I got my 2nd generation Shuffle about 3 days ago, and I have spent some time playing around with it. It was an 'upgrade' from my 6GB iPod Mini that eventually got too large for me. Go figure. I wanted something tiny, portable and that had a decent battery life. I ended up going with the Shuffle, after doing a lot of soul searching on whether I was going to support Apple as I disagree on their stance and use of DRM.
However, I found the form factor (tiny and solid), the size (very small) and the audio quality (for my ears) to make it worth the $79 I had to hand over to the people at the Apple Store here in downtown San Francisco.
Initial install:
I honestly can not stand using iTunes, however as Anapod (the software I use instead of iTunes for my iPod Mini) doesnt seem to support the 2nd generation shuffle yet, I installed it. After installing iTunes, it found my Shuffle, and also an update for the firmware on it. I installed the firmware update, and disconnected the player after. When trying to reconnect it in iTunes, it finds the player fine. However, the entire program freezed when I tried to add songs to it. I was puzzled. After a lot of back and forth trying to find the solution I Googled options to iTunes and ended up using the plugin for Winamp, which works superbly with the player. I uninstalled iTunes (yay) and I am now using Winamp to transfer the files across to the player. This works really great, and support transcoding if necessary. Still awaiting an iPod plugin for foobar 0.9, as that would be the best solution.
Out and about
Now I filled it up with songs, put in my Shure e3c headphones and was ready to go. The size of the player is so tiny and lightweight that it almost feels like something is missing at the end of my headphones. I clipped it to my jacket and started playing. Volume wise I was a bit worried that it would not be as loud as my Mini, but it plays very nicely, enough to make me put the volume down. The controls are working very well, and the layout is intuitive and quick to get a hold of. The fact that the clip is not easily detachable is good (you wont lose it) and bad (you cant take it off
).My opinion
I really enjoy this gadget. To my ears the audio quality is good, its tiny (dont lose it!) and it has a pretty good battery life. I have used it for 10 hours now, and still its not yellow light on even if I have been changing songs a lot and fast forward/rewinding. Also I havent had issues with Lame VBR files and skipping (such as was the problem on my iPod Mini). I will never buy songs from the Apple Store, so for my use (dragging various songs I want to listen to that I already have) through the iPod plugin in Winamp, disconnect the player, take it out and about and listening to it, works really well.
