BY ANDY IHNATKO
For the past eight months, everybody was sure that Apple was going to release a low-cost RAM-based iPod.
So the release of the iPod Shuffle was both no surprise at all, and the biggest surprise of the day. I mean, seriously: a digital music player with no screen?
I've been using the 512-megabyte iPod Shuffle exclusively for a week now, and against all expectations, I've found that a screen is hardly essential for a digital music player, particularly one that only holds a couple of days' worth of music to begin with.
Sure, there are downsides to the lack of screen. You can't glance down and read a song title, and no screen means no support for multiple playlists. That's a biggie. The 120 or so songs on that 512-megabyte Shuffle are lumped together in one big pile, which can be played either in random order or in a pre-arranged sequence. You can't exclusively play just Rock songs, which is a bummer when jogging (unless you run at the pace of an oboe concerto or an audiobook).
But I rarely listen to playlists on my iPod, anyway: 95 percent of the time, it's simply choosing songs at random for me (and Apple says I'm a typical iPod user). Plus, multiple playlists are more useful on a player that holds thousands of songs instead of mere dozens.
I'm surprised by how little I've missed my usual 40-gig iPod. This is mostly thanks to an update to iTunes, the music library app that manages the iPod's contents. When the Shuffle is docked to your Mac or PC, iTunes can automatically freshen it with new tunes, selected either from a pre-set playlist or from your entire music collection.
Unless you're capable of listening to six to eight hours of music a day, iTunes can create the illusion of a player with bottomless capacity.
Finally, who looks at a screen while they're jogging? Do that in the street, and the health benefits of exercise will be immediately offset by someone in an SUV.
The benefit of deleting the screen (apart from lowering the cost of the player) is that there's no screen to get in the way.
I've just spent five minutes unsuccessfully thinking of things to compare the Shuffle's size to. It's somewhere between a stick of gum and a small cell phone. So let's just say that the iPod Shuffle is as tiny as an iPod Shuffle, which, if you've held one, is an impressive achievement.
It's also feather-light. It is, in fact, the only micro-size digital music player worth a damn, because in place of a tiny and unreadable screen, Apple has installed a full-size and comfortable set of buttons in the familiar iPod wheel arrangement. Operating other players its size is a lot like trying to set the time on a $5 digital watch.
The whole design is admirably well-conceived. Its bottom is a cap that conceals a USB connector. There are no cables to pack or lose on a trip; just stick it into any USB 1.0 or 2.0 port, like a keychain drive (you can even use part of its capacity for file storage) and iTunes will update its contents while your PC charges its battery.
Alternatively, you can click it into a lanyard and wear it like a pendant. It's terribly handy, provided that you remember to drop it in your shirt pocket for protection before eating chili or spaghetti. I report from personal experience.
Per megabyte, the Shuffle's one of the cheapest RAM-based players on the market: $99 for a 512-meg model that stores about 120 tunes, and $149 for a full gigabyte. If you want to spend less than a hundred bucks on a player (and you don't care about the FM tuners found on other affordable players), the iPod Shuffle's slick usability and high capacity make it the right answer.
But the biggest advantage of the Shuffle over all other RAM-based players is the simple fact that it's an Apple product and relies on iTunes instead of Windows Media Player. It works, period. I spend every Christmas driving around the state on a Holiday Goodwill Tour of friends' and relatives' houses, and this year, the houses where my welcome was the most warm and the children were most delighted to see Uncle Andy were the houses in which someone unwrapped a non-Apple music player that morning.
Y'see, most of 'em didn't work. It was a Holy Day, and I spent much of it reinstalling Windows Media Player 10 and downloading new device drivers. That's not right. It's just not right.
Andy Ihnatko writes on technical and computer issues for the Sun-Times.
