iPod Shuffle - The screen

The main complaint people have about the Shuffle is that is has no screen. I don’t find this a big problem. Sure it would be nice, but it would have added weight and drained the battery quicker. The Shuffle has two LEDs under the cover to help communicate with the user. The reference card that comes with the Shuffle will tell you exactly what each sequence of flashes means. I only ran into one time when it signaled an error, and that was because I didn’t have any music on it at the time.

• Flashing Orange: Connected and mounted. Do not Disconnect.
• Solid Orange: Charging / Not mounted. Ok to Disconnect.
• Flashing Green: Paused.
• Solid Green: Fully Charged.
• Flashing Green and Orange: No music or some other problem.
• Solid Green on button press: Normal operation.
• Solid Orange on button press: Hold is on.

Installation

Installing it is as easy as popping off the cap and then putting it into a USB port. You may need the optional USB extender cable, but many will not. Before you do that, install iTunes. iTunes is Apple’s music jukebox, and it is used with all of the iPods. Once installed, open it up and put your Shuffle in the USB port. Hopefully you will the flashing orange light, meaning it is connected and mounted with iTunes.

The first time you plug it in, it will guide you through a setup similar to the picture above. You can name it what you want and set up various other options.

Unlike the iPod, many people will not be able to fit their entire music collection onto an iPod Shuffle. Choosing the music you would like on it is simple. You can drag and drop songs, or playlists. If you have more songs that you love equally than space, you can have iTunes autofill your Shuffle.

As with many other USB Flash drives, it can be used as a mini hard drive. You can manually set aside how mush space you want to save for this feature in iTunes, or you can just throw stuff in there until it’s all filled up.

Next: Testing >>
 

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