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 I'm a huge music buff, but despite having hundreds of CDs, an iPod has never really been something that appealed to me, simply because of where I listen to music the most...at home, work and in the car...the latter having a CD player and the other two locals, a Mac.
However, one of the best purchases I made last year was a 512 Mb USB flash drive. It gave me a chance to throw away my zip disks and carry all my files to and from work in a small compact item. Then, sitting at Brisbane airport recently, I heard a little boy say to his dad "The new iPod is so tiny". So I had to go and look.
 My first instinct was to think "It's about as big as my flash drive", and given the fact that it was 1 Gb in storage size and only a little over $210 NZ duty free, I didn't hesitate. Now, I have a cooler flash drive than the one before...and it plays music too.
Yes, I'm one of those choosing to split my iPod shuffle (hereto referred to as IPS for the remainder of the review) into two areas...one for data and one for music, supposedly of around 120 songs. But let's start at the beginning.
The IPS comes in a package about the size of a CD case, if not slightly thicker. Like all Apple packaging, it's attractively put together, but nothing to write home about like the iSight packaging for example. One of the first things that really drew me to the IPS was its size. I hadn't really paid complete attention to many of the images that you see of it and I suspect that it's not until you see something close up that it really hits you. This thing is tiny! But after saying that, it's actually slightly bigger than my flash drive...but you'd expect that...this thing has controls on it.
As well as the lanyard that you can attach to have the IPS dangle around your neck, you also get a small cap for the end of the IPS and your in-ear earphones. Opening the small software folder, you'll find the usually software warranty guff, Apple stickers (you can never have too many!) and two sets of earphone soft covers and the installation manual.
 Installing the iPod software is easy and you'll soon find yourself connected and iTunes launching. It pays to have a good read of the instruction manual as they do appear to suggest you immediately quit iTunes and allow for the battery of the IPS to charge fully.
Now we get to the crux of the issue with the IPS...using it. I've got a few gripes on a number of levels, but perhaps my strongest is the one to do with them trying to keep things simple...by doing so, Apple have actually made things a little complicated. I'm gradually getting used to what flashing lights mean, but on first use, I've found myself constantly going back to the (very handy they included this I say) quick reference guide card, that you can easily carry with you.
But I have a problem that no amount of reading is going to help with....I'm partially colour blind. Yep, reds/greens get me all the time and IPS features a lighting system that features red, orange and green colours. To explain how the issue affects me, you also might be aware that the iBook power cord features a similar colour scheme around the end of the power cord that goes into the iBook...well, yep...I'm forever looking at that glow and thinking "is that orange or green?" In bad light I'm completely stumped, on a good day I'm fine...but I have a feeling that I'm going to be forever holding my IPS up to good light, squinting and thinking "Are you orange or green?"
Next, the switches on the back. I'm not going to go into the whole routine of how to use the IPS switches and listen to music. Don't get me wrong, I think it is very simple and I'll pick it up quite quickly...but the switch does concern me. The "feel' of the switch is not great...it's easy to slide the switch down two clicks instead of one and I have found myself listening for the "click' as it moves to each position rather than go by feel...although again, you will get used to it. I will lay money on it that in the next physical revision of the casing, they might improve the feel of the switch a little.
 Dedicating part of the IPS to be used as a data drive is very easy to do from within iTunes, where a slider just lets you determine how much of it will be used and how much will hold songs. The slider gives you a good read out of how much data and how many songs will be stored as you move it right and left. In the meantime, you can learn all about the flashing lights in the manual and on the Apple website...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300553
Confusing colours and subtle switches aside, I'd have to say that I'm generally pleased with the way the IPS works and happy-ish with the sound. The "Autofill" function (that transfers a shuffled selection of songs to your IPS) is not as automatic as I thought it might be, but I can understand why a manual press of a button in iTunes is needed.
Reports on the web seem to suggest the IPS has better sound that some iPods which surprised me. Using the in-ear earphones I found the sound muffled at times and slightly disappointing. On higher range songs or quieter songs the quality was actually quite good, although the bass did disappoint. I suspect, now that I've got the thing (and hey, I did buy it really as a fancier data drive than the one I've got) I suspect I'll start getting fussy about sound and investigate other options to the Apple ear-buds.
And speaking of accessories...of course you may want to protect your IPS once you get it. One clever chap has come up with a very simple solution using Apple's own packaging....
http://homepage.mac.com/jimyounkin/PhotoAlbum20.html
I've taken a lot of time and effort to make sure that my iTunes library on my Mac at home, Mac at work and my laptop is the same. After really getting the IPS to use as flash drive, one of the things that popped into my head was how great it would be that I could be using any one of these Macs and just say "shuffle me some songs". Sounds great but in fact there's a unique feature to iPod shuffles that I'm really annoyed with almost instantly.
After shuffling some songs to my IPS from my iMac, I wandered around the house enjoying the music and then realised I needed to copy a file from my laptop onto the IPS to take to work (I sometimes leave my laptop at home rather than lug it to work each day since I have a Mac there). Connecting the IPS to my iBook I was surprised to see the following message appear when iTunes launched.
This message is going to annoy the heck out of me. IPS's work slightly differently than other iPods in that what you see appear in the "Source" column of iTunes is in effect a playlist and not an icon of the volume. When you connect the IPS to a second computer (and iTunes is launched) the message appears and asks you if you want to link to that computer's iTunes library. If you say no, then the IPS icon does not appear in iTunes but you can access any data files you have on the IPS data section via the mounted icon on the desktop. If you say yes....then the entire collection of songs on your IPS is wiped and you have to replace them by songs on the new Mac and the different iTunes application.
Supposedly it is some sort of piracy protection issue, but at first I was just furious. I can now see the point...if you are connecting to a new iTunes program on a second Mac, why do you need to see the IPS icon?...well, one reason only...to add new songs in since you can't take songs off the IPS without using third party software such as Senuti (http://wbyoung.ambitiouslemon.com/)....but even so, it is just annoying.
I'll be taking my IPS (like I did my Flash drive) to and from work every day. I'll be plugging it in to get at data and also, now and then, to shuffle songs...the same songs. I'll certainly be launching iTunes every day too.
Now, thanks to the way in which Apple has implemented the playlist in the shuffle, I'm going to be faced with that really annoying warning at least a couple of times a day. I have two options....say yes and be forced to do an Autofill whether I wanted it or not, or say no and then, if I change my mind, have to remount the IPS later. Grr!! It's going to bug me!
So, it'll be interesting to see if and how the IPS evolves over the next couple of versions. Based on the discussion forum comments, the issue over playlists seems to be annoying a lot of people. I can't see the physical look of the IPS changing that much...just more drive space I suspect. Given that I've approached my purchase from the IPS being just a more upmarket Flash drive (and that's a good reflection of a reasonable cost to the IPS that I can think of it like that) I'm more than happy with what I've ended up with. I've repeatedly decided against buying an iPod because of where I listen to music the most, but now, I have a cool Flash drive that does fancy stuff...and it's from Apple.
And I have to admit....as silly as it sounds....I'm quite enjoying the unexpected nature of the shuffle playlist and what songs I end up listening too each time I take it away from my Mac.
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