My 18-month old iPod has started to fail to me. While in the UK earlier this month, my iPod (fourth generation 40 Gig) began to randomly shutdown and would not restart. "The vast majority of our customers are extremely happy with their iPods," Apple spokeswomen Natalie Kerrie said, adding that an iPod is designed to last four years.

On the contrary, a Chicago Tribune article recently exposed these problems and pointed to a study run by macintouch.com, a 12-year-old Apple website for Apple users. The study showed that more than 1,400 failed out of 9,000 iPods owned by some 4,000 respondents. The failure rate was reported at about 13.7% well above what Apple claims it should be. Gregg Radell, who started a company that repairs and refurbishes faulty iPods says, "the single weakest link" is the iPod's hard drive.

Regardless of these problems, Apple counts on its brand strength (and customer loyalty) to help weather the technical issues that plague its dominant music player. Most people, myself included, have grown so dependent on Apple's proprietary system that we are hard-pressed to switch.

Nonetheless, if the problems persist over the next couple years, look for consumers to weigh the merits of some of Apple's competitors' products, not the least of which is Microsoft's upcoming Zune.