Huh.

Having been running my iPod via the slow USB 1.1 connector on my old iMac, I have to say that plugging it into the eMac was a bit of an eye-opener. Trying to fill even that little 4GB device at 12Mbit/s was like trying to drink Lake Michigan through a straw, except without all the dead fish and industrial pollutants. The procedure was slow enough that I rarely changed the playlists on the gizmo because, like cooking in a crock pot, you'd plug it up and then check on it every so often to see if it was done.

Now I plug it in and zip! Done. It's amazing how a little detail like that can increase the usability of a device by an order of magnitude.