“Commuters plug in because they don’t want to be where they are,” says Alex Halavais, an assistant professor at Quinnipiac University who studies the usability of mobile devices. “iPods create a sphere of isolation.” [Earth to Rocker: Reality Calling, Wired, Mar 2008 pg 50]

I think there’s a lot of truth in that statement. Some of the findings Lucia Predolin of Buongiorno presented at the Mobile World Congress panel tend to corroborate the Halavais opinion. And Apple’s iPods are so much less expensive than the other kind.