Yip, I agree. I don't like Itunes, and when you install it, it also installs quicktime in the background. Wouldn't bother me, except that once you stop it from auto running on bootup, it decideds to reinable itself. Also, I have about 5 PC littered all over the place, My Aunts, Halls of residence and at Home and I always like adding more music which the Ipod makes difficult to do from more than one PC.
My Girlfriend has an IPod Mini. I think it looks cool and I like the Anodised Aliminuim body - But since getting it at Christmas, her bettery life has dropped about 33%. The Zen Micro has a case like the older Ipods, plastic white (mine is white) and looks as though it would compliment an Apple Computer nicely. But I decided to go the Zen Micro route because it was cheaper at the time and the Ipod mini came with the only option of 4GB. It's not suffered from the same battery problem as her Ipod. Still, I reckon it could take more abuse.
I suppose I'm a bit Biased toward Apple. If they made the Ipod fully compatible with Windows Media Player (my fav media player, and probably the most popular) then no problem. That was probably the pivoit point in my decsion to go Zen.
If Apple were to make the Ipod WMP compatible, I would probably now by a 6GB one with the Extended battery thing. But that ain't going to happen.