2 weeks later
After a long debate with a few friends, dissecting the obvious pros and cons, I caved in and booked myself an iPod Shuffle on the first shipment that would arrive at my closest Apple retailer.
So it's been two weeks I've had the Shuffle around with me, and others have been asking me how it feels. The bottom line: I'm a happy customer.
When I first asked my Dad about his opinion, he said, "It's rather big for a flash drive, isn't it?" Truth to be told, it is a lot bigger than the latest flash drives you can get out there, but now that I have it in my hand, I understand why you wouldn't want it to be any smaller — you need to be able to push the controls with your thumb. Here's one instance where smaller isn't always better. The size — or rather, the lack of — is great. It weighs almost nothing, being just marginally heavier than my old 256 MB USB flash drive, and tucks almost invisibly into the pocket of my jeans.
From an aesthetic perspective, I have no use for the lanyard. In all honesty, a tacky white cord around my neck clashes with my wardrobe. But that's ok, I just use the plain USB cap.
There's only one real design flaw: the switch on the back of the iPod Shuffle that allows you to switch between play-in-order and shuffle modes (as well as turn the Shuffle off) is too smooth. It is difficult to switch between modes because the surface has no texture and is too slippery on which to get an easy grip. However, the Shuffle has inherited a very smart and unexpected feature that its larger 4G siblings also have — if for whatever reason you accidentally pull out your headphones, it automatically pauses the music. No kidding.
I find the Shuffle has a good sound for portable use, but this might well be a relative thing. The inability to EQ is limiting, but its sound is more than passable for small speakers and earphones. I don't use the iPod earphones that come out of the box (I find the balance on those really strange); instead, I use my faithful Sennheiser MX-400 earbuds which don't ruin my hair. I only notice the "empty" areas on my rather big Altec Lansing computer speakers, but it sounded great when my boss plugged it into his amplifier that is connected to small speakers.
Most of the problems I've encountered are actually with Finder. At first, Finder and iTunes couldn't seem to agree who was responsible for the iPod Shuffle. Occasionally, Finder wouldn't notice that the Shuffle is plugged in after I have unmounted it a first time. Both iTunes and Finder really seem to take their time to think about unmounting the Shuffle. A firmware update was available today, so let's see if things work better from now on.
What about the lack of a screen if you prefer play-in-order mode? Here, it depends somewhat on how you listen to music. If you're the kind of person who can't decide what music you'd like to hear until you've pulled the iPod out of your pocket, then the Shuffle isn't for you. I haven't had trouble with it so far because I do have a habit of listening to certain CDs continuously, and I don't mind having to update the iPod before leaving home in the morning if I feel like a change. I'm the kind of obsessive listener who remembers the number of tracks on a CD, but it would still be very nice if the iPod Shuffle has a means to navigate by album. Otherwise, the shuffle mode is always great fun.
So far so good. Actually, the only practical problem I have with it so far is that it's too small for me to wrap my earphones around when I want to put it away. :)
Posted by sniffles at February 23, 2005 08:44 PM