The iPod Updater is model specific -- how dumb is that?

i'd wondered why my hard drive had several vesions of iPod Updater on it. For all I know I've deleted some of them as rendundant. It turns out that that updateres are iPod specific.:

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh: "We've run into a common problem with iTunes refusing to transfer purchased music to an older-model iPod, and the answer is unintuitive to the uninitiated. The issue, it turns out, is that the iPod user must manually update the iPod's firmware to support Apple's latest digital content control system, and this is a confusing process.

The iPod owner runs Apple's Software Update, which finds a new iPod Updater utility and 'installs' it on the hard drive, so the iPod owner thinks the job is done and can't understand why the iPod won't accept purchased iTunes. In fact, though, you must search your disk for 'iPod Updater' and run that program while the iPod is connected to the computer, following its instructions.

To add to the confusion, the latest iPod Updaters display misleading error messages when used with older iPods, and the only 'clean' way to do the job is to go to Apple's support site, locate and download an older iPod updater and then run that.

This is really, really, dumb.