Steve Jobs doesn’t have to worry.  His iPod near-monopoly is not on the verge of being threatened.  Quite the contrary, the more inane products that are released by so-called competitors, the brighter the shine on the Apple, er, iPod.

You’ve probably seen that Microsoft iPod faux commercial Microsoft iPod, but it’s not only about packaging, but USABILITY!

Rule number one: Less is more.

We’re supposed to believe all the iPod competitors are better because of their FEATURES!  Like the ubiquitous FM radio.  If FM were that fucking good nobody would BUY an MP3 player.  As for those wanting to listen to the TV at the gym, Apple makes an ANCILLARY product, so those of us who don’t give a shit, the MAJORITY, are not burdened and confused by extra hardware.

We don’t want our products to do more.  We want them to do ONE THING, VERY WELL!

All that bullshit about cell phones replacing iPods.  NEVER going to happen until maybe APPLE designs a cellphone.  One that the average person can use to play music.  Not something only a teenager can figure out intuitively, but ANYBODY can figure out almost instantly.

It’s kind of like the Treo versus the Blackberry.  Look at all the extra shit the Treo has!  The camera!  The touch-sensitive screen!  But what if you lose the stylus?  And do you want to remove the stylus to do all those functions?  And do you want to shoot photos?  Isn’t that what KIDS want to do, not businessmen?  And how come the battery life sucks.  And you only get e-mail every fifteen minutes (okay, Verizon has a workaround, but you’ve got to leave your PC ON!)  And how come when you forward calls, you can barely hear them?  In THEORY the Treo is better than the Blackberry, but the Blackberry does one thing extremely well, MOBILE E-MAIL, which is what most people want, so it’s the device of choice.

Then again, if only Apple designed the Blackberry instead of RIM…you’d be able to figure out and use all the features!

You can figure out the iPod WITHOUT reading the very brief and easily understood instructions.  It’s just that simple.  Plug it in and it updates itself automatically, and transfers your music automatically.  Which is why it’s a great big hit, and no portable satellite radio is.

Yesterday I tried to use my Inno in Felice’s car.  Shit, the box alone will drive you crazy.  There are so many PIECES!  What are you supposed to do with them all?  What if you lose one?

You’ve got to put the device in a dock.  And power up via a cable plugged into the cigarette lighter.  And get signal via an antenna that’s attached to a long wire floating in your automobile, unless you have it permanently installed, but why would you do this if you wanted to BUY a portable unit like the Inno?  And then you’ve got to use a cassette adapter, assuming your car still has a cassette slot.  And if not, then you’ve got to tune into an FM frequency, which, of course, you lose as some station encroaches in the next metropolis.  As for figuring out how to set the FM frequency on the Inno?  Shit, you’ve got to read the instruction booklet, which is written in English, but is STILL hard to understand.

And then there’s the design ineptitude.  Want to go to the next station?  Wouldn’t that be a normal choice?  You CAN’T!  You’ve got to pull up the menu, and then scroll to the NEXT station, and then hit Enter.  Which makes surfing stations SO frustrating.  Oh, it’s a bit easier to use the remote control…but you still can’t jump up a station at a time just by pressing a button and why do you need a remote for such a small unit and how come the buttons are so hard to press on the remote and the instructions don’t always register on the Inno??

But you can buy MP3s from Napster!  Like I GIVE A SHIT!  Isn’t this like FM radios on MP3 players???  Why can’t XM just focus on good SATELLITE RADIOS!  Hell, if I want an MP3 player, I’ll BUY ONE!

Oh, the unit worked well otherwise…  But if you buy one of these things, be prepared to be frustrated.  God, ANY focus group would have told the designers their heads were up their asses.  But no, like Sony Connect, XM wanted to reinvent the wheel, and came up with a hubcap.  I mean is it really that hard?

Obviously it is.

Which brings us to my Sirius S50.  The instructions left so much out I couldn’t get the machine to work.  Turns out I need a home dock.  Why wasn’t this in the booklet, like right up front, instead of the endless user agreement/license which no one ever reads ANYWAY???

The S50 too allows you to transfer MP3s to it.  But WHY???  God, all the paraphernalia in the box…I just wanted to record Sirius stations and walk around the neighborhood listening to them, is that so HARD?  Shit, I’m a professional…when I can’t figure this shit out, the average man is LOST!

Meanwhile, they’re selling millions of iPods, which do only one thing, play music, as Rio and iRiver go out of business and XM and Sirius make no inroads into the portable market.  Shit, how come the scroll wheel is so easy to figure out on an iPod and the navigation on the Inno and S50 seems to be understandable only by Mr. Spock?