I have owned my 1G iPod Shuffle for a couple months now and I love it. It is always with me. Because it doesn’t have any moving parts, the battery lasts for an entire Chris Abraham workday, 12 hours. When I run with it, it folds into my palm.
If it falls out of my hand, it drops to the end of the earphones and then just hangs there, dangling at the end of the earphones.
Dangle dangle.
The Shuffle isn’t heavy enough to either pull out of the earphone plug or to pull the ear buds out of my ears.
And, since I have an infinite amount of music on my machine, I realistically cannot listen to it all.
They way the Shuffle is set up allows me to perceive that I have access to my entire iTunes library. Whenever I reconnect the Shuffle to the host machine, it replaces old music with new. It is never the same song list twice. The effect is like I have access to everything.
Finally, when I next run another iPod through the washer, I will have a better chance with the iPod Shuffle because it is solid state. Like the cell phone your dropped in the toilet, the Shuffle might dry out and revive — unlike the regular iPod, it doesn’t use a mechanical hard drive; alternately, it is just $150 for the 1G and $99 for the half-gig so I will be less worried about losing or washing it.
A gigabyte is just enough to swallow a pretty good sized audio book as well. And a bunch of Podcasts. It really is the perfect dinghy — the perfect day pack.
We won’t even talk about all the silly people who walk proudly around with the iPod Shuffle dangling seductively between their breasts like its some sort of a fashion statement.
I am a marketing executive and I know better than to buy that!
Even I admit it looks like some sort of hospital monitor.
Apple did an amazing thing for me: the iPod Shuffle is at a price point where I can lose, break, wash, leave behind, and give away without smarting too much.
And that is what I call progress.
