Adds a nice personal touch to it. That was my mistake. Over the course of the 4 or 5 days I was messing around with her NEW iPod, then going out and using my very OLD iPod, I was forced to admit that it was time to upgrade myself too. Fortunately I got a pretty decent bonus at work this year so I ran straight out and got the 60Gig iPod Video. And now here I am importing CD's and encoding movies to put on this tiny little black box that I'll plug into my head and walk around the city listening to music, watching movies and TV shows, and looking at photos, while Apple laughs themselves silly all the way to the bank.