...and I shamelessly get an obscure Morrissey reference out of it.
It's debatable whether Dell was cowed by Apple's dominance in hard-drive-based players or  simply saw greater profitability in flash-based mp3 players with NAND output exploding in 2006.
Whatever the cause, Dell is dropping the DJ, hoping to fare better against Apple on the flash front with the DJ Ditty, a $99, 512 Mb player designed to compete with the iPod Shuffle and Nano lines.
So if the world's largest computer maker is unable or unwilling to compete with Apple in this space, who's ready to step up? Perhaps mobile telcos. Sure, their cost structure is inflated by the greater expense of delivering data via mobile networks and, frankly, I don't know how you get around that. But I sure hope they do, because, all the syncing and charging of iPods, cell phones and PDAs has officially become a burden in my life, to say nothing of having to be my own music programmer. Let's just consolidate it all on one device that syncs up directly with the mothership, build in some dynamic playlists based on my listening habits, charge me a flat monthly rate and be done with it.