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dreamsharkIn 2005, I was seduced back into the Apple world after a long hiatus when my employer, in an unexpected burst of generosity, gave everybody an iPod Shuffle. The first generation shuffle had a few issues, but I liked it well enough to keep buying new ones when the headphone jack wore out. Then came the Gen2 Shuffle, which is one of those rare product designs that is absolutely perfect. It's tiny enough to clip to your shirt lapel and completely indestructible. Like the original shuffle, the controls are elegantly minimalist: pause/play in the middle, volume up/down and forward/back around the circle rim. There's a toggle button that allows you to shift easily between shuffle and straight-ahead mode. Gen2 added the one necessary function that was missing from the original: a triple click that takes you to the beginning of your playlist.
People who started out with full-blown iPods are confused about how you use a device with no LCD screen. Well, I've tried iPods with screens, and I don't like them. I listen to my iPod while I'm walking, doing chores, biking, etc, and I don't WANT to have to look at it. With a Shuffle, you load on new playlists every couple of days, so you don't need help figuring out what you want to listen to. The trickiest thing for me was figuring out how to switch back and forth between podcasts and music playlists. The triple-click was all I needed to take care of that problem.
Every day or two I load about a dozen podcasts at the beginning of my playlist. Then I load an hour or two of music after the podcasts. When I want to listen to podcasts, I triple-click to get to the beginning and quickly skip ahead past the ones I've listened to. When I want to switch to music, I click the button into shuffle mode. For some reasons, podcasts are never selected in shuffle mode, so this quickly takes me to my music. When I want to go back to podcasts, I switch to straight-ahead mode and triple-click. Bingo, back at the podcast section. All these buttons are so easy to use that I can do them by touch while wearing my shuffle clipped into my Monster iFreeplay headset. It is wonderful. Or it was.
Sadly, the iFreePlay headsets are flimsy and wear out in 6-12 months, and they only work with the Gen 2. I had bought several sets, but was down to my last one. Then I lost the headset along with Little Blue, my last remaining shuffle. I decided to bite the bullet and buy the latest shuffle (now up to Gen4) and a different type of headset. My pretty pink shuffle arrived, and then I discovered that it had been effectively ruined for me by the latest "improvements." A completely unnecessary VoiceOver button has been added, that allows you to hear a computer-generated voice trying to pronounce the name of your song. If you hold it long enough, this bot-voice slowly lists all the songs on your playlist so you can choose one. Seemed unnecessary, but harmless. But then I discovered that the addition of this feature had DISABLED the skip-ahead button, at least for podcasts! They have also removed the triple-click to take you to the beginning of the playlist. So there is now no way to progress from podcast to podcast without using the inane and clumsy Voiceover function. Sometimes the podcast will move on to the next one if you suffer through the credits at the end, but once you have used the Voiceover function once, it won't even do that!!!
I think it is still possible to order Gen2 shuffles online. I'm going to buy a bunch of them before it's too late and send this piece of garbage back. Fooey on you, Apple. You created something absolutely perfect, and then you ruined it.
People who started out with full-blown iPods are confused about how you use a device with no LCD screen. Well, I've tried iPods with screens, and I don't like them. I listen to my iPod while I'm walking, doing chores, biking, etc, and I don't WANT to have to look at it. With a Shuffle, you load on new playlists every couple of days, so you don't need help figuring out what you want to listen to. The trickiest thing for me was figuring out how to switch back and forth between podcasts and music playlists. The triple-click was all I needed to take care of that problem.
Every day or two I load about a dozen podcasts at the beginning of my playlist. Then I load an hour or two of music after the podcasts. When I want to listen to podcasts, I triple-click to get to the beginning and quickly skip ahead past the ones I've listened to. When I want to switch to music, I click the button into shuffle mode. For some reasons, podcasts are never selected in shuffle mode, so this quickly takes me to my music. When I want to go back to podcasts, I switch to straight-ahead mode and triple-click. Bingo, back at the podcast section. All these buttons are so easy to use that I can do them by touch while wearing my shuffle clipped into my Monster iFreeplay headset. It is wonderful. Or it was.
Sadly, the iFreePlay headsets are flimsy and wear out in 6-12 months, and they only work with the Gen 2. I had bought several sets, but was down to my last one. Then I lost the headset along with Little Blue, my last remaining shuffle. I decided to bite the bullet and buy the latest shuffle (now up to Gen4) and a different type of headset. My pretty pink shuffle arrived, and then I discovered that it had been effectively ruined for me by the latest "improvements." A completely unnecessary VoiceOver button has been added, that allows you to hear a computer-generated voice trying to pronounce the name of your song. If you hold it long enough, this bot-voice slowly lists all the songs on your playlist so you can choose one. Seemed unnecessary, but harmless. But then I discovered that the addition of this feature had DISABLED the skip-ahead button, at least for podcasts! They have also removed the triple-click to take you to the beginning of the playlist. So there is now no way to progress from podcast to podcast without using the inane and clumsy Voiceover function. Sometimes the podcast will move on to the next one if you suffer through the credits at the end, but once you have used the Voiceover function once, it won't even do that!!!
I think it is still possible to order Gen2 shuffles online. I'm going to buy a bunch of them before it's too late and send this piece of garbage back. Fooey on you, Apple. You created something absolutely perfect, and then you ruined it.
