My iPod Shuffle Review

[Martin]

Anyone having trouble with getting their songs to play with your iPod shuffle: Enable AAC Encoding through iTunes. In iTunes, click Edit -> Preferences -> iPod, and then check 'Convert higher bitrate songs to 128 kbps AAC for this iPod.' Then proceed to send me blank cheques.

Last week I decided to buy myself a 1GB iPod Shuffle. The lack of a screen had me worried, but the price was right so I went with it, and for the most part, I was not disappointed.

I wanted to go with a flash based player because I run a lot, and I've heard stories from a lot of people who have had trouble running with a hard-drive players (disk damage, skipping). Also, the Shuffle is significantly lighter than a normal iPod, and, for the price of an iPod I can buy myself a Shuffle, an 80GB external HD and lunch.

I ordered it from futureshop.ca on a Wednesday, and it arrived on that Friday. The first thing that I noticed about it was how small it is: the pictures don't do it justice. It's tiny and light. I almost feel bad for spending $200 on this thing: it feels like I didn't get anything!

It comes in some pretty nice looking green packaging, complete with the iPod Shuffle, a lanyard, earbuds, a cd and a bunch of propaganda.

First thing they say to do is to install the software on the cd. Okay. Not a good plan on my part, as with only one EULA, it installed a bunch of software that I don't need, including QuickTime. I hate QuickTime, if only because it insists on putting that ugly blue Q in the task bar, and the only way to get rid of it is to use msconfig (as far as I know). Otherwise, no problem.

I plugged in my iPod Shuffle and after a few minutes during which iTunes formatted the player, I was good to go. Now, this brings me to my next complaint: iTunes. I really don't like it. On Windows at least, it is buggy and functions in a different way than most other windows programs. The screen showing the song information often doesn't update, sometimes for no reason at all it won't let you minimize it, and it insists on using its apple skin. The other thing is that, when selecting a bunch of songs using the shift key, pressing up starts selecting more songs from the top (instead of just unselecting the last song you had selected). Kinda hard to explain; play around with it and you'll see.

There was a brief wizard that got me to name and register my iPod (my iPod's name is IPOD). Took less than 10 seconds to do.

Putting songs on the Shuffle was a simple matter of dragging and dropping, and it worked how you'd expect it to. It was slow at first, but then I realized that I didn't have USB2 drivers installed. I fixed that.

The earbuds that came with the Shuffle were nice, although I prefer my Sony headphones to them (although my Sony headphones ran me about $100). Sound quality is pretty good, although a bit too high on the treble.

Now for my complaints. The lack of a screen is not a major problem, and it wouldn't be a problem at all if Apple had made the iPod Shuffle more configurable while it was docked on your computer. There are two things that they really should have added to make the experience better:
1. An equalizer. The player's treble is too high, I'd like to change this.
2. Keyframes. When in sequential mode, I wish I could put keyframes in and skip between custom keyframes instead of just by track.

Another problem that I noticed (but is probably due to a setting that I need to change in iTunes) is that shuffle mode isn't very random, and instead plays tracks that have been played the most, and ignores ones that haven't been played. Yesterday I added a rip of the new New Order cd to my iPod, and it didn't play a single track on it, yet it played some of my other stuff 2 or 3 times.

As a final complaint, my right earbud crackles, although I imagine this is just a manufacturing defect and I highly doubt it's typical. Fortunately there's a warrenty, and I don't see myself having any trouble getting the earbuds replaced.

The drive also functions as a simple USB storage device. I had no trouble just dragging and dropping files through Linux or Windows.

EDIT: Some new stuff to add. My iPod doesn't play all of my songs for reasons that are beyond me (and apparently Apple too right now). I'm going to Futureshop tonight to see what they'll do about this. Until then, they lose a mark.

Also, it occasionally crashes on me while navigating. The light turns off, nothing plays and I can't do anything until I turn it off for about 5 seconds and then turn it back on again.

EDIT: Okay, so the not playing songs problem is fixed: have iTunes convert them to 128 kbps AAC files (whatever that means). Kinda sucks, because on the iPod Shuffle website it clearly states that it plays 'MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Music Store, M4A, M4B, M4P), Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4) and WAV'

Hopefully this'll get fixed, but for now, I'm back to being happy with my iPod Shuffle.
Pros:
+Cheap
+Light
+Cool looking
+Nice sound quality
+shuffle mode is pretty cool
Cons:
-forced to use iTunes
-no equalizer
-difficult to navigate in sequential mode
-doesn't play all of the songs loaded onto it.
-occasional crashes

The Verdict: 7.5 / 10. With a few software updates, it could be a lot better. The hardware is definitely all there.

[wtd]

A few things.

• In the QuickTime prefs there's an option to have it not put an icon in the taskbar, or you can just right-click the little Q and exit.
  
• QuickTime isn't unnecessary. iTunes uses QuickTime to manage all of its multimedia capabilities. You probably think of QuickTime and only think of the "QuickTime PLayer", but it's a lot more than that. It provides extensive libraries for handling multimedia. iTunes is built on those libraries.
  
• iTunes has a per-song equalizer that might possibly solve your equalizer dilemna. I know the larger iPods respect equalizer settings made in iTunes, but I haven't had a chance to play with a shuffle, so I can't say for sure on that one.

[Martin]

A new update:

It seems that my Shuffle isn't playing all of the songs on it. Playing through it sequentially, and it misses about 20 usually consecutive songs. All of my music is ripped with EAC and encoded with LAME, so encoding doesn't appear to be the problem. I'm going to take it into futureshop today and hopefully get it exchanged....sigh...

Google tells me that a lot of people have been having this problem, and nobody really knows why. Once again: the hardware is all there, Apple just needs to work on the software...

EDIT: Most people seem to think that this is because I don't rip the songs with iTunes. If that's the problem, I'm returning this and getting a different kind of mp3 player. iTunes sucks at ripping audio.

[Martin]

Update 2:

I called Apple tech support. Wow, they suck. First, I have to go through an automated menu so they can figure out where I have to go. Fair enough. Finally, I get through to tech support. They ask for information about my iPod (serial number, my name, etc.) and then they tell me that, although this first call is free, further calls will cost me $50 each. US, I'm assuming.

Okay, whatever, I just hoped that they'd be able to tell me what's wrong. The tech guy asks me about what the problem is, I tell him that some of the songs aren't playing. He asked how I got them, and I told him that I ripped them off of CD's that I own using EAC and LAME, and that most of the songs are playing, so I doubt that that is the problem. He tells me that my software is probably out of date, and that's it. I'm not at my computer, so I can't verify that.

Complete bullshit. Sure, if I want tech support to tell me how to use a certain aspect of a program, I should pay, but why should I pay $50, about a third of what I paid for this, if all that I want to do is figure out why my hardware, which is under warrenty, doesn't work?

[Paul]

Quote:

Also, it occasionally crashes on me while navigating. The light turns off, nothing plays and I can't do anything until I turn it off for about 5 seconds and then turn it back on again.

Exact same thing happens to my MP3, which is not an Ipod. I have no idea what causes it. Surely not batteries.

[Martin]

I hope that someone figures out why this is happening, because it's really an awesome player. It just doesn't like my songs, apparently.

[wtd]

Martin: I'm not necessarily siding with Apple tech support on this, but why don't you try re-encoding them with iTunes, and see if that makes it work. I'm not saying it's a long-term solution, but just see if they're correct.

[Martin]

Hey...what do you know... Thanks

Well, that's acceptable. Hopefully Apple'll address this in the future. I got new headphones today too, so now I am quite happy with my purchase.

[wtd]

No problem. Pointing out the blatantly obvious is my job, after all.

[Martin]

Hey, it clearly states that I shouldn't have to do that.

[wtd]

Note the smiley in my post.