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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."

9 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. madoff's disease more deadly than bio/nuke threat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    it's the trickle DOWn effect. no doubt, unfortunately, that there are many more people who have bernie's ailment, with no visible remedy short of self introspection.

    please do not confuse religion, with being a spiritual being. the lights are coming up all over now. even us mortals can see it now.

  2. Re:why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Because Apple users are fags. FAAAAAGS!

  3. Re:why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I know you were trolling, but I know several gay people and if I were to run the numbers...The majority of them are Mac users.

  4. Re:I Like It by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0, Troll

    Congratulations, you just signed up to regular ass-rapings from Apple every time you need some new headphones. I hope you like iTunes too.

    I suppose at least it charges from USB, which is more than my 3rd gen iPod does. Having to take that Firewire charger everywhere is what made me replace it.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  5. Re:Screen costs money and take up case space. by gbarules2999 · · Score: -1, Troll

    Are YOU joking? It displays many more words than just one; more like twelve, and at a very readable font size. And if you're such a weak iFool that you can't carry an extra few ounces around everyday, you must be struggling from the heavy weight your FUD has burdened you with. You missed the point of my post - it's that Apple could very easily drop in a screen, without any extra cost the parent claimed would occur.

  6. Re:And DRM in the fucking *headphones*. by zmollusc · · Score: 1, Troll

    Well put.
    I would like to add 'Fuck Apple. Fuck them up their stupid assholes'.

    --
    They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
  7. Re:And DRM in the fucking *headphones*. by linhares · · Score: -1, Troll

    The thing that one needs to remember is that anyone, no matter who they are, who questions Apple or points out any problem with Apple's behaviour, is evil. Apple is always right. We are fortunate to be living at the same time that Apple exists.

    Precisely. How would we know what we need without Apple? How would we have any idea of what we want without it? Without Apple, is would be a slippery slope to nihilism. Thank you, my dear Apple benefactors!

  8. Re:And DRM in the fucking *headphones*. by alienw · · Score: 0, Troll

    Hahhahaha, seriously. Rockbox is the biggest piece of shit I've ever used. Let's see, tons of useless, buggy, poorly-implemented features, a horrible UI, and poor hardware support. Who the hell needs FLAC support on a portable device, anyway? It's good for killing battery life and disk space, and that's about it. Between the terrible UI, countless bugs, and "features" such as reduced battery life, you'd have to be out of your mind to use that POS. I understand how it came about (replacement FW for horrible Archos players), but why would you put it on an iPod?

    Also, I've never had any problems with any of my iPods. When I tried out rockbox, it would hang whenever I tried to generate the database. I promptly wiped it. Maybe the developers should think about fixing some of the bugs before they add more useless crap to the features list.

  9. Re:Rockbox by alienw · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yeah, they really care about Rockbox. That's why they encrypted the firmware. Right. It has nothing to do with people trying to crack Fairplay, pirate iPhone applications, and hack/clone/jailbreak the iPhone. Seriously, dude. There are about a million reasons why Apple would want to protect its products from hacking, and I seriously doubt Rockbox is anywhere on that list. Seriously, the DIY Altoids-can MP3 players are more of a competitive threat to apple than Rockbox.