You're being sarcastic, right? Please? Say it ain't so, AidenShaw. Say you weren't fooled by a ****** corporate shill website.
This whole anti-iPod "you're all sheep" ******** has gone far enough. It's completely retarded. I'm not in much (if any) danger of being labeled a conformist. My idea of fun is getting high and reading Wikipedia while listening to obscure bootlegs of the Doors that I've arranged at great pains in chronological order. My toenails are roughly as long as John Holmes' penis, my favorite TV show is still Twin Peaks (and I have watched less than 24 hours total of cable television in the past 15 years -- I would bet $100 on this), and I refuse to get a driver's license because I believe that 93% of the drivers out there are deranged cretins, and I simply won't inch it any closer toward 94%. I voted Democrat in the last election, even though I loathe John Kerry for his actions while on the POW/MIA committee (yes, as much as I loathe John McCain's related actions).
Yes, I use iTunes, and my preferred mp3 player is the iPod. My songs are all mp3s, AAC, or ALAC. I don't have any Ogg, WMA, FLAC, Monkey, Wavpack, or Shorten files. I don't feel the need to transfer songs to my iPod from the Finder or Explorer. I don't even feel the need to use my iPod as a portable hard drive -- that's why God provided the miracle of FTP servers, one of which is installed on my utilitarian and un-hip B&W G3.
An iPod doesn't make you a conformist. That is, if you have a double-digit (or, God willing, triple-digit) IQ and don't define yourself in terms of your posessions and purchases. All that these whiny Gen X-inspired wails of outrage inspire in me is the urge to commit mass anal rape with a nail-studded broomstick. Great. Another ****ing marketing ploy for the dismayingly credulous. Just what this country (in general, and the tech industry in particular) needed.
Congratulations; you've made some capitalist somewhere very happy. Evolved beings, however, are crying real tears at this display of shameless idiocy.