I must admit, of 250 people, I bet somebody's asked this...
This sucks pretty sufficiently because apple's whole strategy w/ iTMS/itunes is to use them to sell the ipod and make money there, and now people can use other players. But, you must admit, that it is pretty monopolistic behavior on apple's part, and so it's not so cool, but it's apple, and on this site, we gladly excuse them. I mean, hey, they're leveraging their power a bit unfairly, but they don't have that much power to leverage, and, they make better stuff anyway.
But, that I'm sure has all been said. The thing that worries me, is that record labels and artists wil not be fans, and won't be willing to sell their stuff through ITMS, but will support vendors of the yet-uncracked WMA format. Because if apple looses ipod profits, it's lost profits, but if apple looses the whole music market, profitable or not, they loose a hell of a lot of attention, and I don't think any of us want any less market share or attention from software makers. GRRRRRRRRR.