iPod Shuffle
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When Apple first announced the iPod Shuffle, a lot of people didn't take it seriously. What was this, a poor man's iPod? How could something so small deliver good sound and hold enough music? Prepare to be surprised.
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPod Shuffle this year, and people started talking about it, most said that it was pointless and they would never buy it. Then, as the release date closed in, more and more people began to hype it up, and it almost instantly sold out everywhere, and the back orders started piling up.
Many thought that when the iPod Mini was introduced, Apple would also introduce a Shuffle-like device, but they didn’t. For the next year Apple did not introduce a new flash-based MP3 player. The iPod started tearing up the MP3 market. At the time the iPod Shuffle was introduced, the iPod held more than 90 percent of the market share of the hard drive MP3 players, and 37 percent of the market of all MP3 players. This was without any device in the flash-based MP3 player arena, so today we bring you Apple's answer to flash-based MP3 players, the iPod Shuffle. Will it make the cut and stand up to its older brothers?
What you get
Like all Apple products, it comes elegantly packed. You get an installation CD, some stickers, the iPod Shuffle itself, ear phones, a lanyard with end cap, and a handy index card showing what everything does. The Shuffle comes with two end caps, a normal one and the one attached to the lanyard.
The iPod Shuffle is incredibly small. It is roughly the size of my middle finger, with a thickness of .33 inches, and weighs in at .78 ounces. This is a very small player, but it fits just right in most people’s hands.
On the top is the headphone plug. Any 3.5mm headphones will fit.
On the bottom, after we remove the end cap, we find the USB plug. On the top of the plug is the memory size of the unit. All the other iPods come with firewire cables, but this is the first to be totally USB. It seems as if the PC world has influenced the Apple world, but no one has ever heard of a firewire thumb drive. Some USB thumbdrives have a hard time fitting into the port, with interference from the case or other cables. I face this problem quite frequently, but with the Shuffle I have no problem connecting it in.
On the front we have the user controls and the status LEDs. There is one big button for play/pause, and if you hold it for three seconds, it goes on hold. The top and bottom of the ring controls the volume, while the right and left skip songs. Between the top of the unit and the buttons are the LEDs for the status. I will discuss this later on.
On the back we have more controls. The upper most control controls on/off and how the music is played. The top notch is off; the next one down is the repeat, where the music is played from top to bottom. The last notch is for the shuffle, where the music is shuffled. The single button below that is for battery status. You press the button, and the light will display a certain color, telling you the status of the battery.
The controls are very easy to use. Everyone will be able to just pick it up and use it. The back controls may take a little getting use to for some people, but won’t present many problems.
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