The sole design flaw in the iPod shuffle
The iPod shuffle is a great gizmo, but has one flaw. Oh yes it does.
It works like this. Flip the thing over and look at the back (see this picture) and you see that it has a three-position slider, for ‘off’, ’sequential order’, ‘random order’.
The thing is, it’s darn hard to move that switch between the top or bottom positions. If your fingers aren’t a little sticky, or your nails aren’t very sharp, then it’s hard to move that widget down or up. Harder, if you’ve moved it down to the “shuffle” position.
What it needs - for the second-generation shuffle, due who knows when - is a little gap at the top and bottom of that switch so you can move it more easily with less sharp nails, or the edge of a finger. Nothing more or less.
And that’s really all I can find that’s not just right with it.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- shuffle iPod at review Register The: or hate it you'll love either it (11 February 2005; score: 84.36%)
- Daring Fireball on the iPod Shuffle: why = and ; are "special" (28 February 2005; score: 80.59%)
- Oh, Mozilla, how *could* you? (9 July 2004; score: 64.69%)
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March 9th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Absolutely agree with your comment re: the switch. I basically just use my Shuffle in random mode only as I never seem to be able to get it to the in-sequence point with any accuracy.
The only other issue I have with the Shuffle - which maybe an issue with iTunes and iPods in general (I don’t know)- is that it would be nice to “shuffle” by album, i.e. play a whole album in sequence and then randomly shuffle to another album if you’ve set up your play list as a set of albums.
March 9th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
I’ve also heard that it won’t plug into the USB ports on the side of the eMac - you can use the spare port on the keyboard instead, but it won’t charge on that port, apparently.
March 9th, 2005 at 3:19 pm
So the whole no screen thing is fine by you? I can appreciate that it isn’t a big hinderance to listening to music as a whole- shuffle is a very cool feature; but if i get a new album, I want to listen to it in order, a couple of times, straight through. As a fan of dance music, I get doubly shafted by it really, since the iPod can’t play gaplessly, thus putting a PITA gap in every hand crafted mix.
In essence, do you think they actively decided to make the shuffle screenless from the very first design draft, or do you think they designed a flashpod, then priced it without a screen and added the shuffle feature as a marketing idea?
March 9th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
I agree… this is a design flaw. Besides being hard to open, you also end up scrunching the controls on the other side while battling with the switch.
March 9th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
Mull,
You can listen to albums in order on the shuffle; just load them onto the shuffle that way from iTunes and then put the slider in its middle position (which, as Charles points out, is probably the most difficult part of the process).
Gapless playback would be nice, but that omission isn’t unique to the shuffle.
March 9th, 2005 at 4:38 pm
mull said:
“In essence, do you think they actively decided to make the shuffle screenless from the very first design draft, or do you think they designed a flashpod, then priced it without a screen and added the shuffle feature as a marketing idea?”
I personally think that Apple’s starting point was the Autofill feature in iTunes.
Once Apple had thought of Autofill, it would’ve become clear that people would choose to set their computers to rotate the music on their shuffles (lets face it, these days pretty much all potential iPod owners are going to have over 1GB of music on their hard drives, certainly over 512MB) and to randomly play the results (if the computer picked the Autofilled playlist, random makes as much sense as playing them in order).
And if you follow that thinking, there’s no point in wasting size/cost/weight/battery life on a screen, so out it went.
March 9th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
If you get a new album and want to listen to it - in order, a couple of times, straight through - you just load it onto the shuffle that way. You don’t HAVE to put 250 songs onto it at once… You can put as many (or as few) as you want onto it. And if you want to get creative, you can put the new album on first, then add more songs afterwards. You can hit the play/pause button three times to start your new album over again, and then when you get sick of it, let the shuffle go on to other songs…
I put a little dot of self-adhesive rubber on the switch (leftover e-grips material) , and now it moves easily.
March 9th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
At Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Greg Joswiak said that they did indeed experiment with a screen for the Shuffle, but couldn’t achieve anything they were happy with.
(http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,119799,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp)
The Shuffle won’t quite plug directly into the G3 iMac’s USB ports either. But you can get a little extension cable, or indeed a hub, pretty cheaply. And if you get a 4-port hub and 4 Shuffles, you can make yourself an iPod Shuffle RAID disk! Woo!
March 9th, 2005 at 5:29 pm
I put a little peice of double stick tape on the slider and replace it periodically. I sure there are better fixes than this. Also. if you have a powered USB hub (has its own power cable) the shuffle works just great — if you have one of the Mac models without the appropriate type of USB port (like me).
March 9th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
A small piece of velcro is what I used …
March 9th, 2005 at 7:23 pm
I noticed the same flaw not 5 min after opening the package. I proceeded to flip out my knife and “score” (scratch) the surface of the switch with about 10 horizontal lines and it has been all a breeze since then. Now I know there are some who gasp at the very thought of such abuse, taking a knife to a perfectly good product, but I prefer function over apearance. After doing this it was not long until I realized why Apple did not do something like this from the begining, it quickly became dirty. Gasp, No I dont wash my hands before touching my electronics, I wash my hands after I use the facilities however. I know some of you clean freaks that can’t stand a greasy fingerprint on your PowerBook or iBook, but nay, I am not in your ranks either. But knoing how Apple likes a clean apearing product, even if they were factory ridges, they would have gotten dirty in that bright white they are so fond of. Any way, the solution works and is a permanant fix to the problem that plagues the switch of the shuffle.
March 9th, 2005 at 8:30 pm
The easiest solution is to texturize the slider button so it has grip.
March 10th, 2005 at 6:25 am
I went to Radio Shack and bought a pack of “Clear self-sticking cushion feet” , made of skid-resistant polyurethane- 12 for $2.19- and stuck one in the middle of my slider. Now I can move it effortlessly! The feet are 1/2″ in diameter, and about 1/4″ tall, so it’s like a clear rubber pimple- very unobtrusive. You could probably shave one off with a razor blade if you don’t like the height.
March 10th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
Yeh
I think the annoying feature is the switch. I think the issue with not fitting in certain USB ports is overdone given you can get an extender cable for £1.16, and Apple could hardly agree to retrofit all computers that had badly laid out USB ports. (Let’s face it - if it was any thinner, we’d be losing them all the time)
I wonder how many people who get the new Sony cylindrical device will get it to fit in their USB port?
I did like a letter in from someone in Guardian online today which blamed Apple for his Shuffle not working despite the fact that the cause was in fact his own PC’s inability to adhere to the USB specification on power!
Anyway I’m very happy with mine - battery life exceeds easily what Apple claim (they’ve learned their lesson). Sound quality is fantastic - if you splash out for some Etymotic ER6i in-ear headphones that is.
Just that damn switch (though I turn mine off by pausing it, then “holding” it - never have to use the switch).
Ian