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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?
"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?
Apple could modify and update the Air Pods, removing the need even for a any device to stream from.
A couple of taps to control. Just like the shuffle with a reasonable memory for shuffling a favourite play list.
If the shuffle was that great...
It's a different world one lives in when one laughs off ones kids losing 100 dollar gifts.
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I bought a 60$ android tablet that lasted for a year. The thing that makes something cheap is not only how much it costs but how long it lasts. People seem to forget this.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
sad news for anyone who'd prefer to not have to lug around an entire phone to listen to music
That's right, because there are no other manufacturers of digital music players, and there aren't thousands of other players to choose from.
If you choose to lock yourself into the Apple ecosystem, you choose to limit how you do things.
Rubbish, quite frankly. First off - he never claimed to invent it, in fact he showed competing flash-based devices such as the Rio at the launch speech. Second, comparing a 5Gb hard drive-based machine to a 32Mb (or 64Mb later I believe) Diamond Rio that could barely hold an album is silly. Remember the original marketing - 1,000 songs in your pocket? None of the other carry'able portables could do that - this is what Taco missed with his now-legendary "less space than a Nomad" comment. The Nomad was..err..20Gb from memory (could be wrong) but it was CD player-sized, not just fittable into a trouser pocket.
Next up is the interface. It's hard to remember now, but this was a head and shoulders above everything both in the way you chose a track and also in the way you interacted with your computer. iTunes was good in those days. Ripping a CD and putting it onto your portable player was made easy for non-technical people, and the store later made it easier still.
There are reasons it became so dominant.
$100 for a fucking mp3 player that wouldn't even let you choose songs? A 512 mb Sansa Express was about $25 at the time IIRC, was a similar size and shape (though not brushed aluminum, admittedly), had an sd micro slot, and actually let you choose songs. The Sansa Clip Jam (8gb) is the current iteration, $28 on Amazon right now.
MP3 players seem to be a dying breed, killed off by cell phones. I am a huge fan of the Sansa Clip and Clip+ lines. I use them to listen to audiobooks, and the Sansa devices integrate well with the Audible.com software (which sucks btw). Currently the Sansa devices command a premium on Amazon since they've been discontinued by Sansa but still have a fan base. For my money, Sansa Clip was the best MP3 player. It wasn't Apple (no iTunes lock in), had decent memory sizes (4 GB, now 8 GB + microSD card), a nicely simple interface. The glaring flaw was the headphone jack. It would wear out (stop making good contact) after about two years heavy use.