Hello all,
I hated iTunes for ages. Now I really like it. Anyway, Apple gets some unfair stick about this. Example: Jobs is on record as not being a fan of DRM on music. However, he's totally fucked if one or more of the 'majors' withdraws from the itunes store, so we're still stuck with it.
Regarding the memory stick drag and drop thing, I'd say similar industry concerns are in force. Also, of course, if you browse an ipod in disk mode you will see that when music is transferred to it, several songs are wodged together as single, enigmatically named .mp3 files. Allows the NAND memory buffer to be filled so that the hard drive has to spin up less frequently (reduces chances of a disastrous head crash and enlongens battery life). So that's a reason not to have true drag 'n' drop (er, at least for the HD-based pods, which are likely a dying breed).
The only thing that really ticks me off is how hard it is to export a playlist - by which I mean the actual music files.
http://www.ericdaugherty.com/dev/itunesexport/ can do this for you, and the very flexible itunes smart playlists can be limited to size (as well as everything else) so that pretty much covers that. To an extent.
Sorry, am struggling with the forum URL embedding thingummy.
PS. I am New Blood. (((CHERISH ME))).