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iPod Shuffle Finds Its Voice
theodp writes "Steve Jobs wasn't around to convince you that you should be impressed, but on Wednesday Apple unveiled a 4GB Shuffle that's half the size of its predecessor. Holding up to 1,000 songs, the pre-shrunk Shuffle sports a 10-hour battery life and also adds a new VoiceOver feature that can recite song titles, artists, and playlist names, as well as provide status information. Even without a show from Steve, the new player is generally leaving folks dazzled, although there are some complaints."
Update: 3/14 at 14:10 by SS: Reader Mike points out some disturbing news that the new Shuffle contains DRM which, according to a review at iLounge, prevents it from fully working with any headphones that don't have an Apple "authentication chip."
I *am* a techie, you insensitive clod.
Got a problem with that? Or are you just jealous, because my brain happens to work better than yours, when it comes to technical things? ;)
I know that it is called racism (and rightfully so, most of the time) when you insult people because of their race. But it seems to be a-ok, to insult intelligent people, or make them look like something bad. Especially tech people.
Unfortunately, tech people then usually buy right into that too, and think they really are worse than the average guy who gets all the women.
I'm sorry my friend. But this time is over. We're not the "Oh, you think you are so much better. Well you're a piece of shit" nerds for you anymore. We *know* that we actually *are* (by definition) so much better (in technical things). So what? You may be better in other things. So what?
I say, we should get girls, not despite, but because we are techies.
(Don't you Americans usually say "Who's with me?" in this moments. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
It's the same adaptor as all the other HTC phones use, and have done for the past n years - converters can be had for trivial money if you bother to look...
Further, no DRM is involved as the converters/adapters contain no proprietary logic, and the connector specification is published with no restrictions on it's use.
BTW, perhaps you should not behave like a twat.
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The EFF needs to lay off this crap if it wants to retain credibility. This is rather silly. If you want to make iPod-compatible accessories, you can either license the relevant information or buy the chips from Apple, or you can reverse engineer it. If you reverse engineer it, you could potentially get sued due to patent violations. I have no idea how they think the DMCA comes into the picture -- I am thinking they just put it there as a red herring.
Besides, it's not like Apple is the only company making MP3 players. If you don't like their policies, buy another MP3 player, or make your own. I'm not sure when the EFF became the whiny Ralph Nader-style consumer watchdog, but I'm sure most consumers are quite capable of assessing whether or not they like a given product.
OK, I'll bite. I actually got a Sansa c250 for $15 on clearance somewhere. Sure, the features sound great on paper, but it's pretty much the biggest piece of shit I've ever used. After using it, I can definitely understand how Apple has 75% of the MP3 player market. Let's see:
- the user interface is awful. A retarded 5-year-old could design a better interface. It's slow, buggy, confusing, featureless, and incredibly ugly. Buttons will randomly get pushed in your pocket, causing bad things to happen.
- the hardware sucks. It's large, chintzy, and really cheap-feeling.
- you pretty much have to look at the display to use it. Great if you are sitting at a desk. Not so great if you are say, running, or snowboarding, or whatever.
- the firmware sucks. The battery indicator doesn't work properly. The MP3 decoding sucks. ID3 tags do not get properly displayed. It takes 5 minutes to rebuild the database every time you plug it in the USB port to charge.
- the much-hyped FM tuner barely has any reception. If you walk around the room, you'll probably lose reception a few times.
Even with all of the iPod shuffle's shortcomings, there just isn't a price point at which the Sansa wins. I pretty much just threw the thing in the trash after playing with it for a couple of hours. If you paid the original price for it, you got seriously ripped off.