Apple has just announced the release of a new "toy" for AAC fans: a new ipod.

Ipod Shuffle is an USB key sizing 512Mb or 1GB, which is able to play MP3, AAC, protected aac ( m4p ), wav and as well be used as a USB disk.

The price for the 512MB model is stated at 99$ (according to Betanews )

Charge time is said to be 4hours via USB, and serves for 12 hours of playback.

More in the article.

Doesn't cost much more than a USB-pen.. I could see this being quite popular

Awesome! I want one

This will help Apple out a *lot*. They've needed a low entry solution there for quite some time. $100 for a device that holds 250-ish songs? Very nifty.

Also, did you see this on their page at the bottom?
"Do not eat iPod shuffle."

As if they needed any help

The iPod is already responsible for about 90% (!!!) of the DAP player sales, and was the most sold electronic gadget at Amazon during the Christmas season.

Surprisingly enough, the iPod Mini was the second most sold gadget

not bad...I have to take a look at one...but the control buttons seem a bit tinny...however, it's so light...and still offers a great amount of playback time...but since it doesn't have a hard drive the playback time between AAC and mp3 should differ enormously...I'm surprised it's so cheap though...

I'm not sure what to think of the fact that it doesn't come with a display...I mean, even 512 MB offers a lot of space for many songs...also, does it have a 'hold' button? Couldn't find one...it also seems that one can replace the battery easily...

anyway, I think it's goanna sell pretty good because of such a low price I mean, before one buys new Apple headphones for $50, it's better to buy an iPod shuffle However, those iPod headphones sound like s*** and are worth $15...but are probably good enough for that thing...but I can't understand why so many people use them on their regular iPods + iPod mini...even people that use AAC 128kbps could get more of their iPods...

The absense of an lcd screen is probably how they kept the price so low. However, I think there are some people (like me) who like to see or choose visually what song is played so maybe it's not right for me.

I want one too!!

uh... wait...

I already have a 4G iPod


OT: The Macmini is kinda cool stuff too. A nice alternative to PC based mini-barebones, or Windows media center based systems at a reasonable price.

I just blew $230 on an iFP-799 last night, thinking the Shuffle wouldn't be out for another month.

Ugh. UGH.

Well, the iRiver has ogg, and longer battery live, and an equalizer, and an LCD, and a mass storage interface, so I can't feel too bad about it.

Also iTunes 4.7.1 is available.

iTunes 4.7.1 includes support for iPod shuffle, support for copying photos to an iPod photo, the ability to show duplicate songs in your library, and other performance improvements.

At that price, I might actually consider buying one.

Another thing that kinda bugs me.. 0.73 ounces and 12 hours of playback time? Let me suggest that this device may not be particularly loud or anything. The iPod itself was already pretty quiet. Plugging into my stereo via the headphone jack I have to crank the thing up to full volume to get normal sound out of it.

I've seen that number thrown around a lot. Whether false or simply outdated, Apple themselves only claim 65% of sales of hard drive DAPs and less than 33% of overall DAP sales. See here, three quarters down.

It's like an iPod for your iPod. I can imagine people who will buy the cheaper one to go along with their full-size iPod just to have something really small to take to the gym.

I imagine there will be some sort of remote/LCD add-on available in the future. They're already advertizing a twin-AAA battery pack for it, so at least they're thinking.

One item they should have added, though, would have been an SD/MMC slot. If that had been present, I probably would have already ordered one. As is, I'll probably keep holding out for another add-on or revision.

- M.

Personally, I like the thing. I've got an iRiver H120, but I'm considering getting one of these toys as well.

My only concern at this point is the flexibility of placing MP3 and AAC files on the device. All the doco I've seen so far leads me to believe that the general file system storage must be allocated as a static (but controllable) size, and the remainder is for the iTunes database/collection. I'm doubting whether it will be possible to simply allocate the entire storage to the general file system, and just dump MP3s and AACs, and have them play.

If this is the case, then iTunes is a requirement for dumping music on the thing, and the USB drive aspect may be trivial. Anyone know anything more about this?

I thought iPods were 90% of the *hard drive based* DAPs sold, not counting flash memory ones. Now maybe they will reach 90% of ALL digital players...

Actually I just ordered one iPod "mini-mini", hoping that (some MacWorld comment said that it is based on a VFAT filesystem) I could use it as an USB stick, or at least to upload/download songs with typical tools. Let's see it. In fact if the firmware does not differ very much from the iPod, one should be able to use the iPod Shuffle as an USB stick.

VERY VERY IMPRESSED. And, having just bought a new iMac, i made counts whether I could have waited and bought a uberpowered iMac mini, but... for 2800€ and an old G4 processor, it is not worth the price. You get the same for 2500€ and a modern 1,8GHz G5 !!!

Bye

well...at second thought the price is not as good as I thought...IMO Creative's player is better and costs the same but does have a screen + FM + alot more stuff along with 512 MB...


I doubt it...it just comes with an ear phone jack but not with that other thing like the other iPod do that is needed for gadgets like that...

... all of which could theoretically be managed via the USB 2.0 interface.

- M.

You have to use iTunes (or Ephpod, foobar, etc.) to add music. iTunes creates a database and transfers the songs into hidden folders on the iPod. If you add songs to the iPod via Explorer/Finder, they will not be playable by the iPod.

A few things to think about...
1. AA battery pack, $30. "Two AAA batteries keep music playing up to 20 hours after the internal battery is drained." Nice thinking, but is that good for the LI battery? I'd prefer the LI battery not used until the batteryies are gone, or an option to not use the battery at all.
2. $?? for headphones. No way it gets too loud (one thing I know iRiver will have on it as small as that battery has to be). Not that I wouldn't get headphones after buying any player, but this one might not power KSC35s too well. After using a few other folks' DAPs, I know where some of their battery life comes from!

On the other hand, it really is small, simple, and relatively cheap (if it weren't reasonably cheap, it wouldn't be too interesting). Probably not as good SQ as some others, but many of us will be in loud places anyway, so as long as it is pretty flat, we won't care (one thing that drives me up the wall is some cheaper players making the soft bass too loud).

For those who already own an iPod and are contemplating getting an iPod shuffle, check the following URL out

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhusson/3253841/

Will the iPod Shuffle play VBR AAC files? Regular iPods don't state VBR AAC as a format under the specifications, but they play such files created with Nero OK don't they?

I wonder what the audio quality will be like, I'm not that impressed with the audio quality of regular iPods. I haven't used either much, I've just borrowed friends and don't like the sound quality very much. It isn't as good as the quality of 128K AAC files played using my ancient Nokia phone. Having said that I have no idea how my friends encode there files, I suspect many of them are download off the net. Others are probably iTunes MP3 encodes :-(

But still those factors aside I think the iPod shuffle looks interesting, I just hope the audio quality is decent.

Anyway, I don't think it will sound better than regular iPods...

[/quote]

Anyway, I don't think it will sound better than regular iPods...
[/quote]

I guess I need to borrow and iPod and load things on it that I am familiar with, and do proper encodes and see what it sounds like then.

Rather than listening to 128K blade mp3 file songs :-)

Sure!

also, get a pair of decent headphones...the Apple ones that sell for $50 btw. sound like crap...for that money you can get much much better ones like the Sennheiser PX 100, which cost 40 bucks...they sound even better on better devices than the iPod....

In addition, I really hope that Apple at least improved their shuffle mode on the iPod shuffle...the one used on their other iPods just sucks...

I've found the shuffle on my 3G iPod to be quite good at picking songs randomly. The 1G and 2G might have had a poor RNG algorithim, but the 3G and up is quite random, I assure you.

well...I have an iPod mini but it should use the same random function like 4G iPods...or at least like your 3G iPod...anyway...

I was listening to a playlist with ~300 songs. The playlist contained many different artists with different amounts of songs by each artist. So, I had 3 songs by Artist_X on it and 2 of his songs played in a row!

I kept listening to the same playlist (same session). There were 5 songs by Artist_Y on it and 3 of his songs played in a row...that all happened within the first 60 songs

Also, I often listen to all of my songs on my iPod ~ 600 songs...many different artists and stuff...but still, sometimes it happened that song A by Artist_T played, after that song B by Artist_S played, after that song C by Artist_T followed by song D by Artist_S again...that's a bit strange...

Also, I have songs that play very often and others rather seldom...I usually don't skip songs, so that can't be it...and I 'shuffle' my songs for every session again...this might be after 30 songs or sometimes after 100 songs...

Are you using the iPod's shuffle? Or some kind of reordering of the playlist in iTunes?

Also, "random" doesn't mean you won't get a couple songs by the same artist in a row. If you could ensure that wouldn't happen, then it would not be "random", would it? For that matter, it doesn't mean that some songs won't play more often than others. Again, if it ensured an equal distribution, it wouldn't be "random" at all.

Random simply means that it picks one with an equal probability from all the available choices. Over a long period of time, this would lead to an equal distribution, but over the short time frame it means nothing of the sort.

Regardless, I tend to stick to one or two playlists on shuffle on my iPod, and the play counts from these play lists are reasonably equally distributed over a period of several months of use, so I'd say that the iPod has a very good randomness function indeed. I think you're just misunderstanding the ramifications of that.

yes, of course


I know that...however, in my example the chance that something like that happens is very very low...and that this happens twice on the same playlist is very unlikely...I mean considering that I just played the first 60 songs of the playlist made me wonder even more...



that's not true! Of course, there is no real random thing, since a computer only follows commands which are never totally random...however, in a real random mode, every song should be distributed the exact same ammount! It might take a while though. But let's say I have 5 songs in one playlist and play that playlist over and over again without letting it fully run through, every song should have been played equally. The often you repeat this procedure the more accurate the result gets...but after doing that 100 times or so should be already enough...

Edit: ok, you said the same thing later on, I was just a bit irritated by your first paragraph

Besides that, iPods's random mode won't play a song twice from the same playlist...so if song_A has been played it won't play again unless you restart the playlist...sure, this is a good thing, but this takes away a bit randomness

Anyway, there has been a firmware update for iPod mini since then, therefore they might have improved it...

Yes, if you play it all the way through, because a shuffle is shuffling the playlist, so no matter how you shuffle it, every song will be played once.

But generally you don't play the entire playlist all the way through, and that's how you get varying results. So let's say you only play the first X songs out of Y total songs in the shuffled playlist. This means that those X songs get incremented, but the rest don't. Now, over time, as you shuffle and play the list repeatedly, you get different sets of X songs that are incremented. And you'll tend towards equal, but it will not actually be equal.


Not really. Even though the playlist is shuffled at random and then static after the shuffle (until you reshuffle), you don't play everything in it. This is basically equivalent to repeatedly picking one song at random from a set of songs, and keeping a count.

The songs will tend to be picked equally, but the fact is that they will not be picked equally, over any amount of time. That would not be random at all.


Totally false. Let's simplify: You flip a coin repeatedly. Let's say it comes up heads three times in a row. What are the odds that the next one will come up tails? Past performance does not control future results. Getting 4 heads in a row is just as equally likely as getting 3 heads then a tail. The odds are still 50/50.

Random choice has a tendancy to even out over time, but this does not indicate that it always will do so. Now, getting an equal distribution is more likely over time because there's more ways to get even distributions when you ignore the ordering of the results, but this doesn't mean that the distribution will always be exactly equal. When picking from a set of a large number of items at random, there's a much wider possible set of distributions. If I'm flipping a coin, then I have 2 possible choices, and the set is small. This means that I reach a high probability of equal distribution fairly quickly. But if my outcome set is large, say, 500 possible songs to pick from, then it will take a very large number of trials before I have anything more than an very small difference in probable outcomes. You'd have to make that decision 500 times before a possibility of equal probabilities occurred, and at least another 500 before there was any difference in distribution probabilities at all. And it's a very, very slight difference even then.

So really, unless you've shuffled that playlist at least 10 or 20 times the number of songs actually in it, you really can't make any visible or noticable call on the randomness of the randomizer function being used.

Yes, it will, and yes, iPods play any VBR files, whether created with Nero or not, ok.

iTunes 4.7.1 borked my 4.1 sound.. Prior to 4.7.1 I'd get sound from 4 of my 5 speakers, now its only two.

Winamp 5.04 and WMP10 still play audio through 4 speakers.

Its a slight annoyance for me.

12 hour battery, no screen.

It's really a disappointment. Even a 3 line display on the back or something would be nice, but then again i guess that defeats the whole purpose of 'shuffle'. Shuffle being the only feature it has... did I mention it has no display?

I have to say this has caught my attention too!

Anyone know what kind of battery does it uses? I hope its a single AAA.

Lithium Ion battery.... Thats what it uses I'm afraid.

Makes it small and light hence why they compare it to a stick of gum. It sucks when you need to replace it though...


Regards

Yeah, I had a feeling it didnt use AAA batteries because of the size!

I mean this hardware would be perfect "for me" if it used 1 AAA battery, had some sort of display, and had the ability to use reduced side or mini mmc and sd cards!

I wonder if suck a thing exists?

It does, it is called the Rio Forge. Unfortunately, the Forge is not integrated with iTunes. It has all of the other qualities you seek. The 256kb vesion is around $130.

The Shuffle though is very good though for what it is designed to be - an attractively priced entry level player or excercise companion.

LOL



bzzt



second time i have to post that gif, heh

Wow, that is close, but that I meant was all the features of ipod shuffle + everything that I said! I don’t think the Rio you mentioned can be plugged into the USB port the same way the ipod shuffle can and act as a simple file USB file storage device at the same time. Just like a standard USB flash drive.

the player you're looking for is one of Creative's player. IMO Creative's player is better and costs the same but does have a screen + FM + alot more stuff along with 512 MB...the size is about the same + it uses one AAA battery, which will give you even a longer play time; ~15 hours or ~20 hours if you use one of these high-capacity rechargeable ones

Yes you are right! I do like this player. Its got everything I want in a portable audio player except 2 things, no AAC playback, and no builtin charger!

Many times I have been tempted to buy this player, and now I'm tempted again.

I know, I know, I'm so fussy!

well, according to the 128kbps listening test, iTunes AAC was only slightly better than LAME mp3 at that bitrate. In terms of the charger...I think it's a advantage that no charger is built in. Therefore, you can use high-capacity batteries and can use your player all the time and don't have to wait till it's done charging...

Not quite right, since LAME used VBR and also had a much higher average bit-rate.. The AAC encoder has also since seen two revisions. I'm sure the quality gap will be quite clear once AAC gets VBR and the test (hopefully) is redone.

Interesting Points!

Completely right actually. So it's now Lame's fault that it uses VBR? heh.



Bullshit. 6kbps is negligible. "much higher", in my book, is at least 15kbps (I.E, MPC in my first multiformat test)

Well, I think it is unfair to say "iTunes AAC was only slightly better than LAME mp3 at that bitrate" without mentioning it was a CBR vs VBR competition and that the average bit-rate was higher for one of the codecs. The difference in kbps was certainly not neglible, on some samples (where LAME actually won) it was closer to 30kbps..

That is all, Sir

so what? iTunes AAC doesn't have a VBR mode...so what's the problem? Each encoder was tested with the best settings available...you could say the same to mp3...it's unfair, because of the mp3 standard, LAME couldn't use feature X that AAC uses...blah blah blah. Apple's developer decided to put their work into CBR and there's nothing wrong with it...but this is not LAME's fault...

As I've said about three times now, LAME didn't use 128kbps (rather as much as 153kbps) on samples it did win.. I just thought it was worth a mention, let's move on