Digital Home Thoughts: Second Generation Shrinkage: The 2G iPod Shuffle Reviewed

You Take The Bad...
All is not roses in Cupertino, however. The Shuffle is not without its drawbacks. Even though they're relatively obvious, they are worth pointing out.

The first, and most obvious drawback is that the Shuffle doesn't have a screen. I certainly understand that no one purchasing a Shuffle is destined to be surprised by that fact, but that being said, even some sort of single-line display would be nice. Often things will play in a strange order or you'll want to hear a specific song and you have to click through every song while looking for the one you want to hear. While the Shuffle only holds approximately 250 songs, that still can take some time.

Another annoyance is the dock. I think it's very cool that Apple managed to dump the USB connector to save room on the actual device. I also think it's pretty cool that everything works through the headphone jack. The problem with that, however, is that it all but eliminates the practical use of the Shuffle as a data device. The nice feature of previous Shuffles was that you could uncap the end, stick it in a USB port, and use it as a thumbdrive in a pinch. To have similar functionality on the new Shuffle, one would have to carry around the cable with the dock also which is not exactly an optimal situation.


Figure 5: Why, Apple? Why? Why have you foresaken us with older earbuds? New 'buds on the left, Shuffle 'buds on the right.

Finally, the Shuffle includes Apple's older headphones. Last year, with the release of the second revision of the iPod with Video, Apple upgraded the headphones. The odd part of the Shuffle not having the newer headphones is that they were announced at the same time! Frankly, the newer ones are much more comfortable, and I'm a bit disappointed in Apple, although I think they're probably doing it to move out tons of the older-style headphones. Either way, it was a bit of a downer.

Filling Your Shuffle...
So once you've gotten over the hardware, how does the software work? Well, it's iTunes. You either love it or you hate it, and there's really nothing in between. Some of us like the way it manages everything and keeps you from having to dig around in Finder / Explorer. Some of us (cough, Jason, cough) aren't a big fan of not being able to have iTunes sync what appears in folders. However you feel about it, iTunes does have some neat features when it comes to handling Shuffles.

My gripe is that Apple chose not to enclose a CD with iTunes on it, but they didn't do that with the prior Shuffle either. The logic of putting a CD that's ten times the size of the product inside a box that's nothing but wasteful probably didn't appeal to the folks in Cupertino.

Generally, unless your music collection is very small, you won't be able to fit all of it in the 250 songs you can fit on the Shuffle. Instead, you can randomize what ends up there by autofilling the Shuffle from your collection (or from specific playlists). iTunes will then fill your Shuffle to the max with as much music as it can cram in. The fun part of this is that you'll end up hearing music you probably haven't heard in awhile. Truth be told, most of us tend to carry around a lot more music than we listen to, so this is a great way to hear those artists you haven't been listening to.


Figure 6: iTunes has some pretty intuitive ways for you to get those songs and podcasts onto your Shuffle.

Syncing with iTunes is very fast due to the USB 2.0 connection. iTunes also allows you to manually add songs to your Shuffle so if you're not interested in the randomness, you can have better control over what exactly is loaded into the limited space available. iTunes also includes an option to automatically shrink higher bitrate songs down to 128kbps AAC. AAC generally offers better compression than MP3 even at the same bitrate, so this is a nice plus.

The Wrap
Overall, the iPod Shuffle fills a need...

1. It's a great budget-class MP3 player.
2. It's the cheapest way to carry your purchased iTunes Store content with you.
3. It's ideal for people who don't want to carry around a regular sized iPod or Nano.

I think the Shuffle is great. I use it mainly for listening to podcasts as I do housework. Occasionally, I'll dump one of my favorite playlists on and listen to music also. My collection of music fits on half of a 30 Gig iPod, and if I had to, I'm sure I could live with 250 songs on a Shuffle. Of the thousands of songs I have on my iPod, I'd say I realistically only listen to about 50-60 of them.

If you can get over its limitations, the Shuffle is a great device that's well-designed, easy to use, and pretty durable. As Chris Breen said after its announcement, you may want to buy two of them just so that when (not if) you lose it, you'll have a backup. So far I haven't lost mine.

Then again, I've only had it for a few weeks! :-)

UPDATE: Dyvim correctly noted that since this article was written, Apple has introduced an updated line of Shuffles with colored cases that does include the new improved earbuds instead of the older ones. Thanks for the heads up!

Vincent M. Ferrari is a blogger, photographer wannabe, digital media junkie, and Apple fanboy from the Bronx, New York. His most famous accomplishment is canceling his AOL account which got him an inordinate amount of fame, something he still brags about to all his friends. When he's not taking down multi-billion dollar corporations, he's writing on his own blog, taking photos, and working on the show notes for the Twit.tv Network's iLifeZone podcast.