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iPod Shuffle Finds Its Voice

Posted by Soulskill on from the easy-to-use-easy-to-lose dept.

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."

4 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. I Like It by CrankyFool · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:And DRM in the fucking *headphones*. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 :/

  3. Rockbox by bcmm · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
    1. Re:Rockbox by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apple is not fighting to keep it off the iPod, they just don't care about supporting it.

      The establishment of encrypted firmware with the iPod Touch and iPod Classic was an intentional move towards preventing third-party firmware installations like Rockbox. Apple made an effort to ensure you can't install it, so the issue is a lot more than a neutral "lack of support".