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Got my Shuffle Today

I got my iPod shuffle today. In the first hour with it:

  • Thanks, José, for setting the volume to the loudest setting. I shall get you yet! 😀
  • It's small, it's light. Duh.
  • I wish the slider on the back had a little notch for extra traction.
  • USB 2.0 is so slow I double-checked to make sure the front ports on a G5 were USB 2.0! Ugh!
  • I'm not sure yet what to do about "Keep this iPod in the source list."
  • I sure wish I had a little belt clip. Then again, maybe masking tape will work just fine.
  • Instead of having colored lights, couldn't they have had different icons with lights next to them?
  • How will I ever choose only ~200 songs? A creative smart list is coming soon…

Whatever. The only reason I wanted the thing is so that I can listen to some music while hitting golf balls. It'll work just fine for that.

15 Responses to "Got my Shuffle Today"

  1. I've started training for a marathon, so I'm considering getting a shuffle to listen to during my runs (sometimes I like running in silence - this is probably more for those boring rainy treadmill days at the gym). Still not sure though. Of course, they're cheap and 512MB is probably adequate for even the longest runs ...

  2. Check this out:

    http://www.dvforge.com/the_clips.shtml

    I just ran a marathon this past weekend with my shuffle... it's awesome, made the time go by much quicker. Barely even noticed it in my pocket, even though I wish I already had one of those clips.

    I have a playlist that fills my mini, I then tell iTunes to pull songs out of that to fill the shuffle. It even has a feature to convert to 128k AAC on the fly into the shuffle, even if it's a little slow (even on a 2x2.0GHz).

  3. I will never, never, never buy anything from Jack Campbell. Period. DVForge, MacMice - I don't care how many times he reinvents a new site. I'll never buy from him.

  4. About USB 2.0 speed, maybe it's the flash memory that's slow. A friend of mine told me his iPod Shuffle is slower in disk mode than his USB 2.0 memory thingie.

  5. Yes, the speed of the shuffle is disgusting. Indeed it destroys my hole idea on how to use it 😉 My initial idea was that it is really simple/fast to exchange the content of the shuffle and therefore that the size limitation doesn't matter at all.

    Practice proves that wrong, the shuffle is incredibly slow in pushing content to the device which basically forces you to stick with a single list of songs on the iPod.

    I suppose Olivier is right, the issue probably isn't the USB but the speed of the flash.

    PS: I still think that the shuffle is more than worth its price. Its just that it didn't fit what I expected.

  6. wow - I didn't realize that it was that slow. Isn't USB 2.0 supposed to be faster than FireWire? 400 Mbps vs 480 Mbps or something like that.

  7. I noticed the same thing about the slider on the back. It was difficult to get it to "straight-through" mode at first, but now it switches a little better.

    And yeah, the thing is REALLY slow. I have USB 1.1 and 2.0 flash drives too, and the shuffle is somewhere inbetween, closer to 1.1 than 2.0.

    As for choosing songs, try AutoFill. My wife really likes that feature.

  8. USB 2.0 has 480MBit/s burst while FireWire has 400MBit/s sustained, that's a huge difference, especially for file transfer.

  9. Congratulations on your iPod shuffle. Hope you enjoy it.

    I am still deciding if I shall buy a shuffle. I am 4th gen 20GB iPod (clickwheel)

  10. My shuffle is way slower than my 3G iPod, but I found that by turning off the "reduce larger music to 128 kbps" feature the speed seemed to double. It's still slower, though. (All my music is encoded 192kbps AAC.)

    Still, I don't find it to be so slow that I can't just plug it into the computer, click the button to replace all the music, and come back a little while later and it's done. It is 512MB after all.

  11. Also, why don't you let us know why you won't buy from Jack Campbell (whoever he is) -- if it's a good reason, maybe spare us from making some mistake or somthing?

  12. Jack Campbell's exploits are fairly well documented at Macintouch. Here's a snippet:

    This morning we were alerted by one of our customers of the Mactable website. This is a stunning example of every violation in the books when it comes to the unlawful misappropriation of intellectual property. Mactable not only claims to sell our patented designs, but also to have designed my designs as well. I have never been contacted by this person and have no clue as to what his plan is, but hopefully he will remove any of the stolen images and catalog copy in short order before we are forced to begin legal proceedings.

    He's a piece of work and I discourage anyone from ever buying from him.

  13. Interesting. Thanks for the heads up.

  14. In the case of the Shuffle, the flash is definitely the reason why it's slower. I believe Apple used MLC flash in the Shuffle, which is a higher-density, lower-cost, and noticeably slower form of flash. That's why it's slower than other USB flash devices.

  15. The file transfer speed is so slow I wanna throw this thing through the window!!! Apple wasted their money on usb 2.0, they should have just made it 1.1