How come it's illegal to letyour pet dog defecate on the pavement, but if you're riding a horse it'sabsolutely fine for your animal to leave enormous faecal mountains all over the place?The world is full of double standards, and I personally feel that Apple Inc isthe beneficiary of many.

Why is it ok for Applefans to attack gadgets like the Microsoft Zune and point out all the featuresthey're missing, but it's not cool for anyone to suggest that the Apple iPod is less than a perfect device?

There can be no arguing:the iPod touch is a wonder to behold. A truly awesome piece of technology. It'sfar more advanced than any other MP3 player out there, and for that Appleshould be very proud of itself (and it is).

But it's not perfect, and Ibelieve it could be made better with just a few minor alterations. It's a realshame that Apple will never make them.

Imperfection

I was an early adopter ofdigital music technology. I got myself a Creative Jukebox way back when MP3players had only just about managed to secure themselves half a page in the Argos catalogue. I'veowned five or six Creative MP3 players over the years and I still regularly usemy Vision:m as well as my SanDisk Sansa e270.

But despite being perfectlyhappy with all those products in the past, I've been saying over the last fewmonths that when the iPod touch finally goes on sale, I'll be really tempted toget one. I want a compact MP3 player which is still excellent to watch videoson - and the iPod touch is ideal, isn't it?

After all, I don't want anArchos 605 - it's too big and chunky. The iPod touch is the perfect size - it'sonly 8mm thick after all - and its video-playing potential is optimised by thefact that the whole thing is basically just one giant screen.

But now I've changed mymind again, and these are the main reasons why:

I want to be able to use my handheldto watch all the videos I have on my PC. But the iPod does notsupport most of these formats. It never has, and it most likely never will.

The majority of large videofiles on my PC (and most other people's PCs for that matter) are encoded using formatsother than those supported by the iPod, which are H.264, Quicktime, MPEG4 etc. Doesanyone actually use these formats? I don't think they do. That's why the AppleTV has sold so unbelievably poorly.

Poor Apple TV sales

What about DivX, Xvid andWMV? Why does Apple always want to separate itself from everyone else? It'salways 'our format, our way' and that's the end of it.

My main frustration is thatthe iPod is designed primarily for use with Macs rather than being entirelyuniversal. And while I see the clear logic in it, that doesn't mean I like oragree with it. As a PC-user, I feel like I'm being treated as a second-classcitizen, and that's not right.

I want the iPod to be amore open device. It still doesn't even support lossless formats like OGGVorbis or Flac.

"Ahh," I hear Apple boffinssay, "but the iPod can play Apple Lossless files!"

Again though, how manypeople rip their music in Apple lossless? Almost none.

In an ideal world, Apple wouldrealise this and open the iPod up to more third-party file formats. I don'twant to convert everything into Quicktime format, why would I? If I've alreadyencoded stuff in one format, I don't want to have to do it all over again.