a third way ok i'm starting to see what you guys are saying however to be honest i don't think this article is really about the brand the first sentence of the article is about the brand but most of the article is about the product s i mean the section on connectivity is clearly about the connectivity of the various ipod products themselves and not the brand so here is what i propose zero article in the lead and anywhere else where we are talking about the brand but normal usage throughout the rest of the article where appropriate so the ipod is associated with one host computer would remain the same since it's talking about the product and not the brand this way we can maintain a grammatically euphonious format throughout and not have to awkwardly restructure sentences to stay in line with apple speak basically my fear was that this page would end up sounding like the ipod manual which to anyone who has read it is clearly super weird and for the record i am writing this on a macbook i have two ipods and i love steve jobs but i love the english language more looking forward to your thoughts