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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."
Maybe consumers will draw the line when Apple requires its users to install DRM-equipped electrodes in their own frontal lobes.
Maybe.
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.
Here it is: iSophagus
http://store.sluggy.com/detailed-isoph.html
The inability to use your own headphones is a big problem, in fact this makes the new shuffle unusable for me as I can't use earbuds.
Ganty
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.
I always thought how big and clumsy my Shuffle is, thank god they finally addressed this issue !
839*929
Yeah, it's almost like the Shuffle doesn't have a screen or something.
Oh.
Though voice is more accessible and helps blind people, for the vast majority of non-blind users it is simply very inconvenient.
Many years back, I got a shuffle when I wanted a tiny MP3 player. It drove me nuts, and I bought a Sansa; same size, but comes with a screen and some useful features.
Just about every tiny MP3 player has a screen these days, but Apple is probably having the NIH syndrome.
Life is just a conviction.
I don't know why anyone is impressed by this at all, even though I'm a mac fan, this new shuffle is lame and isn't all that innovative. If you are going to make it that small, it's dumb to have a long cord dangling, why don't you build the ipod right into the headphones, that would be innovative, and illiminate the annoying need for chord tangles.
As if iTunes wasn't already bloated enough...
I'd be curious to see how accurate that statement actually is. "Apple Mobile Device Support", which as far as I can tell is only needed for iPhone or iPod Touch, is installed automatically with iTunes. Sure enough, I just checked in Apple Software Update, and the new version "Supports syncing with iPod shuffle (3rd generation)." If Apple insists on installing half a dozen other unrelated or semi-related software packages with iTunes, it would be nice if they would provide an interface to only install (or update) the ones that you actually want. At the very least, I'd appreciate it if the iTunes installer would recognize when certain components aren't installed so I wouldn't have to uninstall Bonjour every single time I upgrade. (Why anyone ever thought it would be a good idea for system level network autoconfiguration and application level sharing to be handled by the same program in the first place is beyond me. The only thing I find more baffling is that anyone else in the world thought it would be a good idea to follow their example. avahi, I'm looking at you...)
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
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
OK, this is an interesting new marketing strategy for a company as a way to remove a product from their line. You don't ever have to stop selling it. You just keep halving its size until no one is sure whether they have bought one or not.
With some good access to the RDF, everyone will continue to hear music, whether or not there was actually a device in the box.
I still own a first generation Shuffle. I think it weighs 50 grams. Really, that's just to much to bear, carrying it in my briefcase. I know that if my briefcase only had a 10.7 gram Shuffle in it, it would be MUCH easier on my walk to work.
The speech output option of Rockbox lets you navigate menus and track names and such, but is does not let you hear the title of the track while the song is playing. That aspect is pretty slick!
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
I appreciate Apple trying to get rid of too many control interfaces. For the most part I am behind them all the way.
However, the one button to control this thing is rediculous. On a shuffle I often end up jumping forward or backwords through a fair amount of songs to find something I am in the mood for. On this one you double click to go forward, triple click(?!) to go back. Fastworward/rewind? double click and hold, triple click and hold (but only if you are more than 6 seconds into the track, or the triple click restarts the track). Say the name of the song? Click once and hold for 1 second. NOT FOR LONGER, if you hold longer, then you go to playlist selection!
This is not a step forward. Apple's approach to a simple design before made them accessible to nondorks. Grandmother friendly. My grandmother would need a cheat sheet to operate this. It honest reminds me of The Onion's coverage of The Wheel.
The 4GB Sansa Clip is a similar size, $18 cheaper, similar battery life, has a small screen, and doesn't lock you into the iTunes ecosystem.
SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
The headphones do not contain Digitial Rights Management. device will play just fine with ordinary headphones. in no way does it block access to your music.
the headphones can contain a controller to tell it to advance to a given song or change volume. Were you somehow expecting unmodified headpones to do that? how exactly?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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?
So I'm reading all these heated DRM posts and do something incredibly silly: before posting, I did a little research.
Calling this "DRM" is simply wrong headed. It doesn't meet any definition of "DRM". Not even remotely. And lockin? How can it possibly be lockin if anyone who wants to can manufacturer them?
Are you joking? You're comparing a 2.3 cubic inch device with a clunky 1-word "screen" to a 0.3 cubic inch device with a no-eyes-required audio interface.
The Sansa Clip is almost 8 times bigger than the Shuffle. And that screen? That's a "feature"? The Sansa has 7 buttons plus some kind of radial ipod-ripoff pad. You want to be squinting at that screen pressing those buttons while jogging down the sidewalk?
It's certainly a valid question to ask whether the Shuffle's size and interface are worth $20 to you, over having a clunky device with a bad interface. But you're pretending the Sansa Clip is "more features for less dollars". It certainly is not, unless you start with the assumption that size and interface are worthless.
I don't personally have a need for a tiny jogging-targeted music player, but that's no reason to get on a high horse and act all indignant because Apple is making one. You may as well be saying HURRR TRUCKS ARE DUMB CAUSE SEDANS GET BETTER GAS MILEAGE AND ARE CHEAPER. Yeah, if you don't care about the extra features of a truck, don't get one. Duh.
Yes, he is. At some point there are diminishing returns regarding size.
You concluded that from, what, the fact that it's not an iPod? The Sansa clip actually has a pretty decent UI, as does the rest of the Sansa line. And you can load it without needing special software - it's a freaking mass storage device.
Yes, it certainly is. It has more features (screen, FM radio, voice recording) for less dollars. It's not an evaluation of the quality of the Sansa or the iPod, it's just a fact.
Apparently neither do any of the people buying the new Shuffle, because (according to Gizmodo) the tiny little headphone-cord cables are extremely tricky to use when jogging because they are too close to your head and too small (which makes them difficult to manipulate when you're bouncing around.
Look, I like the previous-gen Shuffle's design (I own one). But there's a point when things get absurd. Requiring proprietary headphones means I can't use it in my car and I can't use it with my Shure e2g canalphones. There will probably be a $30 adapter at some point, but then we're talking about a $110 music player, which is getting into iPod Nano territory.
"Because putting in a screen costs money"
So Apple passes-on those savings to customers .. oh wait.
If you read the reviews on the page you linked to, that cable apparently isn't compatible with the iPhone 3G, presumably because it's a cheap, unauthorised third-party cable without the correct authentication chip.
It is disingenuous to measure the "size" of the new shuffle without including the size of the cord up to and including the "remote control" portion of the headphones. In fact, since the device is nigh unusable without the bundled headphones, you should just probably find the total displacement of the whole shebang before you've found the true size of it all.