Got my Shuffle Today
Posted February 16th, 2005 @ 02:37pm by Erik J. Barzeski
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.
Donate Life
Posted 16 Feb 2005 at 3:15pm #
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 ...
Posted 16 Feb 2005 at 3:32pm #
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).
Posted 16 Feb 2005 at 3:45pm #
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.
Posted 16 Feb 2005 at 4:35pm #
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.
Posted 16 Feb 2005 at 8:16pm #
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.
Posted 16 Feb 2005 at 9:43pm #
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.
Posted 16 Feb 2005 at 9:44pm #
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.
Posted 16 Feb 2005 at 11:31pm #
USB 2.0 has 480MBit/s burst while FireWire has 400MBit/s sustained, that's a huge difference, especially for file transfer.
Posted 17 Feb 2005 at 8:45am #
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)
Posted 17 Feb 2005 at 10:31pm #
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.
Posted 17 Feb 2005 at 10:48pm #
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?
Posted 17 Feb 2005 at 11:11pm #
Jack Campbell's exploits are fairly well documented at Macintouch. Here's a snippet:
He's a piece of work and I discourage anyone from ever buying from him.
Posted 18 Feb 2005 at 8:49am #
Interesting. Thanks for the heads up.
Posted 19 Feb 2005 at 1:08pm #
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.
Posted 20 Dec 2006 at 3:11am #
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