I don't think the empeg is "better" than the iPod. To me its like asking why a tamborine is better than a telescope.

I love the empeg. It's incredible. I've said before that I think it is the finest example of design beauty in hardware/software integration that I have seen (the iPod is good too, but not as good). But, I can't put the empeg in my pocket and walk around the lakes with it. Nor is it really the right choice for motorcycling. Or long airplane rides. You get the idea.

For those applications, I think it is really hard to beat the iPod/etymotics ER-4 combination.

I don't have an iPod but I got my girlfriend one for christmas last year. She is not a computer junkie like me, but she loves her iPod. I helped her out by ripping her CD collection so that she can manage the iPod contents. I've played around with it a bit and here are my observations:

- The headphones suck for comfort, but the unit has good sound quality.

- The battery life isn't too bad, considering.

- It is a beautiful design and can be operated with one hand.

- Portability is cool.

- The user interface, while simple and elegant in its own way, is not as powerful as the empeg. Or, maybe I just can't figure it out. I can't figure out, for instance, how to make up a playlist ad hoc by "append/insert/enqueue" like I can with the empeg. I do this pretty often, actually. Maybe I want to hear Dire Straits shuffled with J.J. Cale, for example. I can't figure out how to do that on the iPod. I can't even figure out how to switch from shuffle to unshuffled easily. Sure, you can play albums (or prebuilt playlists) quite easily, but it isn't really that good for true random-access music playing. Maybe I haven't spent enough time with it.

Other things I miss when using the iPod UI:
- ad hoc playlists (mentioned above)
- only random suffle modes (no least frequently)
- no enqueue/insert/append that I can figure out
- no tweak order functionality (this is the coolest thing about the empeg software, and unique to it AFAIK).
- smaller capacity (actually, the least of the issues, IMHO).
- The windows software sucks ass. (yes, I know about ephpod and that's what my GF is using).

I would like to have an iPod but I see it as supplemental to the empeg. If I could only have one I would have the empeg. I keep waiting for something better from our empeg visionaries...

Jim