First of all, thanks for commenting on my article. I love it when readers point out things that I was unaware of or have missed out on.
Second – I wrote the post and I own, use and love Apple products. As Martin has rightly informed you, this post was not paid for. None of my posts are. When they are, I disclose that fact.

Now, you say that you dislike the menu system on iPod. Please do understand that the majority of iPod owners think exactly the opposite. The iPod has been praised over and over again for its intuitive menu system. In fact, the OS X itself has been praised for its ease of use. However, it is impossible to please everyone, so you are one of those people Apple has missed. Most of us like the simplicity and not having to waste time figuring out how to use a machine I just spent money buying. I would rather get to using my device in minutes, rather than hours. Which is why it is so easy to be clunky and complicated in the UI and so hard to be simple and minimalist.

Searching on the iPod through thousands is slightly tedious, I will partly agree on that point. But the click wheel makes it much easier because I can zip through them in seconds. If there is one REAL caveat with the iPods, it is their sound quality. That is where my audiophile nature gets the better of me. But other than that, no other device in its class has what the iPod has. To put its popularity over time into perspective, all you have to do is look up a chart for sales of iPods vs. comparable products (similar price range would do).

@everyone – If you are talking about about Apple, please find out their growth over the past 5 years. Go to http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:AAPL and click on the 5yr mark. Compare with Google (GOOG) or anyone. This last quarter, when almost everyone’s in the red, they actually had around 12% growth year on year.

I find it interesting that Logitech (THE manipulators company) never paid much attention to touchpads. Only in high-level remotes and that’s it I think.

PS it’s cute to see Apple get such a “warm” reception here at ghacks. :)

Which consumers are we talking about? The Apple Mini owners wondering why they own one in comparison to what they could have for the same price? Not sure if it was a phrase mistake, but no one has a Mac Mini on their mind when a comparable, or even higher priced Win7 system is available.