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."

Comments

Re:And DRM in the fucking *headphones*.

[makomk]

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.

My Sansa

[B1oodAnge1]

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'...

You can't use it with normal amplifiers

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Teardown

[joelholdsworth]

...and already someones pulled it to bits

Re:And DRM in the fucking *headphones*.

[Firehed]

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.