iPod Shuffle: first impressions
Christopher Breen over at Playlistmag.com has
gotten his
hands on the new iPod Shuffle (the lucky bastard!). He can’t quite share the Shuffle with us but he does the next
best thing, and shares his first impressions, which I will paraphrase here for your voyeuristic gadgety pleasure.
The Shuffle’s navigation wheel is divided into quadrants, with a Play/Pause button in the center. Depress the button
for 3 seconds to switch into Hold mode. The east and west quadrants of the nav wheel are the Previous/Next functions,
while north/south is volume up/down. Press and hold a Previous or Next button to rewind or fast-forward, respectively.
The Shuffle also includes an LED indicator that flashes green for ‘good’ and orange for ‘Do Not Disconnect’ or ‘Error.’
Change the iPod from Shuffle to sequential playlist button via a slider on the back of the unit. This slider also
functions as power on/off; slide the switch all the way up to turn off the device. So cool.
Where it starts to get really interesting is in the integration with iTunes. Plugging in the iPod Shuffle and
selecting it will give you a new pane: the Autofill pane. You choose the source of your music (album, artist, playlist,
etc.), and let the iPod do the rest of the work. You can have it select songs randomly, replace all songs, and choose
higher-rated songs more often. Yet another ingenious way to remix your own music collection, courtesy of Apple.
Another way cool function is the ability to set the Shuffle’s preferences to ‘Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to 128
kbps AAC For This iPod.’ What this does is prevent the Shuffle from getting filled up with tracks ripped at higher bit
rates or as uncompressed or lossless audio. iTunes will simply perform the conversion as it updates the Shuffle. It
adds a bit of time to the sync, but well worth it for maximizing the available tunage on your new iPod.
Breen takes the time to make one more point: the iPod Shuffle is formatted as an MS-DOS volume, which means you’ll be
able to let this fresh new device be a swinger in the cross-platform set: no need to reformat to move it between
operating systems.
Thanks for the skinny, Christopher! Anyone else get their mitts on one of these babies yet? Mine will be here in 5-7
business days. ;)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brian Stucki said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
I got a couple of them this morning right after the keynote. I agree with C Breen on all of his points. it is a really slick little gadget. I think of it as a radio, with no commercials and only plays songs you like (since they all came from your library). The randomness is really cool as you listen. It is very light and the necklace is slick. I was a little scared at how easy it would fall from the necklace, but there are two little balls inside the cover that lock in pretty good to the ipod shuffle. It's a good strong connection.
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Ryan said 2:21AM on 7-23-2005
Can anybody confirm if this can be charged from a simple, powered USB hub?
My thinking is that I can get a hub with an AC adaptor cheaper than the $30 Apple brick charger.
I'm 99% sure it would work, but 100% confirmation is always nice.
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Morgan MacArthur said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
iPods and cars everywhere, I guess this isn't really an iPod, but it might be cool anyway. Call it a shuffle-inspired car player.
http://gadgetize.blogspot.com/2005/01/totally-awesome-1gb-car-ipod-shuffle.html
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shariq said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
I just bought the $149 version, which holds 240 songs, but am going to return it for the regular $99 version. The clerk told me the shuffle is not compatible with the regular usb port (basturds), you have to have usb2, which honestly, im not sure if I have or not
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mac_i_book said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
iPod sells well also in Japan.
Does such iPod appear, too or ..
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/mac_i_book/496677.html
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