Why I Dropped My iPod Like a Hot Rock

I remember all my iPods. I loved them. I've had a 2nd, 4th and 5th gen iPod classic as well as several iPod nano/minis. In all cases I loved them more than I hated them. The actual hardware was well designed and beautiful. The UI was annoying at times, but functional. I listened to music, podcasts, and audiobooks. But when I realized that greener pastures were availible I dropped that iPod like a lava hot rock. The reason for this warp speed drop is simply summed up into one word... iTunes!
What initially started as an awesome program that acted as a jukebox, music store, and sync interface has ballooned into the biggest joke of the retail/tech world. It is bloatware in the cyber-flesh. The fact that so many Apple products require iTunes in order to sync, reset, and so forth is a testiment to how one company can be so full of itself that it fails to see when it's star innovation is now crapware. And iTunes was innovation in its time. It was a unifying idea that caught on, but that time as past. Now is the time of the cloud, the app, the web browser. I think of my current setup for music, audiobooks, and podcasts, and I shudder at the thought of having to re-install iTunes if I were to move back to an Apple product. The mere removal of that program alleviated such a large load off of my laptop & desktop's system. Compairing syncing, uploading files to my smart devices, backing up info, and much more anything more than basic "click & drag" like function is just way too much. So dear iPod, I didn't abandon you because of anything you yourself did. No, I abandoned you because you medlesome parent iTunes just kept getting between us. Know I have found another in Android. As I once listened to you, I know listen to her more because I do not have interuptions like that of you parent iTunes. Can't you see this is for the best? I hope we can still be friends!