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New iPod Shuffle - Now In Pill Form!
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Lately my iTunes has been actually been refusing to play random songs. For some reason, it seems to only recognize half my Rush's 2112 album, and absolutely seems to deny Deep Purple's Purpendicular album. And to make it worse, my iPod Nano 2nd Gen seems to not want to play half the songs on it too, despite everything being straight up standard mp3 files. When a music playing program fails to play music that every other music program can play, there's something wrong.
As an aside, my iPod Nano has otherwise serviced me well, and as long as it doesn't screw with my podcasts, then I'll put up with the music glitches.
Try songbird.
Sooongbiiiird.
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Well, assuming they buy it new... that probably won't happen since it comes with the necessary headphones and an instruction booklet thing.
well no, the problem is is that they are now even going to make third parties jump through hoops to get computable headphones out, which will make it even harder to use good headphones with the new shuffle.
If you ever needed another reason not to buy the new shuffle, this is it. Stick with the gen2 device, which apple still sells new at the online store, instead.
Considering all the integration Apple has been pushing among its products with the headphone remote (iPhone, iTouch, controls the new Macbooks), it's not that surprising that they'd try something like this. It's hard to walk the line between useful quality control and hard-ass moneygrabbing with the proprietary chip thing required for 3rd-party manufacturers, though, and it seems like they'll have a hard time getting this functionality as widespread as it needs to be to be useful.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/03/16/manufacturer-confirm.html
I'm not sure it's a big issue, console makers have been doing stuff like this as far back as the NES and no one seems to mind it, though it does seem odd that Apple is trying to put restraints on what kind of headphones you can use with the shuffle.
I think the real issue is how poor the apple earbuds are. If the damn thing shipped with a decent set of speakers I doubt anyone would care.
</sarcasm>
But yea, the exact problem is that Apple is trying to restrict who can make iPod shuffle specific headphones. And knowing Apple, they're probably trying to see if they can pull this off and do the same shit to more iPods in the future.
At least I posted a link!
Apparently this feature already exists in ipods.. plug the new headphones into any ipod released in the last year or two, and the controls work. Same with the latest MacBooks. So this appears to be something they've been planning for quite a while.
Fuck yes?
Or perhaps a cap that can be placed on your tooth and you can hear it through your jawbone..
The best part about that picture? The headphone plug-in is the same size as the shuffle itself. :P
Can someone make a passthru jack that gives you the one button control and lets you plug anything into it?
I saw there are some companies making a simple dongle with the controls so you can use whatever headphones you want. Downside is that the controls end up so close to the shuffle, unless you would prefer it that way.
Since this apparently hasn't been cross-posted here yet - this slashdot story from yesterday
So yes, they're likely trying to get people to buy their headphones, but it doesn't appear that there is actually any legal or technological restrictions on 3rd party ones
Develop some wireless headphones+controls, you could freaking swallow the thing and have it play until you pooped it out.
Um, that's a really terrible idea. If you have to get anywhere near the device to control things, you might as well just have the buttons on the device itself.
I actually kind of like the new shuffle design, if only for one purpose - while running (/biking/etc), it's a touch easier to hit a button way up on the headphone cord than it is to hit something on the shuffle itself (especially if you have it in a pocket or clipped somewhere more inconvenient). I've found myself using the button on the iphone headphone cord a fairly reasonable amount, and that's on a device that actually has playlists - if it's a shuffle, you don't really need anything other than a quick way to pause or go forward anyway.
I don't see this kind of controls replacing real control schemes, but specifically for something like the shuffle it's an interesting idea... and if you really hate it you can always go back to the older shuffles, which will be even cheaper now!
So in reality every pair of headphones should have built in controls.
A quiet revolution. Yea, I see how it's better.
It'd be better if it worked with any headphones, and/or didn't require a special Apple-approved chip. Or just went all the way and had the player built into the headphones.
What they've got now is a silly mixture of the two.
Well I'd argue that if you can use any non-remote headphones it defeats the purpose - if the controls are 3-4 ft down the cord (say, a secondary cord that regular headphones plug into), then you again might as well just have the controls on the device itself. And it appears that the chip is not locked to Apple, so other companies are free to make different headphones that work with it.
I agree in general for mp3 players - there's all sorts of reason why you would want your own headphones to work (better quality, etc etc) on a normal mp3 player; on a shuffle, however, I see it as less of an issue
I do agree that just having it built onto the headphones is probably an even better idea
Which I totally agree with; maybe it's just me, but I just don't see who's buying a $50 tiny as hell and basically featureless mp3 player to use with their $200 headphones
I mean I don't know, I'm not discounting the possibility that I'm just an idiot and completely missing the shuffle market, but I had one of the last-gen ones and while it was great for working out in the gym, I don't really see why you would want a shuffle (even one with great headphones and controls on the device itself) for normal use over something that actually has an interface.
Which was my initial point - for the places where I can see a shuffle being the ideal device, crappy or cheap headphones are probably reasonable, and having the controls more easily available on the cord is useful... there's certainly plenty of times when you'd want better quality headphones, and don't mind having the controls on the device itself, it just seems like those are times when you would want a full-featured mp3 player over a shuffle anyway
Throwing the necessity for this remote business in is understandably going to rankle for a while because it fractures the market that had been standardized. It's like making a car that you can only fill up at Sunoco stations or something.
Now, I wasn't going to buy a Shuffle... ever, really, buttons or no. It wasn't going to affect me either way. However, Apple is pushing for a new standard, which is headphones with the remote. And honestly, I'm all for the remote functionality, it seems useful. It's just the interim period where you're wondering if this remote thing is really going to take off and whether it's worth buying some, and manufacturers get into their little wars - it's a headache that spreads to more people than just people who were going to buy Shuffles. And really it's not even that big of a headache to me. I dunno.
I could see myself getting something like this just for exercise because the screen on my nano has been broken beyond repair it still works but it looks terrible. I could leave that in my car and keep this tiny badboy on my person at all times.
I don't have super sensitive ears, but the Apple buds sound terrible to me. I will admit part of it could be because the fuckers refuse to stay in my ears.. it's possible I think they sound worse because they're so annoying.
well, I am a bit ashamed to admit this, but I used to be one of the "olol I have white earbuds I have an iPod I'm cool." Granted this was before iPods were all *that* common, so it kind of was. But then one day my precious white earbuds broke, and I had to buy new headphones. I couldn't afford new white ones at the time because apple charges too much for them, so I bought a pair of $30 earbuds. It took approximately 1 song to realize the previous error of my ways, and I've never looked back.
From what I understand they are a massive improvement on anything apple has done before, but still not quite as good as the competitors.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think they're a bit overpriced as well.
$80 is not a lot for good quality earbuds. I have $100 earbuds right now, you can buy earbuds for $500. I wouldn't call them overpriced, but there are other $80 earbuds that are better quality.