Apple make great products,

However, the restrictions on moving mousic around and the force feeding of itunes if you want an ipod simply excludes it as an option for me.

I would NEVER buy an MP3 player that didn't allow me to move music and videos on and off of it as I please.

I would rather go without than patronise those modern day highwaymen.

They are the ones that are the root cause of this (that DRM is present). No DRM, then the music from the iTMS can be downloaded and used on any device that chooses to implement the AAC standard format. Problem solved.