Why Steve Jobs Loved the IPod Shuffle (wired.com)

"Right after the keynote in which Steve Jobs introduced the iPod Shuffle, I went backstage with one question in mind: What makes an iPod an iPod?" remembers Steven Levy. mirandakatz writes Apple recently announced that it's officially discontinuing the iPod -- sad news for anyone who'd prefer to not have to lug around an entire phone to listen to music. At Backchannel, Steven Levy offers a requiem... The Shuffle, he writes, was unique in that it was an iPod stripped down to a single basic function -- and, as Steve Jobs told Levy in 2005, it made the perfect [cheap] gift for inculcating young kids in the ways of Apple.

"I will go buy them one of these for 100 bucks apiece," he told Levy, referring to why the Shuffle was an especially appropriate gift for his daughters, six and nine at the time. "They'll probably lose them in 60 days. But they'll get into it this way."
Jobs called the Shuffle "every bit an iPod -- just a different iPod," saying that the definition was simply "a great digital music player." (Though later he'd say that creating a radically smaller Nano was still "a huge bet.") Levy remembers the Shuffle as "one of the company's most fun products ever...stripped down to the one feature I adored," writing that he loved how "algorithmic serendipity" approximated a genius deejay (or "the 'Hand of God' chess move that Deep Blue used to confuse Garry Kasparov into thinking the computer had trespassed into realms formerly limited to brilliant humans.")

I bought my first mp3 player in 2000 -- an Archos Jukebox 6000 which weighed three quarters of a pound. Anyone else have fond memories they want to share about the iPod, the Nano, the Shuffle, your old Newton -- or your own first mp3 player?

Comments

Re:Still a market for music players that aren't ph

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse link...

As if

[markdavis]

>"sad news for anyone who'd prefer to not have to lug around an entire phone to listen to music."

Seriously? As if there aren't many dozens of other MP3 players out there for many, many years, that are also better and cheaper? Sandisk Clip perhaps?

Re:The iPod is dead - LONG LIVE THE IPOD

[bjb]

This is amazing. Are there instructions anywhere for how you did this?? I've been holding onto my last-gen iPod Classic forever for the same reasons, (why should I be limited to only cloud-based music when I'm within cell service?). I even went out and found a used one a couple years ago when someone broke into my car and stole my original one.

I did something similar to my 1G iPod Mini (4GB). It is rather easy actually, since the iPods use standard compact IDE interfaces to their hard drives. Sure, you need to get an adapter that fits, but they're available. Look on MacSales for the Tarkan iFlash Dual.

For my iPod Mini, the process is simply getting a CF-to-SD adapter and then sticking in an appropriate sized SD card. Personally, I went with a 64GB SD card and it has worked really well. Total cost was around $25-30. The only thing I will point out is that I suspect that sometimes the Mini's firmware might struggle with so many songs on the device, but it hasn't been a real problem ... I suspect an iPod Classic would have less of an issue since its firmware is a few years newer.

The only other note I would make is that if you're going to go through the effort of opening the device up to do this, you might as well swap the battery out at the same time if you can. While I've opened my Mini 4 or 5 times, it does seem to me that I might start having some problems after another 5 ... they're not really made to be disassembled a dozen times :-)