I never thought about those points, and accept that they may have been thinking about more than style. I suppose for a machine aimed at jogging etc., it makes sense to keep it super small and enclosed.
I wouldn't buy it, though. I have a RIO MP3 player that I love, but over the years the enclosed battery has gotten weaker to the point that I have to recharge the thing before every use, and even then it runs out sometimes.
I had a Rio MP3 and I liked everything about it except the damn FM tuner. On a good day, I could only get a clear signal on 2 stations. Sounds like you might be using NiCad batteries, if so, I would dump them and get some NiMH's with a quality charger -- Sony makes a nice one with an auto shut-off feature to prevent overcharging.
I wouldn't buy an iPod shuffle either, but I understand their engineering decisions. I think it's the excellent engineering that makes me like Apples in the first place, especially their attention to detail, which is just amazing.
For example, the Cube had a video plus USB connector to the monitor. When you put the Cube to sleep, the light on the power button would slowly pulse (not just blink). Cool, huh? But the power button on the monitor also pulsed. Cool too, I guess. But here's the Apple attention to detail -- they used the USB connection to make both pulse in synch.
Now that's not important, nor does it make the computer operate any better. However, given that much attention to such a trivial thing, imagine how much attention they give the things that are actually important.