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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 suspect I was one of the first few people on Thursday to pick one up. This Shuffle is my first, complementing my 30GB Video, 60GB Video, and iPhone devices. Basically, I've gotten tired of lugging around the bigger devices while I bike.
So far, I'm really pleased with it. Hate the headphone arrangement in principle, but I can live with it for now. It's tiny, as noted, and I've already lost it (and found it again) once. I suspect that's the biggest risk to owning a small, black device like that.
And before anyone says the Voice function is innovative, Rockbox has had it for years. Luckily Apple prevented the installation of Rockbox onto iPods with the 6th gen Classic :/
I am surprised, with Apple constantly spouting "The first music player that talks to you", that no one has yet mentioned Rockbox's voice capabilities.
It has existed for some time, and even supports it on some very cheap hardware, by calculating and storing the speech synth on a PC while the player is plugged in.
So, Apple has, in fact, been fighting to keep speech synth off the iPod for years.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
That's going, as I've noted in another reply, on a single iLounge review. Not exactly a technical analysis of what's going on inside the earphones. It sounds more like a non-standard control chip, as opposed to a DRM chip.
See also my reply with the definition of Digital Rights Management (short version - the music is entirely unaffected and can play through any headphones).
Thus we arrive at what is without a doubt the single worst product that apple has ever released.
No, the puck mouse still has the nr. 1 place. The new iPod shuffle is at least usable, but it definately comes close though.
Nowhere near close. The puck mouse did exactly what it was supposed to do. This Apple product _may_ be their worst ever, but maybe someone knows something worse:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA45469?viewlocale=en_US This was a tape backup device with 38.5 MB storage capacity. The Macintosh II at the time shipped with a 40 MB hard drive, so the tape was too small. You couldn't backup your hard drive on a single tape. Except if you stored your backup as individual files, in which case the backup time was so bad, it wouldn't be finished in the morning if you started in the evening - it used a tape drive to simulate a direct access device, with seek times in minutes. I bet 99.9% of its users tried it once and gave up.
For $80, I can get the iPod shuffle with no screen, or a comparably sized Sansa Clip with a small screen, FM Tuner, voice recorder, OGG/FLAC support, and compatibility with every OS. The Sansa Clip also happens to be on sale at the Sansa store; it's only $60. So, where's that "screen costs too much," charge Sansa should be forcing on me, then?
The EFF, and specifically Fred von Lohmann, is not only taking a shaky position here, but expressing it ignorantly. The group is getting good at going on witch hunts without really knowing what they're talking about.
For starters, comparing Apple against Microsoft, Ford, Toyota is not just stupid, but apeshit retarded. Microsoft isn't a principally hardware maker, but its hardware IS all encrusted with DRM, from the Xbox to Zune. It also promotes WMA/WMV DRM on files and HD-DVD style end to end video output DRM on PCs, so von Lohmanns' comments are ridiculous.
Ford and Toyota all use proprietary parts in their vehicles that can not be swapped out for third party bits from any supplier a user might want to pick from.
But secondly, the guy doesn't even verify the information he's complaining about at full speed. Fred von Lohmann is a shoot first, gather details later kind of guy. He was the same EFF staffer who wrote, "Apple is among the worst offenders when it comes to messing around with stuff you've already paid for. But iTunes 7.2 is likely to be remembered for the especially wicked tricks it plays on iTunes customers."
That's the same whiney moralist language he's using here, but he was wrong about iTunes 7.2 removing the ability to rip tracks to CD. That didn't stop him from prattling on about it.
Von Lohmann thought iTunes could no longer burn and re-rip music after reading about it in a blog. He was wrong, because the blogger he believed was also mistaken. However, von Lohmann did not correct his posting accusing Apple of "removing the feature" from iTunes; he also cited [EFF's Peter] Eckersley's "previous revelations" [erroneous nonsense about metadata spying in iTunes] as proof Apple could not be trusted.
Apple's 'Especially Wicked Tricks.'