In a way, it doesn't really matter; if Apple are stiffing their users just because they can, and are happy to let people think it's for legal reasons, happy even for non-accountant, non-lawyer customers to defend this theory on forums, then I won't buy their product. If there genuinely are legal reasons for it, whether directly or as an unintended "chilling effect", then I won't buy a product made by a US company. But, as the only other MP3 player made by a US company is the Zune, which I wasn't going to buy anyway, it amounts to the same thing.

Not that I'm any sort of huge fraction of Apple's intended market, of course, but the Ipod Touch is kind-of cool, and before all this happened it had occurred to me that if both my current and backup Trekstor (GmBH) units failed, Ipod Touch might be the next best thing.

Peter