I’m not bragging or anything, but I’ve now got about 20GB of MP3s (of CDs or records I actually own, or freely available material, in most cases!). I keep them all on my Mac which sits under my desk at work, set on “random play” which means I get to hear the Dead Kennedys, then Mozart, then the Pogues, then Charles Bukowski, then Gershwin… Short Attention Span Radio.
I’ve been looking longingly at the iPod; 10GB and Firewire is really great. 20, or 30, or removable/replaceable harddrive would be better. IP and OSX Lite and a little keyboard, would be better; it could even be a little bigger, that would be fine. Till then my (most excellent) iBook will have to make do (it helps that I use that for development of PHP and mySQL, and Quicken, and everything else, too!).
But I’d also like something to take my music with me to Burning Man; some sort of a waterproof boombox that could play MP3s. The Sony S2 looks pretty cool, and it’s only about $150; I have the previous non-MP3 version (CFD980) and it’s taken a lot of Fredabuse(tm). But the S2 only takes MP3 CDs. Why can’t they drop in a standard (replaceable) IDE hard drive, and throw an IP port on the back? Or at the very least, give it a line-in jack so I can plug in an iPod? I actually disassembled the yellow one and tried to figure out where I’d jack in external audio, but haven’t had the nerve to start cutting wires to test it!
I think there’s a market (of at least one!) for portable (not pocket-sized) MP3 players with off-the-shelf hard drives and a network interface. Playa-dust-proof, if you please, and by some company that has some design sense, like Sony or Apple.