The first Apple iPods only had FireWire which was exotic here, so they were not at all popular. I had a Rio (Nitrus, I think?) that was released within a year from iPod's release. When I first interacted with an iPod a couple of years later, I was not at all impressed.
I didn't have a NOMAD, but Slashdot's "no wireless, less space than a NOMAD, lame" tagline was pretty much on point. Its marketing was great, however.
"No wireless, less space than a nomad, but can be fully synced up and fast-charged in a few minutes" is what the review should have been. USB support came after when usb2 was "good enough". Syncing and creating playlists with other players was usually awful, slow, and the bundled software was not much better. iTunes was (at least at the time before the iTunes Store) quite lean and mean, too.
I'm not saying the iPod was perfect, though later versions got pretty close. But the "no wireless" part of the review still makes me chuckle. There were few hand-held anything that leveraged it at any truly useful level until proper smartphones existed.