Well, at least they got the right answer. I've had to explain the meaning of "random" at least half a dozen times on the Apple iPod forums. Maybe I'll just start pointing them to this article instead. Random mixes will sometimes include clustering. That's the way random works.

Ever have the feeling that you have the magical ability to turn off streetlights? Like when you're driving up to them at night and looking at them and they go out just as you get near them? It's pretty common for people to mention that this happens to them all the time. Truth of the matter is that they really only remember the times that it happens and forget the zillion other times it doesn't. People see patterns even when they're not there.

If you made an algorithim that never played two songs by the same artist in a row, and spread out similar sounding songs far apart in terms of playing back often, and played a really close to even mix where every song was played the same number of times over a long period of time, then subjected most people to it for a long period of time, they'd think it's pretty random. Truth of the matter is that it's not random at all, it's very predictable because of all those things I just said. People are not wired to recognize true randomness, just like the dude at the end of that article says.

A bit more reading of the same material shows the variance that can occur between a well maintained and an improperly maintained Lithium Ion battery: in an environment where the battery is kept at or below 25 degrees celcius and not discharged fully, the potential charge loss can be as small as about 4%-5% a year; whereas if the cell is in a warmer environment and allowed to fully discharge often, the potential charge loss can be as high as 20% or more a year. Unfortunately, the typical owner of a shuffle will fall more in the latter camp.

A replacable battery would have been nice, but would also generate less revenue (for Apple) long term, and push the unit price up slightly.

In any case, the only better technology available is Lithium Polymer (which iRiver use), and it's only slightly better. We have quite a bit more work to do on portable energy storage (I hope).

yeah, but there's no "true" randomness in an iPod...it still follows some formula...I think true randomness can be achieved when splitting atoms or was it radioactive decay?!...I read something about that a long time ago...

Well I just got an iPod Shuffle today in the mail that I ordered off eBay. It is a 512MB model and I must say I am impressed!

Since I don't think I saw any HA readers post a personal review of their experience with the iPod Shuffle, I will give some opinions based on my experience playing with it:

1) The sound quality is incredible! Very loud and crisp. The best sound quality I have ever heard from a portable. It is (in my opinion) as good if not better sounding in quality than other iPods! Also the songs play right await without the delay that sometime happens with hard drived based portable players.

2) It appears to be a quality unit. Seamless integration on Windows with iTunes 4.7.1 - and the AutoFill feature is a reallyl nice one. Also the option to automatically on the fly encode any Lossless (ALAC, AIFF, etc.) formats to AAC 128k is nice.

3) The lanyard is convenient. No extra USB cables to carry around, etc. Nothing to lose or misplace. Earphones included are OK, but you can easily use your favorite headphones or earphones.

4) The price is right. At $99 it is a nice complement to an existing iPod or can be used just to take a day's worth of songs with you to school, work, skiing or an a trip.

5) So lightweight and not at all heavy on your neck while carrying it around. I can see kids/teens buying these by the boatloads for a fashion statement. Apple will likely have these coming out in assorted colors (flavors), like they did with iPod mini, within a year to capitalize on the "style factor" of youth. Wear a red iPod Shuffle with your red outfit, blue for blue jeans and a t-shirt, etc.

Anyway it is a good, solid product with a 12 to 17 hour rechargeable battery life (according to many reviewers). I can see these coming down in price even more. These are the ultimate "loss leader" to help Apple sell more iTunes songs and other Mac products including more expensive complementary iPods.

Microsoft can't really sell a Media Player to compete with Apple, as they have to keep all the companies happy (Creative, etc.) that have licensed Windows Medias Player devices and already are selling portable audio players.

Steve Jobs is a smart man, and I admire his ability to keep a lock on iTunes Music Store and the iPod to help his company's profits grow, yet embracing international standards like AAC/MPEG 4 audio. With the new Mac Mini and the iPod Shuffle he has more powerful weapons in his marketing arsenal, and he is all set to release in a few months the "Tiger" Mac operating system upgrade and the updated AVC video and hopefully AACPlus support to make things even better. The future looks bright.

All in all, the iPod Shuffle won't likely replace your iPod, just maybe will give you more options as to what kind of music you want to listen to that day. A random 120 or 240 songs selection or the full army of all your songs. I can see how it would be great for exercising, for people in your family that want an easy to operate/use music player, jogging, outdoors stuff like skiing, travel, etc. I think it is easy enough to operate that even my mother could enjoy using the iPod Shuffle. Perfect gift for your parents or grandparents in my opinion (or kids too for that matter).

Radioactive decay is true randomness. It's used as the random component in the famous Schroedinger's cat experiment, which is an analogy of quantum fluctuations, which are truly random within a certain precision.

You as a comsumer (someone who has just bought a Shuffle) you shouldn't admire locking to iMS, it lessens choice which is bad for consumers. Put it this way, if you bought a Ford car that locked your to only filling up from Texaco, would you admire Ford?

Other companies selling AAC wrapped in Apples DRM can only be a good thing (even for Apple, they just do not realise it).

Who said you are locked into iTMS for buying music? I get most of my stuff from other places, such as amazon, HMV & Virgin..

As for online stores (which you seem to refer to), what's really the big deal!? All the stores offer the same content at the same prizes, so your gas-station analogy isn't quite right. Currently I see iTunes as a "bonus" or extra incentive to get a iPod, not much more..

You might, people on HA might, but Joe Public is likely to just buy online music that uploads and is easy.



Rubbish, stores have different music catalogues and different prices (each store has to negotiate with each label). Put it this way, if there was competition the price of audio tracks might drop to $.50 each, over 5 years (the overhead for an online store is way lower), if it was just iMS then that will not happen (at least on the iPod). The other stores (based on WMA) would then leave Apple behind, over the years Apple have been happy with the overpriced niche market as people thought they were getting something better (or more stylish), this does not work for audio tracks, people are buying exactly the same item (just different format) and would be non-too happy.

I think ¢99 a pop is something the average joe is more than content with paying. If they all begin to make much money you'll bet the net prize won't lower, but rather the profit margins would increase..

As for content, I did a brief search around and they all seem to offer a little more than 700,000 tracks each, with roughly the same amount of tracks added each week. The labels have nothing to gain when limiting distribution, so I reckon over time they'll all offer pretty much the same content.

And even though all stores were to become iPod compatible, pretty much everyone would continue to use iTunes anyways, no? People that actually use the stores tend to say it is the best of the lot.

what headphones did you use? Don't tell me you used those crappy Apple headphones that came with it


just for your info, they don't use any international standards...they break them! iPod shuffle only plays AAC files that you encoded or bought from iTunes! On the other hand, you won't be able to play those iTunes music AAC files on any other device than the iPod...

So, even if you find the same song, in AAC format in some other online store, iPod shuffle won't play it...so you are hooked to iTunes...and you admire him for that?!


sure, but do these AAC files play on iPod shuffle? They don't...as far as I know, you have some 3G iPod, but I'm sure that Apple will implement the same restrictions to their upcoming iPod models...another reason to stick with mp3

Huh!? I buy my music in this format from those stores

They say the Shuffle "may" not play other AAC files. My purely non-expert hunch is that they can't account for all the possible variance in the AAC algorithm in such a small device. Recent encodes could play back fine wheter they're made in Nero or FAAC as long as they follow the m4a standard properly. It would be great if someone could test this!

EDIT: grammar

Jojo,

I was unaware of the potential problem playing back files created by other .m4a/aac encoders with the iPod Shuffle. Since seeing your post I have researched this issue on the various other iPod forums and tried it myself but I could still play back a Nero encoded .m4a file I tested. I have been harping (here on HA and directly with the various vendors) for them to support .M4A compatibility for over a year now. Back then, only about a third to a half of the audio players would even playback or read a .m4a file without it having to be renamed to an .mp4 extension. Now all the big boys (except MusicMatch) will read .m4a files. Nero is the lone holdout of m4a supported players/ecoders for not allowing an option to save directly to (without user renaming required) files with a .m4a extension. Hopefully Nero will add this feature and also be 100% Apple iPod/iTunes compatible with the .m4a files their fine program produces.

RealPlayer needs to update to the latest compatibility also to ensure their users (like myself) who use RealPlayer or RealPlayer Plus to encode .m4a files that they can be played on any version of iTunes or iPod. I am not talking about Harmony (DRM) protected content here, just non-DRM stuff a user rips and encodes.

WinAmp, which is notorious for dragging their heels (usually kicking and screaming) in ensuring MPEG 4 compatibility (they have been using an MPEG 2 Audio engine for a while now tyo playback and encode .m4a files), needs to get on board with their player and encoder to make sure WinAmp is 100% iPod/iTunes compatibile also. I am not sure about Compaact! as I haven't seen an update from them in a while.

If you think this iPod Shuffle compatibility is big, wait until QuickTime 7, OS X "Tiger", iTunes 5 and iPods get updated to support the supposed MPEG 4 HE-AAC (aka AACPlus v 1) standard this summer! Wait until you hear the people moaning about WinAmp crashing playing AACPlus files, various encoder and player incompatibilities, etc.

It is unfortunate that their is mot a better published (by Apple) tagging standard for .m4a files. Hopefully Apple will work with the likes of Coding Technolgies, Nero, Real/RealPlayer, AOL/WinAmp and Yahoo/Musicmatch to get their version of the tagging spec standard for .m4a files "out there" and available so everybody can play unprotected .m4a files that each other generate. Note: I know MusicMatch doesn't currently do M4A, but just some wishful thinking on my part!

It will inevitably fall on the "other" players/encoders to follow Apple's lead/tagging standard and make sure they are 100% compatibile with all iPod products (including the iPod Shuffle) if they want to "play" in the MPEG 4 Audio market.

Its.. interesting.. no screen.. :|

I think that Apple's stance about potential compatibility problems if using other encoders is similar to their Legal CYA manuever in the iPod Shuffle docs about the potential for injury if your lanyard gets too close too machinery, get caught in something, etc. Also their highly visible disclaimer about the battery having a limited life (number of recharges) which can vary by use.

I see these all as legal manuevers to prevent legal claims against Apple (and rightly so). With some guy suing the iTunes Music Store/Apple looking for a class action lawsuit status because iTunes music files won't play in other competitior's music players you can see the potential for lawsuits. Also they learned from the previous iPod battery backlash.

Maybe they don't want a WinAmp user who ripped a MPEG2-AAC file using WinAmp's older Dobly based M4A encoder to sue Apple for not playing correctly on his iPod Shuffle. I have a feeling this disclaimer will likely be added to the entire iPod line as a CYA manuever on Apple's part.

So I don't think it is a Microsoft-like conspiracy theory or an attempt to break compatibility with other encoders, as many are proposing on other boards, but rather a legal protection to prevent Apple's shareholders from outrageous lawsuits, and also to prevent damaging reports about incompatibility of Apple products in the press. If Apple is guilty of anything here, it is disclosure, which smacks to me of lawyers getting involved in writing these precautionary words/warning.

Thought someone might get a kick out of this
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,66460...tw=wn_tophead_2

Guess we now know the Microsoft employees' favorite portable music player....
"Even though it's Microsoft, no one is interested in what we have to offer, even our own employees."

...guess Uncle Bill will throw a little tantrum now that it's in the open, and throw a few more billion into marketing and FUD

no screen is good, definately no tagging problems

(iam still searching for a cheap recorder with some mic inputs)

The speeds on the iPod shuffle are awful in my opinion, but that's only because I've been spoiled by the original iPod. I believe I read an article somewhere that it's 1.4MBPS, and this is simply unacceptable that a brand-new 2005 product only utilizes +0.3MBPS of the (somewhat) old USB 2.0 technology.

There are other reasons why I got a full refund on mine -- I didn't actually like you have no clue what song will be playing next, and the buttons felt ultra cheap (and whats with the sharp edges like on 1G and 2G iPods? this does not feel good in the hand!)

All flash-drives are pretty slow in my experience. But is it a big deal? It doesn't need to fill up 10.000 songs or something like that..



You choose the songs that go on there. It's not like you're going to suddenly find yourself Livin' LaVida Loca, unless you made a pretty big mistake somewhere along the line.

Although I don't have first hand experience with the ipod or shuffle just going on specs I'm inclined to favor the iRiver players, also the jetaudio players (http://www.jetaudio.com) look pretty cool, and for the extra $$ having a display is well worth the price.

another thought is that apple being as big as it is isn't going to put as much effort into providing an upgradable product, where as these other companies pretty much make that the selling point and I'm all about being able to upgrade my firmware now if only cell phone manufacturers would get the hint

~ J

A little update on that subject:



link

link 2

edit: forgot to add the second link

I must be blind... I didn't see that written in that news article, especially the "worldwide" part. Fake quote?

Well, this one seems to say something a little different:
Cya

My cell, now almost 5 years old, has upgradeable firmware. The provider (Verizon in my case) sends the updates over the air so most users don't even know.
Check the paperwork that you signed and maybe threw out as soon as you got home from the cell store.