More Shuffle Observations

[HiRez]

Played around with one in the Apple Store (of course they still don't have any for sale). I took my Sony MDR-V6 headphones in at a somewhat quiet time, although there were still people milling about, screaming babies, etc.

1. The sound quality is pretty good. Not amazing, but clean, and the thing puts out plenty of power to drive any headphones you have.

2. EQ settings do not appear to be supported, either for individual songs or the overall (current) EQ setting. :rolleyes: That's a bummer. Ideally I'd say it should allow you to choose one EQ setting from a drop-down list and apply that to all the songs it syncs.

3. Volume adjustment settings for individual songs are supported.

4. Syncing is occasionally goofy: sometimes it will just sit there forever saying "Updating iPod, do not remove." and nothing happens (even when there are few or no songs to update). So you have to remove it and reinsert it.

5. Using it as a USB flash drive is occasionally goofy: sometimes it reports the wrong amount of free space after you adjust it, and I also got a few errors about not being able to copy files to it (from a Mac) because the file names were too long. Maybe this has to do with it being DOS formatted, I dunno.

6. It's not particularly fast when used as a USB flash drive for data. Copying about 700 files totaling about 250 MB over a USB2 connection, it took exactly five minutes. That's about 50 MB/min, or 833 KB/sec. Copying two large files occupying the same space was slightly faster, but not much. OK so actually it's slow. Really slow. But, for casual use it's probably fine. I forgot to test read speed.

7. The rear slider switch isn't very easy to slide accurately since it's flush with the unit and perfectly smooth. If they had embossed a little grippy pattern onto the switch it would have helped. I know, that's nitpicky, but I expect Apple to pay attention to such things.

8. I could not find any way to have it copy a complete playlist, and then randomly autofill whatever space was left over. That would have been a neat option, but fortunately that's something they could easily update in iTunes.

So, it's not perfect, but I still intend to get a 1 MB version as soon as I can. :cool:

[yoda13]

I hope that it is a success. I really do, but I won't be buying one because there is no screen. But that is just me, if you like it, by all means, then you should get one. It is good to know that it has decent power for driving phones. I was curious about that.

[johnnyjibbs]

So, it's not perfect, but I still intend to get a 1 MB version as soon as I can. :cool:
I wonder what price that one will retail at - I guess it would be the iPod Shuffle ultra-mini - with enough space to hold about 1 minute of one song.. :D :D ;)

Sorry, I knew you meant 1GB but I couldn't help myself :p

[HiRez]

Sorry, I knew you meant 1GB but I couldn't help myself :pIt's the iPod Chiclet™! [1]

[1] Do not eat the iPod Chiclet™. Eating iPod Chiclet™ may cause mild indigestion or cravings for more iPod Chiclets™. iPod Chiclet™ now available in Fresh Peppermint Blast™ flavor.

[Bibulous]

HiRez has all good points, and I would add that it seems almost too light. I've been using a 1gb for a few days, and find myself treating it like a wafer cookie in my front pocket, I'm afraid what will happen when I forget its in my jeans and sit down to quickly. Also the usb cap seems like over time it will loosen up and fall off easily.

[dotnina]

8. I could not find any way to have it copy a complete playlist, and then randomly autofill whatever space was left over. That would have been a neat option, but fortunately that's something they could easily update in iTunes.

I have a Shuffle. This is doable, I've done it a few times myself.

When you're looking at the songs on the Shuffle in iTunes, just drag a playlist from the left sidebar to the Shuffle. You can do this repeatedly for whichever playlists you like. It copies ALL the songs from the playlist to your Shuffle.

I usually copy 2-3 tiny playlists to my Shuffle. Then, with the space remaining, I use autofill to say, "fill up the rest from this giant playlist." The downside is you have to sit there and do this manually. Hopefully there will be a more elegant way to do it in iTunes soon.

Oh ya -- here is something odd I noticed with the Shuffle. With my Mini, I had to push the "eject" button to unmount it once I had updated it w/new songs. With the Shuffle, though, as soon as it's done it says "OK to disconnect." Is this just me -- did I miss something? Has anyone else seen this happen? Very curious.

[telecomm]

7. The rear slider switch isn't very easy to slide accurately since it's flush with the unit and perfectly smooth. If they had embossed a little grippy pattern onto the switch it would have helped. I know, that's nitpicky, but I expect Apple to pay attention to such things.

Yup, I noticed the same thing with mine, but, as many reviews in the media have noted, after using the Shuffle for a couple of days this switch is much easier to position correctly. I can say that mine has definitely become easier to position, and this is no longer an issue for me.


8. I could not find any way to have it copy a complete playlist, and then randomly autofill whatever space was left over. That would have been a neat option, but fortunately that's something they could easily update in iTunes.

As dotnina [nice avatar—Emily Strange?] noted, you can do this. I've also noticed that you don't need to eject the Shuffle in order to disconnect it without any difficulty.

[WildCowboy]

This is correct, to an extent. If your Shuffle is set up only for music, you do not have to eject it. However, if you have partitioned it for data also, you must eject it, even if you have no data on it.

[quidire]

This is correct, to an extent. If your Shuffle is set up only for music, you do not have to eject it. However, if you have partitioned it for data also, you must eject it, even if you have no data on it.

Can one create an HFS+ partition on the iPs??

-RS

[WildCowboy]

Can one create an HFS+ partition on the iPs??

-RS

I'm no expert, but it doesn't seem like it. It's not really partitioning, but it's the best term I can come up with. It's just a slider bar that you can use to set aside a certain amount of space for data. Essentially, it just tells iTunes "only fill the Shuffle with 750 MB of songs because he wants to save 250 MB for data."