I finally broke down and bought the 1GB iPod Shuffle on Saturday. I went down to the apple store and picked it up. The store was just packed with people browsing and trying out the various apple products. The demand for the shuffle just seems amazing to me. Most of the people in line were waiting to pay for their shuffle. BTW both days I was at the Victrola last week, the number of apple notebook users dwarfed the pc notebook users 5 to 1. It’s almost like in my little corner of the world, the greater than 90% marketshare of PCs doesn’t seem to exist.
But onto talking about the iPod Shuffle.
Where does the iPod shuffle fit into my life? I have a regular 40GB iPod which works great when I’m at home or at the office. At home it drives my "home stereo system" which is just it and a set of Altec Lansing InMotion speakers. At work, I combine the iPod with pair of Bose QuietComfort 2. The noise cancelling Bose headphones are comfortable and do an excellent job of quieting down the office environment for me.
In most other situations, I find the regular iPod too cumbersome to bring around. The iPod is extremely portable but it doesn’t fall into the category of "don’t even think about" portable. I went to the Cafe Ladro this afternoon with my book and shuffle and was just able to use it. Perhaps my problem with the regular iPod is that I tend to fiddle around with the screen while the shuffle doesn’t give me that flexibility. You just play it and go.
I’ve tried to bring the regular iPod to the gym or running and it’s never worked out for me. This upcoming season, I hope to use it when I’m training.
Some thoughts I had on improving the use of the shuffle.
- If your primary computer is a notebook (hence not being on the whole day), the USB Power Adapter is a must have accessory. Otherwise you can’t charge the shuffle while you’re away at work and your notebook is at home sleeping. It would be nice if Apple added the capability for notebooks to charge peripherals whilst they are sleeping.
- The sports case may be useful depending on your weather patterns. The smaller size and supplied lanyard makes it more suitable for athletics than it’s bigger cousins. But the sports case makes it weatherproof. Makes sense to have one in Seattle with our rainy weather.
- It takes about 8 - 10 minutes to "refill" the 1GB Shuffle. Keep that in mind when you want to leave the house and have a refilled shuffle with you. It’s longer than I like especially for a device where you’re supposed to "refill" it regularly. Plus the constant overwriting of the storage media, I’m concerned how that impacts the lifetime of the device (good thing they’re priced fairly low, but still…)
- Enable the option in iTunes to show the shuffle on the sources list. iTunes will keeps a list of what is on the shuffle even when it is not plugged in. This allows you to work on the shuffle playlist when the shuffle is not plugged in. When you plug it in, the shuffle is updated with the new songs.
The one thing that irritates me about the Shuffle. I would like to have both audiobooks and music on it. More generally, having two playlists on the shuffle rather than 1 playlist. Clicking a switch on it would allow me to play playlist 1 or 2. Within the two playlists, I could choose to play them in normal or shuffle order. That way when I walk to work, I can pick my audiobook playlist. When I run, I can use the music playlist. Storage remains the same but you can use the shuffle for dual purposes without needing to remember that your audiobook are the 1st two tracks on the shuffle.
