“When Apple updates other iPod models, the change is usually about two things: better features (such as the bigger iPods’ addition of video) and slicker industrial design (such as the Nano’s evolution from a blocky plastic device to a gracefully curved metal one). The iPod shuffle is fundamentally different–it’s on a track of ever-decreasing size and ever-increasing minimalism. What Apple would like, I think, is for the Shuffle to be invisible. Not in the ha-ha manner of SNL’s iPod Invisa, but in the sense that the music matters and the gadget itself is sort of beside the point. The new version takes a major leap in that direction, and not just because Apple shrunk its size by almost fifty percent,” Harry McCracken writes for Technologizer.
“Apple made the new Shufflesmaller in part by moving the buttons off the device itself [they sits on a remote on the earbud cable]. In fact, the move has some practical value,” McCracken writes. “Putting most of the controls on the remote pod means that you can put the Shuffle pretty much anywhere you want to, without worrying about whether you can get at it. (I’m in chilly, rainy Austin for the South by Southwest conference at the moment, and when I went out for a walk tonight I just stuffed the Shuffle as deep into my overcoat as it would go.)”
“Conceptually, using one button to do almost everything sounds nightmarish. In reality, I was startled by how intuitive it was. I read the Shuffle’s instructions once, and my fingers pretty much remembered what to do to produce the results I wanted,” McCracken writes. “The remote’s design helps: You never forget which nub increases the volume and which one decreases it, and your finger can find the indentation between them without any fiddling. It’s possible to forget that Apple intentionally designed the remote so you can’t see it when you’re using it. Which also adds to the new Shuffle’s feel of invisibility.”
“Then there’s VoiceOver, which is Apple’s name for the Shuffle’s text-to-speech music navigation. When you sync music onto the Shuffle from the new iTunes 8.1, the audio files the player needs to speak each track’s artist and title travel down to the player, too. I used iTunes on OS X 10.5 Leopard, and got what’s reportedly a higher-quality voice (a male one) than the one you’ll hear if you use Windows,” McCracken writes. “The combination of the remote and VoiceOver is surprisingly successful. The Shuffle is still aimed at people who want to listen to music without a lot of fuss–maybe while exercising or performing other tasks for which a fancier iPod would be too bulky and complicated. But it no longer feels quite so much like a teensy bucket of unorganized, unidentified tracks.”
“Apple says there will be third-party adapters to let any headphones work, and headphone manufacturers are already announcing Shuffle-compatible models. Which is good news, I guess, for anyone who finds the new Shuffle seductive but who has a visceral dislike of Apple earbuds,” McCracken writes.
“Like I say, the company’s goal with the Shuffle seems to be to make it invisible. The third-generation Shuffle doesn’t complete the job, and it definitely isn’t for everybody,” McCracken writes. “But in its own stripped-down way, it’s the most strikingly inventive new iPod since the iPhone.”
There’s much more in the full review – highly recommended – here.
