New Gen iPod Shuffle Takes Buttons Away
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The iPod Shuffle has been a music player I never could understand. Its tiny body and limited functionality turn me off as I play virtual DJ through my headphones. With no display, you don’t know which song will come up next as all of your songs are “shuffled” around once you hit play. It’s a constant surprise.
Apparently, some people love its tiny size and shuffle-only abilities. Some people apparently don’t even bother to use the buttons as Apple has removed them completely from the device. If you want to play or stop the music, either skip a song or go back to the last, you will need to use Apple’s new Shuffle headphones that places such buttons on the cord.
Why would they do such a thing? Easy, to make it even smaller, the world’s smallest portable music player, actually. The reworked iPod Shuffle is about the size of your standard house key. It is small enough to be concealed extremely easily, and small enough to be as durable as the last models (even the big ones were extremely hard to break at all), great for working out and dropping it everywhere you go because its so small.
Packed deep inside of this new gadget is a technology we haven’t seen before: VoiceOver. The technology developed by Apple gives the Shuffle the ability to read off a song that is playing and the playlist you are listening to. Yes, you can now have playlists as well as more songs — 4Gbs, or 1,000 songs worth.
The VoiceOver technology is worked in with iTunes. When you load up your songs it pre-loads the voice saying the song titles and artists. If a song has a Spanish title, the VoiceOver will know to say the title in Spanish, as opposed to English. Furthermore, the technology works for 14 languages in total.
Lets go back to the no-buttons deal. Apple brilliantly removes the buttons from the actual player, and placed them at headphone level. On the headphones there are three buttons:
Diagram from The buttons may take some getting used to as people are more familiar with the old way of having them on the player itself. I believe, though, that the iPod Shuffle is not something that necessarily needs buttons and most of the speculation about the product are from people afraid of the new “buttonless” design or aren’t users of this particular product. The Shuffle serves its purpose of being the smallest and most versatile, yet cheapest among the portable music players from Apple.
As an active gym member myself, having a bigger device with buttons just isn’t needed. I listen to whatever songs come up through shuffle anyway on my big iPod. I usually don’t even skip songs. A Shuffle would be nicer to lug around, I have to admit.
What do you think: was moving the buttons a good idea, or not?
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