the new iPod Shuffle - Enjoy Uncertainty

Might I suggest:

Shufflegasm
Shuffletastic
Ipod Micro: featuring Shuffletech
iSchaffel

but i usually play those when i'm riding my bike, so that i don't wind up with some slow ballady thing playing while i'm trying to SHRED!

Then again, I have a device that can store 100 songs by Parliament and/or Funkadelic. And decides to randomly play said songs at every opportunity. And I'm complaining.

But you can get a mic for the iPOD.

I think the *iSHUFFLE* is silly. I want to decide myself to go from Harry Pussy to Junior Boys...

yes, but it's also a lot less than comparable sized flash players. i'm curious, but the lack of display and loss of control (isn't that what the iPod is all about?) is uninspiring.

* Music capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128Kbps AAC encoding.

* Do not eat iPod shuffle.

* Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information.

* Some computers require either the optional iPod shuffle Dock or a USB cable extender (sold separately).

I would get one, but I still want something with a mic. The iRiver N10 is so sexy, but overpriced...

I've enabled the mic, and different sampling rates on my iPod. They were all there, but crippled by Apple for some reason. But if you also whack Linux on the machine Installers, the mic works properly, and you can record, even through headphones, and change the sample rate. Yay!

What an odd product. All MP3 players offer random play. This is a small MP3 player which does.

how much?

also:
I've enabled the mic, and different sampling rates on my iPod. They were all there, but crippled by Apple for some reason. But if you also whack Linux on the machine Installers, the mic works properly, and you can record, even through headphones, and change the sample rate. Yay!

what?!

yeah i have about 10-15 long mixsets too. but being only 10 files out of 8000+ files, they don't come up very often.

PEOPLE MAKE A SMART PLAYLIST THAT ONLY PLAYS SONGS BETWEEN TWO AND FIVE MINUTES AND YOUR SHUFFLE PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED.

But then Apple's almost never been particularly interested in making a product that wasn't self-contained, difficult or impossible to upgrade, and proprietary as fuck.

plus it can be used a usb harddrive. a 1gig usb harddrive costs around $80us, so the 1gig ipod shuffle is essentially a $70 mp3 player.

except at $150 for a Gig of memory it's not overpriced relative to it's competitors. and half-assed? because it lacks a screen? for it's market (gym goers/athletes), i'm not sure this is going to be as big a deal as it initally seems. i think about when i trained for a marathon, i'd just load up my 256Meg flash player and go. i rarely looked at the screen cuz i was, like, bouncing around and couldn't focus on it anyway.

I would argue that this is half-true, and I'm officially a dual-platform user. A G4 is actually quite expandable. I've hot-rodded mine with a Pioneer internal DVD-RW and some Western Digital IDE drives, and they've worked without a hitch. The "Life Savers"-coloured iMacs from a few years ago, however, are another story.

I've got mixed feelings about the new iShuffle (which doesn't actually have to play in shuffle mode) - as gimmicky as it seems, a USB memory stick with a built-in MP3 player could be useful, given the price.

I really hadn't considered the appeal to athletes and gym goers because I'm not one (and I exercise in my home on a stationary bike in front of a TV usually), but that does make some sense.

I didn't say "half-assed" because of the lack of a screen. I meant "half-assed" as in "only a gig when there are players on the market 40 times that size hardly 40 times more expensive." But again... didn't think about y'all joggin' folks. (I'd never jog with my iPod on account of I can't stand earbuds or any other shitty lightweight headphones, and studio cans just don't stay on your head while running, nor are they all that safe when you might have to cross a street or two.)

Understood. As I was saying over on the ILX "Apple Lust Objects" thread, I have a (comparitively speaking) monstrous MP3 Discman that I've just about had it with, AND both the iPod and Mini iPod just seem like too much money to me, BUT the iShuffle makes sense to me, both size- and price-wise.

I just think their way of doing business on many fronts is questionable (not that M$ isn't), and I think that many of their products (which obv aren't aimed at a demographic including me) are kinda silly. (Said silly products would include, obv, cube, mini mac, imacs, and other largely non-expandable machines.)

I am happy to see a Mac come out at a price point that isn't ridiculous though. That's great. In the past I always forgave them for being pricey because, let's face it, it does take more time and effort to make something look as nice as it performs (as opposed to some place like Dell where it's obvious that less time is spent on design), but I think it's great Mac is apparently able to compete pricewise now. (Of course that's probably due to the fact that the iPod is making them mountains of cash so they don't need to worry about as large a profit margin on their new inventions.)

Anyway, I already have a regular iPod, and I totally want an iPod Shuffle. I don't really want a Mac Mini--but that's because I already have a laptop. If I were buying someone a desktop, though, I'd buy it in a minute. The cube was dumb because it was expensive; the mini will do great.

I guess. It's just you already got all the fun you get from random load on a bigger box, and I tend to think that once you're in the hole, why not wait, get further in, and pony up for a better player? But then I didn't pay for my iPod.

what?!

Honestly. I don't leave it booted in Linux for playing, because they haven't got the kernel to work with VBRed MP3s yet, which covers all my great new tracks. But it's (a) fun; (b) has better games - Tetris, Minesweeper and so on; (c) you can reboot back to Mac any time safely and (d) you've got that audio thing back.

It'll probably turn out that there's a radio in there too.

ihttp://www.ipodlinux.org/images/4/43/Linux_On_Ipod1.jpg

Right now shuffle mode is the best way to listen, but occasionally you land in the middle of an album you want to hear more of, and if you're driving it's a hassle to navigate through 2 or 3 sub-menus to turn it off and then back on.

That is really my biggest complaint about the ipod. Sometimes the next track on an album should be allowed to come next and the way its set up now its next to impossible for that to happen smoothly.

You can access "Shuffle Mode" at the top level of the iPod menu (if that's any help)

I like the iPod Shuffle's three position switch (off/playlist mode/shuffle mode), but shuffle doesn't get fun until it's crosspollinating a huge music collection...

Against my better judgment, I am edging closer and closer to getting one of these ipod shuffles....

i dont have a huge digital music collection at home [because uh, i have my records here], but i have a ton of stuff on my PC at work. my gym happens to be on the same block as my office. normally i just throw stuff on my minidisc walkman but the its a pain in the ass [thank you, propriety software]. so it wouldnt be such a bad idea if i had something small that i could pull some stuff off, without the expectation of more permanent storage, and change up as often as id like.

stupid 4g :(

ZING

http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,119799,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp

She estimates the 512MB of flash in the cheaper of Apple's two IPod Shuffle models costs the company around $37.50 for each player. That's about two thirds of the estimated total $59 that Apple spends on materials needed to make each 512MB IPod Shuffle. The product retails for $99 giving the company a profit of about $40, or roughly 40 percent.

Here's a fun trick to add, er, uncertainty to your music: try plugging iPhone headphones into a first-generation iPod Shuffle. Glitchcore!

Seriously: is this weird incompatibility (caused, I can only imagine, by interference from the iPhone headphone mic) well known? I can't find anything about it. Mind, I don't imagine there are too many first-gen Shuffle users out there either.

I have a 2gig shuffle, it was all I could afford last year, but I have to say they are a brilliant little device. So fucking small, you get a ton of use out of it. I could see myself buying an Ipod Touch next time I have some money but I reckon I'd still use my shuffle.

the shuffle function is messing up my 4th gen Photo model these days. after using it, none of the song titles are visible or accessible any more through the "Artists" menu. they come up fine when I look through "Albums", and I can still add whole albums to the playlist through "Artists", but it's getting annoying. yesterday the shuffle wouldn't work at all, but I think that when I leave it off long enough to reset this problem goes away.

I would try to update the software but I am away from my regular computer which inspires great fear in any update.

Mind, I don't imagine there are too many first-gen Shuffle users out there either.
Still have mine, 1 GB, bought the day it was available to order on apple.com. I have a new nano that I most use, but I do still use the shuffle on occasion- it gets great battery life, and I only have a few songs on there. I use it mostly when I'm walking the dog and don't want to carry too much, although these days it's usually just my phone with some music on the SD card. But anyway- yeah, 1st gen shuffle user here.

I still have the first gen 1gb shuggle and use it every day. I can't imagine using the newer one, I like the way this one fits in my hand and when it runs out of juice I can just plug it into the USB port of my computer at work.

It's a little wonky, I sometimes have to turn it off, then wait a minute then turn it back on again, but it lasts for several commutes and still "rocks" my world.

I don't imagine there are too many first-gen Shuffle users out there either.
Still rockin' the 500MB "package of Juicy Fruit".

new one looks great but you have to use their earbuds?? ech
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_shuffle

I don't think I'd want an iPod to talk back to me.

Looks lame, for $30 more you get a lot more space but that's only marginally more useful on a shuffle where you can't pick songs anyway. And the battery life is 2 hours less. And it looks worse. And the headphone thing. This is a weak update.

yeah at first i felt like a chump cuz i got a shuffle a few weeks ago, but this just doesn't look too good

if I had to replace mine today I'd buy one of the older ones. I'm guessing Apple got a great deal on memory sticks but only in that ugly shape.

my iPod Shuffle has in the past couple of days played me at least two songs that aren't in my iTunes, and don't come up when I attach it to my computer and scan through the files

consequently I am convinced that artists are paying Apple to have their songs snuck onto iPod Shuffles

tell me I'm not crazy

oh man! do you know what songs they are, for shuffle scandal googling purposes? maybe you can figure out what they are by googling the lyrics?

A more likely explanation might be that you have some songs mislabeled?

are the songs by "coldplay?"

lol ok I WAS wrong about one of them....it was The The's "Perfect" (9-minute 12" version) which despite being on my computer I didn't know at all

the other one...I'm stumped. but I'm clearly bonkers

In fact, I listened to the opening couple of minutes of that The The song, assumed it was by a contemporary singer-songwriter type, and skipped on

it isn't Matt Johnson's greatest hour