1. The Price
The price isn't great either. You can expect to pay up to £200 for these iPods when they come out. That's about four times the price of my most expensive Walkman! Okay, so I have to also pay for batteries for that, but given how long they last even factoring that in doesn't make this an attractive purchase. The music is not widely available either. You're either going to have to download it from some of the dubious free music programs like Kazaa, Audiogalaxy or Napster, and incur possible charges of copyright infringement, or use your computer to "rip", I believe is the term, your CDs and convert them into the format of choice of the ipod, MP3. Want to listen to your albums that are not on CD, or your tapes, on this thing? Best of luck. You ever tried hooking up a turntable to your computer? Me neither.
Conclusion
So between over-sensitive controls, restricted ways of loading music onto the damn thing, tiny headphones and a price point that would probably buy you a decent MIDI system, I think the future of these things is very limited indeed. Maybe those with more money than sense, and wanting to have the very latest technology will splash out on them, but like Laserdiscs and DAT this looks to be something that will only be for the idle rich, while the rest of us carry on as we always have. iPods to take over the world? Yeah, and one day we'll all be watching televisions that are flat and wafer-thin. Oh, and with 3D and gaming capabilities too, sure why not? Give me strength! Think I'll stick to my good old Walkman, if it's all the same to you. Just sounds like too much hassle just to be able to listen to music. I like things simple. I think Apple may find that the vast majority agrees. Hope they haven't manufactured too many of these already...