Why are Ipods supposed to be so great?

Almost everywhere you go you’re bound to see those white earphones that id a person as using an Ipod, they are constantly mentioned as though they are the world’s only mp3 player. Are they really so great?

I bought a creative Nomad jukebox something or other last year. It was cheaper than an Ipod, but could play and store mp3s, the only reason I wanted it. Now we have news that apple are to lower the price of their Ipod minis:

"The price of the four-gigabyte iPod mini was cut 
$50 to $199 U.S. A new six-gigabyte version will 
sell for $249 ... The playback time on a single 
charge is now 18 hours, up from the eight hours 
of previous models"

But you can get a creative mp3 player that’ll hold 20 GB for the same price as apple’s 6. And their batteries are supposed to last for 24 hours.

So are Ipods really so great? Course they are so popular at this stage that I wouldn’t buy one anyways.

(Amazon’s Creative Zen page & the Ipod page)