Gabriel Lewenstein, (left), and his brother Ari outside an Apple Store in California. Photograph: Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
[This story has been updated following the discussion underneath - see the end of the story for details]
If you bought an iPod in the last few days, you should feel justified in swearing heartily about the price cuts announced by Apple yesterday - things are around £40 a pop cheaper than they were a couple of days ago.
In an interview you can read on Onlineblog, Online's Bobbie Johnson, speaking to Apple supremo Greg Joswiak, made the point that this kind of thing is tooth-grindingly frustrating.
Joswiak's response - that it's "just as good a product today as it was yesterday" - is a polite way of saying "tough luck", which wouldn't exactly calm you down, even if it's an entirely valid answer.
They're running a business, after all, no matter what the fans say about it being a Cult of Mac. Their cunning plan is that, for those thinking about joining the iPod generation (or upgrading their existing player), yesterday's price cuts make these desirable little gadgets rather more affordable. You can pick up a "proper" high capacity iPod for £139 - which might still sound like quite a lot until you bear in mind that the first incarnation, launched in November 2001, cost £329.
But why is Apple lowering the price when the devices are flying off the shelves? Visit Apple's London store and you'll find panicky-eyed wannabe customers and occasional dearths of particular models - the company appears to be struggling to meet demand. Surely they should be raising prices?
The simple answer is that Apple's ramming home its advantage while it can. It still makes good money from iPods, even with the prices cut, and it is reaping the benefits of volume production. And, for the medium term, the company is building a sturdy monopoly in digital music, from online music sales (iTunes music store has around 70% of the legal downloads market) to music players - estimates last year put Apple's share of that market at more than 80%, and that was before the January arrival of the cheap iPod Shuffle, and yesterday's price cuts. Apple's killing the competition.
What's more, this success isn't likely to evaporate any time soon. The company knows that once we "rip" our CD collections into iTunes, and buy music from their online store, shifting it all to another platform - specifically Microsoft's WMA format - is going to be a pain. All our downloaded music will be in Apple's AAC/Fairplay format - which no other player can use. Faced with dull hours transferring our music across to other players, we're much more likely to stay loyal - even if better non-Apple products appear on the market. That gives them a solid iPod business for years to come, a potential launch-pad into other areas of home and portable entertainment, and huge power over the record industry - which it can squeeze for extra profits in its iTunes music store business.
Of course, it also helps that Apple has quite the most sexy range of music players out there, and the best online music store by a long chalk (there's something to be said for Napster's subscription model, but not enough to make owning a non-iPod enough, in my book). Apple is, simply, miles ahead of the competition today, and shows no signs of relenting.
The trouble is, once the world has made its choice and plumped for Mr Jobs' lovely little gadgets, the competition is likely to fade away. Microsoft has already shown us how slack a monopolist can be. Can we trust Apple to stay on top of its game for the foreseeable future?
[Notes: Thanks to all those who correctly pulled me up on my loose use of terminology in this post. Correspondents are right to say Apple's standards-based AAC format is fundamentally open - it's the FairPlay DRM Apple adds on top which prevents copying, and which specifically provides lock-in for music purchased from iTunes Music Store. I've added a few words, in italics, and deleted a few others, to make it clear that it's less of a fuss to move ripped music from AAC to another format (although it's still not straightforward). It remains much harder to overcome FairPlay, which Apple does not share with rivals, and so I think my original point about lock-in and eventual monopoly is still valid].
