I’ve finally joined the iPod generation, even if the bizarre second-letter capitalisation kick that it has going on just gets on my nerves.

I’ve had an MP3 player for a few years, but it as it had more or less given up the ghost (well, it worked for everything apart from getting sound out of it, which I deemed relatively important) and had only had a 6 Gb capacity, meaning that while I hadn’t quite filled it, I’d been picky about what music I was loading on because I was aware space was limited.

Now I’m looking at an 80 Gb iPod which basically says to me “Load it on. load it all on.”

So I have been. Currently my iTunes holds about 90% of my CD collection — amounting to some 2243 songs, which it would apparently take 6.3 days if I were to listen to each of them once. No doubt a paltry collection by some standards, but by some reckonings, that’s a fair whack of music…

But what I like best is the “Cover flow”.

Basically, when you’re browsing through your music in cover flow view, it shows you the pictures of the albums you’re looking at. And this works whether you’re using the iPod itself or iTunes on your PC. Granted, it’s not exactly that fancy: it’s not like it generates a holographic image of the band who appear in your front room and perform live (I think that’s the next model up).

However it is something I didn’t anticipate or want when choosing the iPod and — unlike a mobile phone where the ability to take poor quality photographs adds little that is useful to the main purpose of being able to communicate with other people — being able to flick through the image of the covers means that now and again you’re struck by a particular cover or reminded something in a way that a plain text equivalent simply wouldn’t, it actually adds to the experience of the phone.

So well done Apple. I like your iTunes. I like your iPod. I like your Safari windows browser. But I still don’t want a Mac or an iPhone