I bought an iPod mini yesterday. It felt good to buy an Apple product again, after giving up on the Macintosh a few years back.
I've started exercising (This time I'll stick with it! Really!), and so I wanted a music player to help pass the time and to keep my mind off my aching muscles.
I've given up on cassette and CD players, due to the hassle of lugging all those tapes and discs around. I've tried using Windows Media Player on my Pocket PC, but the low amount of memory on a SD memory card limited me to just a couple dozen songs. I've looked at MP3 players, but was underwhelmed. The mini is $250, which seemed a bit high for a music player, but I decided that the benefits are worth the price. Once I decided to spend the money, I considered getting one of the full-size iPods, which cost more but have lots more space. I decided to get the mini due to the more attractive weight and form factor; price wasn't really a consideration.
I have a couple of complaints. One is that there is a brief pause between tracks. I listen to a lot of albums that don't have pauses between songs (Pink Floyd, for example), and so it is annoying to have that brief stutter between songs when listening on the iPod. My other complaint is that iTunes will only import one CD at a time. I've got two CD drives connected to my PC, and it would be nice if it could rip two CDs simultaneously as I build up my library.
The Apple Music Store is a nice feature. I bought a few audiobooks (Steve Martin, George Carlin, and a couple others) and also tried out Anton Fig's album. I tried buying a John Coltrane album, but got an error message; I'll have to try that one again later.