[iREZ]

i just wanted to declare how much i love my shuffle. i love my 20gb third gen as well, but it doesn't come close to how much i love this shuffle. ive dropped it from the 2nd story floor onto direct concrete, it still worked! i dropped it onto hardwood floor while warming up for a bball game and it was kicked across the court, picked it up and it was still working. just two days ago, went to the marriot pool in palm desert (those of you who've been there know why ) and actually jumped in the water with the thing in my board shorts pocket, had a few beers...then finally realized it and let the sucker dry out in the sun. then didnt touch it for a good two days and when i plugged in my phones today...worked like a charm, and it was underwater for a good 15 minutes. i effin love this shuffle!

[misc]

Apple now can have new advertising catch phrases:

"Underwater Music Experience"
"240 songs in your trunks"
etc, etc.

[powerbook911]

I love my shuffle too. I hate, when I hear people (non-Mac and non-Apple people usually) who say, 'No display, too big, etc." If they owned one, they might understand the convenience and reliability.

[teknopimp]

i'm looking forward to the new Mini if it indeed with have flash memory. should be a feather light and able to take some knocks like the shuffle.

[Eriamjh]

For something you really love, you sure treat it badly.

[hcorf]

i really like my shuffle as well, its so light you can carry it in your hand when walking, i find the big ones too heavy to do that.


But in my experience, you have to remember to fill it up with new music every couple of days or you will end up (like me yesterday) flicking through 10 songs or more just to find one you havent heard three times already, then having to repeat the proccess to find the next song. Maybe not an issue for most, but sometimes i am away from my powerbook for most of the week, and its a real pain in the ass. Next time i go on holiday i am def buying a portable cd player or something.

[stwain2003]

I cant tell you how many times I was swinging it around with the lanyard on my finger and it flew off. lol. Ill be a tad bit more careful with my upcoming ipod nano!!!

[Drakino]

I hate, when I hear people (non-Mac and non-Apple people usually) who say, 'No display, too big, etc." If they owned one, they might understand the convenience and reliability.

I own one. I own multiple Macs. And though the Shuffle has some use, it's getting relegated to flash drive use only once I get an iPod Nano.

I initially bought my Shuffle for one reason, it was a cheep flash MP3 player that would work well on motorcycle rides. My motorcycle has a habit of making any hard drive player go crazy, so flash seemed the proper choice.

However, once I got it, (also being my first iPod), it saw a lot more use keeping Podcasts. Though until iTunes 5 came out earlier this week, it was always a manual transfer process. It offered one benefit though, syncing back to the iTunes software the time I left off in a podcast.

Using it as a podcast device though exposed the flaws. With no screen, it became nearly impossible to navigate to a particular podcast. Sure, most music sounds unique after a few seconds. However, 15 episodes of Inside Mac Radio all sound the same for the first 15-30 seconds.

Also, from time to time it would lose the bookmark on a file. This then resulted in having to spend forever holding down fast forward with no exponential speedup to the fast-forward to get back to 55 minutes into a 90 minute podcast. And with no display for the time, it was easy to miss getting back to an exact point.

While the Shuffle serves as a cheep entry into the iPod family, it serves as a poor example of what can be done. Even iTunes 5 doesn't allow automatic podcast transfers via a normal method. You instead have to make a smart playlist of podcasts to sync.

Now that the Nano is out, I have a feeling the Shuffle will suffer the fate of any other older iPod, being neglected and not seeing any updates to firmware.



Oh well, at least for a larger part of my music collection I still have a Rio Karma. Hierarchal playlists to let me organize things the way I want, crossfading, gapless playback, and "now and next" view of the playlist. The Nano will sadly lack all these features, but will at least work well as a podcast player.