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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."
You must've missed the iPod TV out debacle. All the recent iPods won't do TV out unless they can detect a special Apple authentication chip in the TV out adapter. There's no technical reason for this - they're quite capable of doing TV out via old-fashioned adaptors without the chip, and I think some of them even display a message via the TV out in this case. The sole purpose is to require accessory manufacturers to get authorised and pay a per-item fee to Apple - enforced by the requirement to put the Apple-supplied lockout chip in each one.
It really shouldn't surprise you if they start doing the same things with headphones.
Man I love my 25 dollar, 2 gig Sansa with a 4 gig microSD card.
I've had speech functionality since I installed Rockbox in January of '07.
Plus, I can play doom and gameboy ROMs in class.
Did I mention I got it brand new for 25 bucks?
Jus' sayin'...
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
You can't play it through normal amplifiers without losing the ability to change tracks.
You can't plug it into a cars MP3 port, you can't plug it into previous iPod docks.
This is useless without its headphones, you're stuck with those crappy Apple ones.
...and already someones pulled it to bits
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.
According to iLounge, even Apple's own previous headphones with remotes built in (for the iPhone and recent Nanos) refuse to control the new shuffle properly. So non-standard that it doesn't even work with your existing products seems pretty unlikely, though I'll happily be proven wrong if someone smashes open the remotes on either set of headphones and finds out what's in there.
See also my reply with the definition of Digital Rights Management (short version - the music is entirely unaffected and can play through any headphones).
Is the music player not also a digital device? It may not be DRM to the letter, but it's still technology to prevent you from freely interacting with your purchases.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
What you lose in simple, pretty UI design; you gain back in features and usability. Of particular note is Rockbox's support for a number of music formats (FLAC and APE come to mind). Rockbox's greatest feature though IMO, is the fact that I can simply plug it into any computer with a USB port and drag a music file right onto my Ipod, just like a regular flash drive, and it'll play. I can organize my music into folders and don't necessarily have to rely on various ID3 tags or "Smart playlists" in order to organize my music the way I want. This point alone is what drove me to Rockbox. After my ipod crashed once and corrupted my Itunes database, I either had to create a new database or find a few special program that would repair the database. The former option is all that's available to most users and it means having to retransfer all your music over the corruption of a stupid database, never mind the fact that all the music files are still there on the ipod in perfect working order, albeit all renamed to hash number. Oh, and should you want that kind of database support, Rockbox provides that too. And should you need to get back into Itunes on your Ipod you can merely shut the Ipod off, turn it on, and throw the hold switch on before the Apple logo disappears and you'll boot straight into Apple OS. So rockbox even supports dual booting.
Apple may make kick ass hardware devices, but their software plays to the same tune that M$ does.