So, yeah, it turns out it’s trivially easy to use a non-Apple mp3 player.

Trivially easy to use. Trivially easy to transfer files. Trivially easy to SEE WHAT’S IN MEMORY ALREADY.  It was that last one that was chewing on my ankles; because God forbid that you can move things around on Apple easily.  Well, to heck with that.  The day of my liberation from the regime of Tim Cook is at hand: all I need now is for the MicroSD card to come.