[blasdel]

You've got it backwards :)

Right now, with the iPhone and iPod Touch, you don't really need to connect them to a computer at all. When I bought my first iPod in 2003, that was absolutely the case, and all the existing PC software for organizing your music sucked ass. I had to use fucking Musicmatch Jukebox to sync my iPod, and the alternative library programs were even worse.

The release iTunes for Windows was a godsend to me -- sure it's pretty resource hungry and has only gotten moreso, but it's pretty fucking fantastic at just getting the basic library management stuff right. Being able to easily rip to AAC was gravy, as it meant that I no longer had to have some of my albums as lossless (MP3's psychoacoustics shit all over gravelly voices). I switched to a Mac a few years later.

[ugh]

See, iTunes never mattered that much to me when I first got a iPod. And I do actually like iTunes.

But everyone I know who ever got a iPod absolutely loathed iTunes. iTunes was not the reason, the hardware was. I have seen that change with the iPhone. Of course, no data, just anecdotes.