the problems you are speaking about are far and few among the users....as mentioned previously...iPods are designed to work out of the box for the average consumer (over 100 million people seems a good average to peak of)
i dont think the marketing is the only thng driving the sales of ipods, as they have been here for a long time, and have been #1 since the begining. they work to play your average music files. when you search music stores online, they all sell in mp3, when you download songs of of BT, most are mp3....thats the common format
cisco sued apple very recently because cisco made a shite phone and to up sales called it an iphone. apple was already in works on their version of the iphone...and decided not to change the name when they released it.....cisco cried
i"something" in its use today stemmed from apple unless i am missing something
it really just sounds like either you had a bad egg of itunes, or you just are putting shame to your degree and dont know how to use itunes. many of the problems you list have been resolved - gapless playback, copying from ipod to computer, better battery life, organizing songs by artist and album, easy 2-way syncing with itunes, pc and mac, most common music formats
not sure what you are expecting in a slim, stylish, affordable, decent quality mp3 player