Hands-on with the new iPod shuffle

Yesterday Apple announced the third-generation iPod shuffle, a device which manages to shrink even smaller than its predecessor while reducing its on-board interface to mystifying zero buttons. iProng Magazine was able to get its hands on a new iPod shuffle today, and we’ve spent all day testing the device from top to bottom.

Back in 2005, Saturday Night live parodied both Apple’s continual revving of the iPod lineup and its propensity for making new versions of the iPod ever-smaller by having a fake Steve Jobs introduce (and then immediately discontinue) several new iPods within the span of a few minutes, each smaller than the last, until the iPod had been shrunken so tiny that it was invisible. The new real-world iPod shuffle isn’t quite small enough to be invisible, but on the SNL scale, we’ve officially reached “iPod micro” territory.

While Apple’s third-generation iPod shuffle is a little wider than its square-ish predecessor, the new model is thinner and about half as tall, making it essentially weightless and so tiny that it makes the original pack-of-gum-shaped shuffle look huge in comparison. Aside from the headphone port and the clip on the back side, the only aspects of the new shuffle that retain any connection to the previous shuffle are the off/play/shuffle slider and the “low battery” light. That’s because beyond that, the new shuffle literally has no interface.

By now iPod shuffle users are accustomed to having no screen and either listening to the songs in the order they were loaded onto the device or at random (hence the “shuffle” in the name). But what’s different with the new shuffle is that the play/pause,next/previous, and volume controls have all been moved to a trio of buttons on the cable of the included earbuds. iPhone users, along with those iPod users who’ve purchased Apple’s newest earbuds, are already accustomed to the option of controlling their music (to varying extents) via in-line buttons on the earbuds. The key here is that it’s not an option; without using the controls on the earbuds you can’t even get the music to start playing, let alone have any control over it.

First, the good: the in-line controls manage to vastly de-clutter the shuffle itself. The front of the shuffle is just solid smooth grey (or black) brushed metal. The back of the shuffle features nothing but a tall and thin pinch-clip with a mirrored chrome surface and a small Apple logo at its center. In short, the shuffle has all the complication of a generic USB thumb drive – less, actually, since the shuffle doesn’t even have a USB port. Instead, Apple bundles a tiny dongle which plugs into the shuffle’s headphone port and has a USB plug on the other side. In short, the new shuffle has been stripped down to the absolute bare essence of what a thousand-song music player could conceivably be. “iPod invisa” it’s not, but conceptually it might as well be. And Apple is to be applauded for taking the ostensibly simplest iPod in the lineup and distilling it down to simplicity itself.

But don’t let that apparent simplicity fool you: the new shuffle actually has a feature set that goes beyond any other current iPod or iPhone model. Thanks to the lack of a screen, shuffle users have long had to deal with the “that’s a great song but I haven’t heard it in awhile and I can’t remember who sings it” dilemma. But the new version sports a VoiceOver feature that does just what it the name implies: hold down the middle button on the earbud controls, and the shuffle will speak the name of the song and artist currently playing. Yeah, it’s a computerized voice that could be a little more human-sounding. But the impressive part is that, at least for the most part, the names of the artists are pronounced correctly, even with often-mispronounced band names like Augustana – even most Augustana fans don’t know how to pronounce “Augustana” correctly. However, VoiceOver isn’t perfect, for instance incorrectly assuming that the “G” in “Jody Gnant” is silent when it’s not. It’s unclear whether this has to do with the relative popularity of the artists involved. iTunes does have to download a “VoiceOver” file from the internet and load it onto the shuffle before the VoiceOver feature will work; it’s not clear whether this is because they didn’t have it ready to load onto the first batch of shuffles out the door.

On the subject of capacity, the ever-increasing capacity of flash memory chips (and USB thumb drives) suggested that the iPod shuffle would reach the four gigabyte mark eventually, which leads to the practicality of putting a thousand songs on a device without a screen. But the ability to toggle among multiple playlists (by holding down the center button for an extended period of time) essentially makes that a non-issue, so long as you take the time to set up your synced playlists wisely in iTunes beforehand.

Some aspects of the new shuffle, however, are going to turn off some users. The belt clip is positioned equidistant from the top and bottom of the shuffle, which gives the shuffle a nice symmetric look from the side but turns out to be a boneheaded mistake on Apple’s part that could have been avoided simply by taking a look at the various third-party clips designed for the first-gen shuffle and second-gen nano that failed by not having the clip go all the way to the top of the device. As a result, the top of the shuffle will poke you in the neck if you’ve clipped it to your T-shirt collar, or poke you in the stomach (if you’re overweight) if you’ve clipped it to your belt. Furthermore, the clip is oriented such that the earbud cable has to come out the top of the shuffle if you’ve clipped it to your shirt collar, meaning that the plug will poke you in the neck even more severely with earbuds plugged in (although you can clip it upside down to your belt). The clip appears to have been designed under the mistaken assumption that users are only going to clip it to the top of their pants pocket or shirt pocket (or in between the buttons of a button-down shirt). These are the only instances in which the orientation of the belt clip proves to be correct; other users will conclude that the clip should be upside-down. And although the clip initially appears as though it might be removable and therefore reversible, this proved not to be the case.

The other potential turnoff is that as of today, you more or less have to use the shuffle’s bundled earbuds; any third-party earbuds will leave you unable to even hit the “play” button to get the music started, let alone control its volume. Even third-party iPhone earbuds with a built-in play/pause button can’t be used with with the shuffle consistently, based on our initial tests. This fact will leave some of you scoffing (or squealing in agony), as some iPod users decided long ago to invest in better-sounding and more expensive third-party earbuds. But most of you reading this are probably thinking “what’s the big deal?” as we’ve found that eighty to ninety percent of all iPod and iPhone users (and probably ninety-five percent or more of all shuffle users) just go ahead and use the earbuds that come with their iPod anyway. And based on the shuffle’s intended use outside your pants pocket, and its corresponding shorter cable length, it’s clear that Apple has intended since at least the second generation that the iPod shuffle simply isn’t meant to be used with third-party earbuds.

That hasn’t stopped third parties from going ahead and doing so anyway. In fact Scosche announced an iPod shuffle-specific set of earbuds today (not yet shipping), and several third parties will likely make similar announcements in the coming week. We’ll review such products as they come to market, despite our knowledge that the vast majority of iPod shuffle users don’t opt for third-party earbuds.

So what’s left? The new shuffle’s official battery life has dropped to ten hours from twelve on the previous model, but Apple has a history of iPod overhauls which have resulted in the battery life of new models fluctuating slightly up or down. Our real-world tests of the new shuffle’s battery are still ongoing, and we’ll add them to this review once finished, but we’re willing to go ahead and assume for now that the ten hour battery claim is accurate based on the fact that every new iPod model we’ve ever tested has ended up having at least as much (often times greater) real-world battery life than Apple advertises.

Not every user will be thrilled by the disappearance of the rainbow of color choices, and we’re still confused as to why Apple thinks it’s a good idea to eliminate the $49 shuffle model in this economy. But aside from the misguided clip, there’s really nothing not to like here and the VoiceOver technology represents a major step forward which we hope to see implemented on iPod and iPhone models in the future – and you just can’t beat the fact that the real-world shuffle is now as small as the fictional “unrealistically tiny” iPod portrayed on television less than four years ago. The small subset of users who refuse to use Apple’s bundled earbuds will find the new shuffle to be a non-option for them (at least for now), but we expect that the vast majority of people who buy the new iPod shuffle will be blown away by how it manages to be overwhelmingly simple and surprisingly sophisticated at the same time.