If you don't like Apple's business model, products, prices, OSX, iOS or any other part of them, DON'T BUY THEM!
That is good advice. I have been adhering to that model for over 30 years and have never so succumbed.
I do like the iPod's playback user interface which is a work of genius. Shame about the iTunes rubbish which spoils the whole party.
I was given an old (when I got it) iPod Shuffle [1st generation] and I never travel without it. I just wish I could simply use a Windows Explorer (was File Manager before Bill demanded that everything should be renamed every few years - grrr) type of interface to copy my music on and off of it as opposed to the incomprehensible[1] iTunes.
[1] Incomprehensible that is to someone who has written computer programs in - Fortran, Z80 machine code with pencil and paper (in hex out of the Z80 programmer's reference manual), BBC Basic, 6502 assembler, 8086 assembler, Z80 assembler, MS DOS system calls, C, Turbo Pascals various, C pre-processor, dBase III (you know, the second one:-), unix shell script stuff, MS Excel macros, MS Access, Perl. In short whatever is NECESSARY. iTunes is NOT necessary (for the non-purchaser of Apple's finest "goodies") and that is I suspect what makes it so damn frustrating.
Happy New Year.