iPod Shuffle Review

Like many Apple products, it started as a rumor. At least in public. The Mac rumor web is constantly filled with information relating to possible new products and features.
In the past, about two-thirds of the rumors have been right, or at least on the right track. For example, On August 31, 2004, Mac Expo Paris was where Phil Schiller, Apple’s VP, would give the keynote speech. This speech is usually done by Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, and is where he announces the new major products and company updates. The rumor mill had been churning about Mac Expo Paris. What would be released and announced? Among the rumors was the possibility that the iPod would receive new Bluetooth or Airport compatibility so that users could sync their iPods without plugging them in. The speculation was founded on information from a job listing at Apple. The listing was looking for an iPod engineer possessing the skills for these functions, but there was no more proof than that. In hindsight, this rumor has never seen fruition. Instead, Apple used those engineers to develop an iTunes Music Store on certain Motorola phones. Who would have thought? More often than not, though, the rumors can make some good guesses. The iPod Shuffle was one of them.
Again, it started as a rumor. The “Mini iPod Mini” was first alluded to by Phil Schiller in a Mercury News article on January 7, 2004, who also said Apple had not ruled out making an iPod at capacities smaller than 4GB. The first actual rumor about the new MP3 player was posted on October 1, 2004 and it said that the “flash-based” iPod would be in stores for Christmas. 22 days later, another rumor came out that the new iPod would start at $99. By the end of October, news.com, a technology news site, added some credibility to the rumors by posting some analyst suggestions. The analyst said after meeting with Apple executives, he could see the new iPod in the $149 range. The two prices were right.
On December 7, 2004, a Mac News site, themacmind.com, posted “confirmed details” on the new iPod. The specs they posted were exactly right. But because their site was not very credible, no rumor site gave this information the light of day. This rumor also included the date of entry: Mac World Expo 2005, exactly one year after the introduction of the iPod Mini. As the day of Steve Job’s keynote address at Mac World Expo arrived, much about the iPod Shuffle was known, including the name. The US Patent office, which posts information relating to new patents, posted that Apple had received two new patents; among them, the name “Shuffle”. The rumor mill worked perfectly and Apple supporters and information leeches, myself included, were not overly surprised, but very impressed with the iPod Shuffle.
The iPod Shuffle. It is the newest member of the Apple iPod family and the smallest. For comparison, it is about the size of a pack of Trident. Take out four quarters. Hold them in your hand. You’re holding more weight than the iPod Shuffle (it weighs in at .78 ounces). There are two models: one that holds 512 MB, and one that holds 1GB of music and files. In other words, Apple claims you can hold about 120 and 240 songs, respectively. (I tested my music library to see how much of my music I could fit on each model: about 125 and 235 respectively) The 512MB model retails at $99 and the 1GB model at $149, and while there is no education discount for the 512MB model, the 1GB is only $139 with this discount. The rechargeable battery lasts an incredibly long time: about 12 hours before it needs more power. If you are going on a flight longer than 12 hours, for example, or just will be away from power for a while, there is an accessory battery pack that uses two triple-A batteries for 20 extra hours of music. The battery pack retails at $29, and $26 with educational discount.
It has an incredibly simple interface. On the front side, there are 5 buttons, all arranged in a circle: play in the middle, left and right buttons for next and previous track, and up and down buttons for the volume. The top has a jack for headphones, and the bottom has a cap that covers the built-in USB jack for easy synchronization to your computer. The back has a slider controller with three settings: shuffle, standard play, and off; there is also a battery level indicator.
I have heard many arguments against the iPod shuffle saying that “you can no longer listen to your playlists.” This is just not true. The slider controller has three settings, two of which control whether you want your music to play straight through or you want the music shuffled. If, for example, you want to listen to a new CD you just got, just bring it onto the iPod Shuffle. If you don’t care what you listen to, you can use a feature called “AutoFill” within iTunes where it will fill the iPod Shuffle with the maximum amount of music it will hold.
Linking the iPod Shuffle to a computer is also incredibly simple. Take the USB cap off to reveal the USB connector, and just plug it in to your computer. It will automatically link up to your iTunes software and charge itself at the same time. Incredibly cool. It looks like a USB “thumb drive” when you plug it in, and you can use it as such. In the iPod Shuffle preferences, you can allocate a certain amount of the space to storage of files instead of playable music. For comparison’s sake, I just went onto compusa.com, and for the same amount of storage space, thumb drives were $60 and $100, respectively. So for 40 dollars more, you can play music with your thumb drive. Awesome.
So, who is Apple targeting with the iPod Shuffle? Why would someone want to buy this? Well, the iPod Shuffle is not for people who want to store their entire music library. That’s why someone would buy a normal iPod with 20 or 40 GB of storage. One might even get the upper-level iPod Photo with 60 GB of storage for their whole music library. But those are much more expensive. With the iPod Shuffle, Apple is taking on the low priced, flash-based music industry, which is the one area of music players they have not affected. This player is for someone like my family friend Holly. She wants a portable music player at the gym. She doesn’t need to carry her whole library, just a few CDs worth. The iPod Shuffle is for her. The player is for someone like me. I’m a college student on a short budget. I listen to most of my music in my dorm room on my computer. I want to listen to some music when I go to and from class, and I want to be able to select what I listen to a few minutes before I leave for the day. The iPod Shuffle, with its sleek integration to iTunes and quick data transfer (it employs USB 2.0, which runs at 480 Mbps; in other words, really fast), is for someone like me.
Some argue that the iPod Shuffle is missing something: a screen. This is not an argument; it is fact. There is no screen. Then again, when you were listening to a CD (remember when we had single CD players?), how often would you look down at your display and expect to see the title and artist? Never, because most standard CD players only have screens that show time elapsed or remaining. And do you really care that much about that kind of information when you’re just listening to music for the sake of listening? No, the iPod Shuffle does not have a screen. And no, I do not think it is a big problem.
When the iPod Shuffle was released, the first store to carry them was the Apple Store in San Francisco (interestingly enough, right up the street from where Mac World Expo was held). People swarmed to the physical and online stores. As of today, January 22, 2005, 11 days after its release, there is a 2-3 week wait for the 512MB model, and 3-4 week wait for the 1GB model. If I had been in San Francisco then, I would have been with the mobs. Overall, I think the iPod Shuffle is great for Apple. Apple has finally realized that if they want to expand their market, they need to make their products more affordable. They showed they learned this at Mac World Expo with the iPod Shuffle and the Mac Mini. That review will come later…I’ll need a long flight for that…good thing that’s coming up!