This is why I haven't bought anything from Apple since Steve Jobs died, its slowly going into stuff.
The last thing I bought was an iPod nano , the one you can wear on your wrist like a watch, I think this was one of the best ones honestly, but that thing broke really fast, I currently use a Zune, I honestly have now idea why they never got popular, its as simple as plugging it into your pc and dragging music into the damn thing, and if you must they have something called the zune desktop but I never use it.
Hey buy if you want to spend around $600 on a device that will be outdated and eventually discontinued go ahead, my Zune HD is already discontinued, but it still works bug free and it gets the job done, I don't need a app store if I just want to listeen to music.