That's the most 'overrated' comment I've ever heard, Quik.
iPod's are NOT overrated. They're MEANT to be a MP3 player. Apple's being smart. Instead of being like microsoft and spanning out towards 1000 subjects (and all of them being buggy), its staying focused on what it's supposed to do. I'd rather have several things that perform their functions very well than one that does everything crappily. For games/entertainment, I have a gameboy/books, for pictures I have a digital camera, etc.
Yes, iTunes blows. That's why we have Anapod Explorer. There's Nomad Creative Zen equivilants (from the same Redchair Software company) and from what I've heard, RCS's software pwns nomad's.