John, I know a lot of people like it and it serves its purpose for what they do. My comments were primarilty directed at Microsoft for their lack of support and features compared to many of the other players out there. It is a slick interface that really doesn't do very much compared with other players out there. If you do a lot with music files, you will find yourself wanting more.
The problem with the IPOD is that Windows does not recognize the file system that Apple uses. They did this intentionally to discourage copying of music. You can't just open up Window Explorer and view your music files like you can with any other portable player. Even in the I-Tunes software there is no way to directly access your files.
Because of this, I would not have bought an Ipod if it weren't for the fact that many clever programmers have circumvented the problem, and now there is a wealth of options available.
I can't help but wonder if Apple really did not want to cause these problems and only did it to satisfy the EIA and the recording industry. The back door they left open seems to have been too easy to open and I haven't heard of Apple going after any of these companies. Who knows.
When you add in the fact that Apple and Microsoft are bitter rivals, it makes sense that Microsoft would not be in any rush to make WMP compatible.
WMP will support limited playback of MP4 if you get the DirectShow-MPEG-4 decoder packs. The problem is that there are many versions of MP4 thanks to Apple. WMP still won't support m4u or aac files, which are common Apple formats, even with the decoder packs, and you still won't be able to encode, and you still don't have access to the actual files. This means that WMP will not help solve the problem mentioned in the original post.
This is a very complex subject that has been totally screwed up by the greed of the manufacturers and lack of control by the standards orginizations. Unfortunately, we as consumers are the ones who ultimately suffer because of the difficulty of trying to keep this all straight.