Super Bogus Super-Shuffle

You knew it had to happen. Whenever someone in this country (or Europe) has a hit electronics doo-hickey (sorry for being so technical), either Korea, Taiwan, Japan, or China has a “Looks almost like it, but not quite” copy relatively quickly. Considering what a run-away hit the iPod has been over the last few years, I’m surprised it’s taken this long. The caveat to this is that I’m not talking about the iPod hard drive based units, but the iPod Shuffle. The darn thing hasn’t been out but two months and a Chinese company called LuxPro announced a identical looking device (and I mean identical, right down to the control buttons) they were calling the Super-Shuffle.

There were SOME differences. The Super-Shuffle has a FM tuner built-in (Though how you were going to select your favorite stations without a display is beyond me). And there is also..um..well..OK, there were no ther physical differences. It plugs directly into a USB/2 port for all your downloading pleasures. Of course, it would not operate with iTunes, so you must some other crappy music download service (not that I’m prejudiced or anything) and obviously it can’t play any tunes downloaded through iTunes DRMed songs.

From the moment I heard and saw this thing (It was one of the biggest stories coming out of the trades that covered the CeBit show), I knew there was no way anyone in the U.S. would ever be able to buy one of these in this form and I was right (even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes).

Tim and Dave’s favorite site Endgaget has the scoop on what is the biggest publicity stunt so far this year. Hit thisLINK to read the story or just going on here.

LuxPro never intended to sell this device. It was for publicity at the CeBit show. They DO want to sell manufacterers the guts of this thing to put in their own (Non Apple Shuffle case) enclosures. What did it cost them? Apparently about 3000 Euros for showing it after being told not to by a German court.

Probably the best money and most effective advertising they ever bought. I mean c’mon, I’ve wasted a thousand words or so explaining this.