In my example I mentioned sharing the Firewire device. Of course this has the same limitations as sharing any other storage volume on any machine.

And I neglected to mention another important thing. The ability to automatically access a Firewire drive depends on the OS support for the disk format. Connecting an iPod to a Windows machine isn't going to allow you to read the disk unless you've got 3rd party support for HFS.

Firewire has more uses beyond mass storage of course - and they don't all need a computer connection.

When I think of a small portable device like the iPod, I'm more interested in it as a portable disk, rather than a network component. Putting ethernet on a device like that won't automatically allow you to do anything beyond what you can or have to do with Firewire for sharing anyway. You'd still need appropriate software support on the unit itself to give you the various communicaitons protocols you'd be looking for. For some manufacturers, I suppose that's a whole level of support they don't want to implement. More than likely because "sharing" isn't their target. For many reasons, some more obvious that others.

And if you're going to implement some platform-specific driver-enabled connection, maximum bang for the buck comes from developing a product for Windows. Least amount of effort with the largest pool of consumers to sell to. Then you can let some Linux people hack support for themselves (they wouldn't buy the toy if it just worked out of the box) and most Mac users won't buy it anyway because it has Windows support and/or isn't made by Apple. That's why we're normally left with USB.

Bruno