The continuing success of the iPod is something I don't really understand - I was chatting with a friend at the weekend who made the observation that people like integrated services and style more than things you can actually measure as being better or more valuable. I personally don't think that caring (as I do) about music, the musicians who make it and the quality of what I listen to that I could EVER own an iPod.

I've bought a couple of these puppies for folks and I am so impressed - £23 for a 256meg flash MP3 player - they also do a 512 & 1gig version.

Ways they score over the iPod Shuffle:

Regular USB storage device - plug it into any Windows/Linux/Mac and it appears as a drive that you can drag tunes onto. You don't have to install iTunes and then lock your music player to a specific computer,
It has a screen - you can see what tune's up next and navigate the very easy to use menus,
Third of the price!
No embarrassing white headphones!
Just the thing for listening to spoken content that hasn't come from iTunes,
Uses replaceable batteries - normal or rechargable - none of that sending it back to Apple when the batteries die (and evey iPod owner I know moans about that!),
Sound quality comparable (or better) than an iPod,
Smaller.

Ways an iPod scores over this:

"It's a design classic, darling"

Now, the thing I really don't get is the new Apple iPod 'phone - a very crippled version of an iPod Shuffle integrated into a mobile handset that didn't win any prizes when it came out! It seems you either want a vanilla handset to make calls and text OR you want something with a bit of grunt - I've been enjoying the Orange SPV series of Windows smart 'phones for two and a half years now (Ben, my colleague who looks after the 'phone contracts at work tells me we're all about to be upgraded to the M500) and they are superb. It seems I ask myself the question every time a new Apple product comes out - why would you want it? It's expensive and under-powered and represents yet another attempt to dumb-down the technology.
I suppose that in the end free-markets always gravitate towards mediocrity - The Sun, The Ford Escort, Westlife, McDonalds, the iPod.