The iPod shuffle, the smallest in the iPod stock of portable media players designed, developed and sold by Apple inc. It has no screen, and thus has the tagline of “Life is Random”, allowing for a constant shuffling of songs. Touted as the smallest digital media player ever produced at 10.7 grams, the iPod shuffle is clearly a performer without the need for a screen. With a polished steel outer casing, and no controls on the device itself, the iPod shuffle looks as minimal as Apple makes their other media players, but delivers the true playback clarity, stereo effect and audio output that the traditional iPods give, making it the perfect media player that fits right into both your shirt pocket and your wallet – with a price starting at $79 this is one cheap and stylish media player for the amount of tremendous experience it gives you.
With no controls on the device itself one wonders where the controls are. They are on the proprietary ear buds given by Apple inc. that has an integrated circuit working along with the device itself to control the music playback. Three buttons on the right ear bud wire allow the user to control the device as he or she sees fit.
The 3rd generation Apple iPod shuffle also comes with the VoiceOver control that allows song name, artist name, album name and playlist name to be encoded to speech via the text to speech functionality of iTunes 8 in 14 different languages. With multiple playlist support, the iPod shuffle is raring to go with 4GB of space – up to 1,000 songs can be stored and can be heard over 10 hours before the need to recharge.
Criticism is shown at the proprietary hardware of the headphones that come with the iPod shuffle. Without the headphones given by Apple, the devices is practically useless, although claims of auto play being switched on when a non proprietary headphone is jacked in float around the internet, it is clear that while a Digital Rights Management chip is not present on the device, an effective check on the copying of hardware and usage of favourite headphones is imposed by Apple. Inline control adapters, made by other companies for the classic iPods and nanos are again incompatible with the 3rd generation iPod shuffle, causing great resentment among fans who wanted to keep using their better headphones for their new iPod shuffles.
