Went to the Apple Store on Oxford in London yesterday

apple

(btw, someday all stores will be like this one: basically hands-on showrooms).

In the “music” area, a friend of mine and I noted that the vaunted iPod shuffle is really just a USB flashdrive with a play/pause/forward/backward/up/down control on it. Duh.
shuffle

So why not just make the controller, so that you can plug any USB drive in? Simple device: battery, headphone amp, software to recognize a flashdrive, read MP3s, play them. It’d sell like hotcakes.