I’ve just expanded my MP3 player family with an iPod video 60GB and am extraordinarily pleased with it. Selecting the 4GB of music for my Nano has been slightly tedious, and whilst I still love the Nano — it is great to have the chunkier iPod with all of my music on it.

For longtime readers, I still maintain my principles against Apple: the lack of functionality of the iPod compared with other MP3 players is annoying — why can it *only* deal with Quicktime video? Why can’t it play back other file types? Why can’t it record audio? Why doesn’t it have an FM radio built in? Why doesn’t it… etc.

The answer, in almost every case, is to help Apple make more money by selling own-brand accessories. Clever business model – but annoying for me. Made even moreso by the fact that no-one has, as yet, come up with an MP3 player that competes with the iPod on sleekness and interface.

Come on, you guys!!

Be interested to see what Zune looks like when it comes out, although I’m anticipating that the first generation of ‘full screen’ video portable entertainment hubs is going to be mediocre as hell. We’ll see…