Topic: The new iPod Shuffle

[idolminds]

It...what?

VoiceOver is the exciting new feature that makes iPod shuffle the first music player that talks to you. It entirely changes the way you browse and navigate your music. Say you’re listening to a song and want to know the title or the artist. With the press of a button*, VoiceOver tells you—without interrupting your music.

*button not included

So now when you want to see the artist info, instead of simply looking at a small display and reading it yourself, your music will lower its volume and then some robotic voice will tell it to you. Yeah...that just what I want.

Also I read that the controls are on the headphones. Of course, they won't work with any other headphones with controls. Not unless you buy a handy-dandy adapter that Apple will be totally happy to sell you.

[sirean_syan]

Yes. That totally revolutionizes how we will listen to music, because reading two lines of text is just too hard.

[idolminds]

You know what might actually be cool? Voice activated MP3 players. Just be like "iPod, I want to rock" and it plays your rock music. Or tell it a specific song, artist, album...whatever. Tell it to mute, get louder, etc.

If they're aiming for joggers and want minimal controls, you can't beat....no controls. Even though its still a gimmick and not something I would probably use, its at least actually interesting and, dare I say it, useful?

Plus you can totally fuck with people walking around with them on all the time.

[sirean_syan]

That would be horrible. In trains and buses you would hear nothing other than, "Next song. Louder. iPod, have my children. iPod, please take my eternal soul so that Steve Jobs may continue to protect us from the Golden Throne. FOR THE EMPEROR."

Unfortunately, Steve Jobs just isn't that badass.

[ren]

A voice that tells you track and artist info is something I would definitely use while running.

[sirean_syan]

Then you don't deserve your soul. Please drop it off at the nearest Apple Store as soon as possible.

[Quemaqua]

I'd say it's useless, but if you're stupid enough to buy an MP3 player with no screen, I can see why it would be useful.  Or I guess if you're out running or something; but again, you'd have to be stupid enough to buy an MP3 player with no screen, or have no idea what the fuck you're listening to even though you put it on your MP3 player to begin with.  Which is pretty sad.

[gpw11]

A voice that tells you track and artist info is something I would definitely use while running.

Negative.  While it is a bit of a bitch to run and actually look at the screen of a fullsized ipod (especially at night), something like the old Creative players works perfectly fine.  I think the voice would be good for running if it was pulled off perfectly, but i can't see that happening.  I can, however see me wondering what CD this song is on, hitting the button and then hearing 15 seconds of info I already knew and/or didn't care about.

[Cobra951]

Needing to have a conversation with a gadget within earshot of another human has to be the biggest deal breaker I can think of.  I don't do ipods anyway.  This only cements that position.

[Xessive]

So basically it's abut the size of a USB stick.. I still prefer the Sansa Express. It's a LOT cheaper too.



EDIT:
I think SanDisk is making the biggest strides in portable music when it comes to innovation and invention. As opposed to Apple who just keep reintroducing the same thing.

[idolminds]

Needing to have a conversation with a gadget within earshot of another human has to be the biggest deal breaker I can think of.  I don't do ipods anyway.  This only cements that position.

You don't have to talk to this one. My post was just an interesting thought. A voice activated MP3 player would only work for people working out or out away from the general public. Of course the general public would buy them and make things horrible. This is why we cant have nice things.

I agree with X, SanDisk makes some cool players. Even though I probably wouldn't buy one, the SlotRadio is an interesting idea. $99 and you get the player plus a (locked) microSD card with 1,000 songs on it that will play radio-style. Other cards cost $40 for 1,000 songs in different genres. While you don't get a choice in the song selection, thats not a bad deal for a song sampler ($0.04 per song). If all you listen to are "hits" anyway, its great. The player takes regular microSD cards that you can fill with your own music so its not like its totally wasted.

SandDisk rocks for letting you expand the memory in a lot of their players. Plus most of them (even the little one X posted) has built in FM radio, a mic for recording, and a screen.

[Cobra951]

I understood that.  Voice in either direction kills all my interest.

[ren]

Then you don't deserve your soul. Please drop it off at the nearest Apple Store as soon as possible.

You've got me all wrong. I would never buy a shuffle. There's just no point in it. But if I had an mp3 player which had that function, I can see myself using it. It's not a selling feature for me, just one of those useful things.

I'd say it's useless, but if you're stupid enough to buy an MP3 player with no screen, I can see why it would be useful.  Or I guess if you're out running or something; but again, you'd have to be stupid enough to buy an MP3 player with no screen, or have no idea what the fuck you're listening to even though you put it on your MP3 player to begin with.  Which is pretty sad.

I always listen to full albums but it takes me a long time to learn the names of tracks. If something comes on I'll know what album it's from and roughly how many minutes into the album the song is but I doubt I'd know the name of the song. So now when I'm running and the song changes I always take out my mp3 player to look at the screen and go "oh yeah, this song". If I could do that with the click of a button, hear the first syllable or so to remind myself and then click it again to get it to stop, I would do it.

It's pretty irrelevant since shuffles ration you to 4gigs of music. If I was forced to put that small of an amount of music on, I would know the vast majority of it really well.

[scottws]

This reminds me of that story from The Onion about the  MacBook Wheel:

"Apple is already working on a follow-up version that has no screen or wheel."

[Xessive]

This reminds me of that story from The Onion about the  MacBook Wheel:

"Apple is already working on a follow-up version that has no screen or wheel."

Hahaha totally!

Pretty soon they'll figure out how to make it be.. just be.. it becomes the idea of an iPod.. You pay them money for it but you can't see it. You have to believe it is there.. you paid for it so "it has to be there," you tell yourself.

[W7RE]

I have the previous version of the iPod Shuffle. I heard about this new one yesterday, and I think mine is better. I can use any headphones for one. It's got no display, but it's got a power switch, a shuffle switch, volume controls, and skip/FF/RW controls, and play/pause. Some of the buttons serve multiple functions, but it's all simple enough that you don't have things like "Tap the button twice, then hold it and click your heels together. This announces the name of the next track, which you can then jump to by shaking the iPod twice and rotating it 180 degres on it's X axis while holding the play button."

Of course I guess my iPod is only 1 gig, and I always put entire albums on it. So skipping 10-15 songs ahead until I find the next album is easy. If that's not what I was looking for, I skip until I hear another album. I can imagine it would be annoying if I just threw a gig of random songs onto it and put it on shuffle though.



That Sansa Express looks badass. To be honest the only reason I went with Apple on mine was that I was at the store with my parents and they said "so you want an mp3 player for your birthday, right? What color iPod shuffle would you rather have?" With no time to do research or read reviews, I just said "silver".

[scottws]

Yeah, the headphones thing kind of gets me.  I have an iPod Nano (2nd gen.) and I found the headphones to be very uncomfortable so I bought a nice pair of V-Modas.

You don't have that option with the new Shuffle.  Though I suppose you have the choice to not buy a Shuffle in the first place.

[Xessive]

Ok, there really should be a rule to standardize all portable devices, specifically mobile phones and music players. The two slots they should all have are 1) 3.5mm headphone jack and 2) miniUSB standard.

That was the only real thing that made my Nokia N95 stand out above the rest. When I pawned it off and got myself a Samsung Omnia I was pretty miffed about it having only 1 slot that's unique to the Samsung brand only. I wannause headphones I have to attack the special cable into the special slot. Frickin' lame.

Btw, I don't go for portable music players mainly because my phone pretty much covers it. That's been the case as far back as 2004. Then again, before that I never really did bother with a Walkman or a Discman.. or anything.

[scottws]

I don't know about the headphone jack, but cell phone makers have agreed to move to the micro-USB standard for power and data.

I can't do phones for music.  The interface always seems really clunky on all the phones I've had.

[Xessive]

I don't know about the headphone jack, but cell phone makers have agreed to move to the micro-USB standard for power and data.

I can't do phones for music.  The interface always seems really clunky on all the phones I've had.

It depends on the phone really. Nokia used to be really crap for it but in light of Sony-Ericsson's Walkman phones they'e had to pick up the slack.

My Omnia is pretty straighforward since it's a Windows Mobile phone.. It's more of a PDA than a phone though. It has native divx support as well so I keep movies or shows on there in case I get stuck on a long bus ride or an hour wait at a clinic. The media player options on it are quite good and it supports media sharing, so I can just stream stuff right off the network. Like I mentioned earlier, the one crap thing is if I wanna use headphones I have to carry around the cable for it. It's basically a 3.5 jack converter, so at least I'm not limited to one set of headphones.

Imagine in the future phones are pills you take with nanobots that transmit signals. And they expire when you don't pay your bill. When you hear that someone's dropped their phone in the toilet you know they've probably kicked the bucket.

Anwyay, back to reality, Windows Mobile 6.1 is a so-so platform.. Actually it kinda sucks.. Well, less than WM5. Apparently WM7 is in the works and is supposed to be Microsoft's saving grace in the pocketPC world. Of course they had break when Android didn't turn out all it was cracked up to be, but that's just a matter of time. I anticipate Android will really take off in the near future.

[scottws]

Yeah, I guess it makes sense.  I mean you're in the UAE, one of the richest countries in the world.  Plus, pretty much everyone is ahead of the U.S. in cell phone techonolgy.  The country is simply too big to always keep the whole infrastructure up to date.

[gpw11]

Thank fucking god they're finally moving to standardizing usb on phones.  I've never used one as a media player and never plan to, but having the option to just plug a standard cable into your phone in order to sync your contacts onto your PC would be fucking great.  Beyond that, if these motherfuckers have storage onboard, i see no reason why you shouldn't be able to use them as little portable drives for documents and shit.  Would save me from carrying around a flash drive for school and one for work.  Bluetooth just isn't widespread enough at this point, and on my last phone it was a huge bitch to get working.

[Xessive]

Yeah, I guess it makes sense.  I mean you're in the UAE, one of the richest countries in the world.  Plus, pretty much everyone is ahead of the U.S. in cell phone techonolgy.  The country is simply too big to always keep the whole infrastructure up to date.

Yeah, though I'm still in shock that in North America you pay to receive calls. Airtime is for incoming and outgoing?! WTF?! That used to be the case in the old mailing system in England, where the person receiving the parcel would pay until some guy decided "No, I didn't ask to receive this mail, I'm not paying for it."

Most phones these days have onboard storage if not a memcard slot. I am just grateful for that. Portable drives.

[gpw11]

Interestingly enough, i believe they recently decided here (they being two of the three main providers...or possibly all three) that unless you have a text messaging plan, you're paying for all incoming texts (previously, you'd only pay if it was international or something).  If it's spam or some bullshit, you'd have to hit star plus some number right after so they could record it and strike it from your bill, but that number would be locked out of yours so you couldn't really scam it.

The thing that pisses me off here? Not the hardware, but the fact that you have to jump through hoops in order to get a decent plan and it's a total crapshoot.  The advertised (by advertised i mean listed) plans are all total bullshit, and even then they try to screw you when you renew by saying the best deals involved in any plan are only for new customers if you're renewing.  So then you have to call customer service, get them to connect you to retentions and spend god knows how long fucking bartering in order to get the "magical" deals they can obviously still make a hefty profit off of but don't want you to know about.  And even then, most of it is up to the rep you talk to, so if that motherfucker is having a bad day you have to pretend something tragic is going on and you have to call back later (crossing your fingers that you'll get someone a little more generous). I spent like 3 hours getting my last contract, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than i would have paid if i was lazy about it, but fuck....if one of these companies was to make it easy i'd switch over to them in a second.

[scottws]

One thing I think is odd is that (at least in the U.S.) the providers have pretty good deals to sign up as a new customer but don't really help you out at all if you are an existing customer.  I've called my provider at the end of my contract and said, "I want to know what kind of deals you can cut me to stay with you.  I can get X phone for free if I switch to Y provider and the plan is basically the same as what I have now, but I see that you are offering me to get X phone for a 20% discount.  At that price it is still out of the range of what I can afford.  Is there something we can work out?  Can you sell me the phone cheaper or lower my monthly rate or something?  Otherwise I'm switching to Y?" Their answer?  Basically, "See ya!"

I don't understand why the providers don't try harder to keep people with them.  As such people constantly rotate providers over here to get the free phones.

[Xessive]

When I was in Canada I had to rotate my providers regularly not for a free phone but just to maintain certain services. This was especially the case with my internet*, TV, and landline. At the time none of the companies could offer me a decent mobile plan where I could use my GSM (which I had brought with me from here) since none of them offered SIM cards. Out of the blue Fido appeared and introduced "unlimited incoming calls and texts" like it was somethign spectacular.. Well it was for the Canadians.. For me it was like advertising "100% REAL BEEF" Well, no shit, it's supposed to be that way!!

* I still can't believe they tried to implement bandwidth limits! Bell, my ISP at the time, introduced a 5GB per month limit and $10 for every extra GB after that. WTF! I immediately called them up and cancelled my DSL line. I switched to Cogeco and about 2 months into it they decided to stick a 10GB/month limit and $5 for every extra GB, at which point Bell reannounced they were removing the limit. Naturally I went ahead and called Cogeco to disconnect and they informed me that they have to decided to withdraw the bandwidth limit. So I stayed with them. Until I moved to London Ontario, where the only option was Rogers. Fackin' Rogers. Amazing Internet connection speeds but terrible, terrible customer service.

[ren]

That Bell 5gb limit did not last at all. Almost everybody I know canceled and Bell removed their bandwidth limit a couple months later. I don't think anybody went back because they all entered into a contract elsewhere so sucks for Bell.

Unlimited incoming calls and picking up a little bit of steam here. I've seen it as an add-on for $10 a month which isn't too bad since with free incoming you need way less minutes overall.

Right now I'm with Koodo which lets me change my plan every month without penalty. What's interesting though is they seem to have their pro-rating formula wrong because every month they end up billing me 50% of what they actually should. So as long as I make a small variation in my plan everything is roughly half off. I've been doing that for a couple of months now just to see how long it takes for them to notice.

[iPPi]

Canada's internet and phone providers gouge their customers because there isn't enough competition, and we have to put up with these restrictions because there really aren't that many different choices.

[gpw11]

Telus internet still has a cap on it.  I think I was at something like 30GB a month until i blew over it like four months in a row (with five peeps in a house you'll do that). All they did was call, tell me about it, and bump it up to 60GB a month for free.  As far as i know, all the providers still have a limit, they just don't charge you if they go over.  In university we'd go over our Rogers limit pretty often and they'd call and threaten to suspend service but never actually do anything.

For the phone companies it's a bitch, but at least Telus has a fair amount of room to move if you want a better deal.  You just have to make sure that when you call you get sent to rententions instead of dealing with the regular customer service.  Telus also offers switching you plan every month, but the ones they have without jumping through hoops are all so shitty there's no point.

[scottws]

Canada's internet and phone providers gouge their customers because there isn't enough competition, and we have to put up with these restrictions because there really aren't that many different choices.

There aren't a lot of choices here either.  Basically we have one provider for each method of delivery:  Cincinnati Bell for DSL, Time Warner for cable Internet, and Duke Energy for Internet over power.  I think they all are pretty good.  They hold price fairly steady and compete on speed, constantly outdoing each other.

But damn, those bandwidth limits... fuck that.  That's crazy.  I wonder how much I download in a month.  It's probably over 20 GB.

[idolminds]

I download ~6GB a month.

[Xessive]

I download ~6GB a month.

Haha that's like riding a bicycle and comparing mileage with a car Regardless, that is still impressive for a 56k!

[idolminds]

I'm just saying, on MY connection I'm pulling 6GB/mo. 20GB would be easy to hit with anything faster. I'm certainly not a typical internet user. With Youtube and other streaming video, podcast and music downloading, large-ish flash games...all that will add up and I don't really make real use of any of those things.

The fun part will be when these caps start digging into media companies and what they want to do. Digital distribution for games and movies seems great now...until people stop buying things because they are afraid of hitting their caps for the month.

[Cobra951]

I think the answer is already in this thread: caps won't work as long as there's any choice at all.  Imagine the number of pissed-off people who suddenly can't get anything to happen online.  Getting a bigger bill than expected won't provoke the same instant response, but it will lead to shopping around just the same.  Unless there's collusion across the board, people will start hopping around services like Xessive did.