Apple unveils redesigned iPod shuffle with speech technology - Page 9

Here's why I don't think the controls suit me. First of all, don't like to shuffle through my tracks. I put albums on there and listen in sequence most of the time. Say I want to skip ahead five tracks. What was it, two clicks to advance? So I have to double-click, wait, double-click, wait, double-click, wait, double-click, wait, double-click. Or, on my current shuffle, click-click-click-click-click on the forward button. Much simpler in my opinion.

Just as any new HID, the general public may be split in approval opinions. However, over time people will renounce this new method of input control and the device will fade away.


Well, I am one of those people. Fortunately I possess the brain power to remember how my Shuffle is oriented on my shirt / shorts so when my finger touches the ring, I know where to press it to get the desired result. This is why I bought my shuffle. And I'm quite happy with it.

Has anyone on the east coast seen these things at Apple retail stores?

I love how so many people throw out numbers they're obviously making up. I think they actually believe their own personal anecdotal experience equals hard, irrefutable data that speaks for the entire world. Anyone who thinks there aren't a large number of people replacing Apple's earphones need only look in the headphone section on Apple's own site. The Apple store sells over 100 headphones made by other companies. If there weren't a market for them, Apple wouldn't offer so many earphones FROM OTHER companies on their OWN SITE. Then visit Amazon and see how many different headphones they sell. Do you honestly think that only a scant few of those are replacing Apple's crappy headphones?

I've probably spent close to $15,000 over the last 20 years, maybe more on Apple products, computers, iPods, monitors, laserwriters, software all tallied up so I'm not an Apple hater, but I've never been able to figure out why so many people defend each and every thing Apple does with religious fervor as if Steve J was the Pope of the Holy Church of Gadgets.

lol Touché


I used to work in Apple retail as first a Sales Associate and then a Genius, and from my own experience the third party accessory wall did sell headphones but not nearly as many as one would assume. As a few others have stated, not many individuals wish to spend more $$$ on headphones for a $79 shuffle or a $149 nano. Generally speaking (and no, I certainly have no concrete facts or numbers) most people stick with the packaged headphones as they're less apt to spend more on another headset and/or don't believe the packaged headphones are such an issue.

As per your other comment inferring that Apple fanboys come to Apple's defense too often, judging from the comments on this thread alone it seems more often that Apple fanboys are more apt at criticizing Apple. Then again, who is to state that everyone commenting are truly Apple fanboys...

Let me start by saying that I love 9 out of every 10 Apple products.

This one is clearly the case of that 10th product that sucked ass.

Small just for the sake of smallness, unintuitive interface (Don Norman will vomit when he sees it), the triple click is a joke, and the no-buttons-let's-change-songs-with-the-whitebuds decision is plain stupid. They might as well add an external speaker, pre-load it with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and change the USB cable for a serial DB9 port to finish alienating me altogether.

The sad thing for the consumer and good design, is that Apple will most likely get away with it because hey, it's APPLE, they can do no wrong lately.

The bottom line is this is a weird ipod, and a step backwards. I KNOW YOU CAN LEARN TO USE IT, IT DOES NOT LOOK THAT HARD.... the problem is.... it's not elegant, it's not simple and it's not intuitive. People instantly recognize that the small triangle means play, the small square means stop, and the same goes for forward and backward signs, + and - for volume, etc... Apple just raped standarization and gave us this monstruosity.

DESIGN FAIL.

Possible consumer success tho.

See my original point about personal anecdotal experience. From what I can tell you worked at 1 brick and mortar store. Do you have sales figures for other Apple stores or Apple's online store? The $159, B&O A8s alone have 460 reviews on the Apple site. The number of people who write reviews is a tiny, tiny number of the people who actually buy the product. Most of the others have less reviews but the fact that they are there at all tells you something. You also ignored all the other online sellers. I'm guessing as many people buy the shuffle because of its size as they do the price. If your into getting the best sound you can get, you are not going to limit the quality of your earphones based on how much you spent on the output device, especially if you have multiple devices. Audiophiles do go out doors occasionally, they remain audiophiles once there. Who says everyone replacing Apple earphones is buying the uber pricey models anyway? Many replace them for comfort or ones that won't fall out during exercise, or the better sound isolation of buds with other lower to mid range earphones. Of the people I know personally who have iPods, most replace the earphones especially if they exercise with them. I over heard a Best Buy salesman talking to another customer who came in asking about headphones. The salesman asked what he was connecting it to. The guy said an iPod. The salesman replied something along the lines of, "Yeah, we seem to get a lot of people looking to upgrade their iPod earphones." I prefer my anecdotal experience over yours, it means about as much. Why dismiss a significant number of customers who want better options for reasonable purposes as meaningless? I don't understand that mind set from anyone other than Apple employees or shareholders.

What people are really objecting to here is Apple's infuriating habit of needlessly reducing options that leave many of their customers out in the cold. Apple still sells the 1 gig shuffle but why did they get rid of the 2 gig shuffle? Because it will "cannibalize" the sales of the new 4 gig shuffle? I doubt it. It would just offer a wider range of products to more people. Anyway, who cares? If that's the one their customers want than sell it to them. If companies only offered products aimed at the largest number of total customers, Apple wouldn't exist at all. Just about anyone expressing an opinion that is anything other then "kudos for Apple" on this site is summarily attacked or labeled trolls as if you have to fall in love with every product Apple makes or you're some sort of traitor. That is weird.

Ugh, this debate is getting a little too serious...

Klipsch to offer headphones for new iPod shuffle http://www.macworld.com/article/1393...3/klipsch.html

but with the 100 USD price tag you'd be better off getting a nano.

I think the three biggest criticisms of the new iPod shuffle comes to this:

1) The controls are just too minimalist for users of the current shuffle.
2) You either need a special headphone with controls on the headphone or a special headphone adaptor for this new player (what a dumb idea!!).
3) The battery life is just a tad too short.

And you wonder why for not much bigger you can get the VASTLY superior SanDisk SANSA Clip, where you have real navigation controls and display screen, can use any headphone with a 3.5 mm stereo phone jack, and offers around 15 hours maximum of battery life.

Some of us have ears that are simply too small to use earbuds. I hope they keep the earlier Shuffle as an option... love mine. I use it when doing tasks where I need to adjust the volume from time to time to override noises from appliances. I won't be buying one of these "earbud only or no control" devices.

I paid over $350 for my Sony Noise Cancellation headphones* which I have used on all my iPods. When the adapter comes out, I'll get that too. I love the idea of being able to to control the iPod without having to take it out of my pocket or from under my sweater/jacket.

It is really perplexing that all the complaining and nobody here has even seen the new iPod. And in the meantime the reviews after actual trial are coming in, extremely positive.

As well, unless they are holding and viewing a 'video' iPod, nearly everybody is flicking through their music blindly. Moving the controls up the line, so-to-speak, brings a conveniences that will soon be the norm in future iPod releases and nobody except those that don't get one for free will continue to complain.

* "Another option is the use of noise-canceling headphones. Unlike earbuds, noise-canceling headphones quiet or eliminate background noise. That means listeners dont feel the need to crank up the volume so high as to damage their hearing, Garstecki said." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1216191834.htm

I always like to use my own headphones with any device. This model fails to impress me. The last gen was better.

The headphone controls for the iPhone are great. I'm guessing that Apple saw them as huge success which is why they felt comfortable with releasing this new Shuffle.

I'm reading complaint after complaint about how you have to click twice and hold to FF through a song, and so forth, but I don't recall ever doing that with my 2G Shuffle. This device has exactly what I've been looking for: Playlists, VoiceOver and Apple Lossless. Now I don't to covert my audio, can have different playlists for different parts of my workout and can finally use Shuffle knowing what song will be next without having to wait for it to start up. If we go on this forum on this forum alone I am the odd man out for wanting this device.

1) Stick with or buy last year's model

2) Buy new headphones or the adapter that supports the controls.


PS: Just wait until Apple makes the iPhone Shuffle into a phone in a few years. Since it can speak to you it can guide you through the menu and read off your contacts the same way it reads off songs and artists. To dial a number that isn't in your address book you'll just do a series of clicks on the headphone control similar to the lengthy dialing of a rotary phone. In may go something like this: First click through the menu to the phone app and then hold to access the dialer. Clicking the dialer the number of times for each number would be crazy (9 clicks for 9, 10 for zero, 11 for star and 12 for pound), so you'll do a series of long and short clicks and holds reminiscent to Morse code. You can't get any simpler than that.

hey that's great that you do that, i also use 3rd party headphones. but this is a clippable ipod. controls were already on the outside on the previous version of the shuffle.


it's not about the LOOKS, it is simply pointing out that designwise, it is a step backwards for the sake of smallness. i'm sure it's an excellent player. i love the shuffle, i have a 1st gen myself.

perhaps there will be a third party manufacturer that comes out with an adapter or headphones with controls that look just like the controls on the previous shuffle. that oughta make some of us happier. if not, well, 2nd gens are still being shown on apple.com and they will still be available for a while.

It is harder to implement, because hebrew and arabic needs also a vowelizer because those languages usually don't write vowels. So, "fthr" can be "father", "fother" or anything else.

For the moment, you can't use two applications in the same time, that's why you don't have full speech recognition or a screenreader for the whole system. That's why you have companies like Acapela Group who can furnish speech synthesis SDK to implement in your application.

I doubt the adapter will be wireless so it will most likely attach to the shuffle itself not clip to the same place on the cord the standard one does. If not directly, probably by a short cable attached to a Jack. I can see that being rather awkward. If the adapter has it's own cord, it will probably be short. If not, the adapter plus headphones combined will be long enough to to put a hook on the end and go fly fishing with it. All this means that unless the adapter comes with a long cord which presents it's own problems, keeping the unit in you pocket won't allow you to control it.

Only the 1 gig. Why not the 2 gig? Because that would make more sense.

I went to the Apple Store last night and finally got to check one of these moe foes out in person. I must say that it is a very nice, discreet iPod that a lot of people should be happy with. The controls on the ear bud cord work just fine like they did on my iPhone 3G.

From my 5 minutes of play, i thought it was very nice. Now if they had colors and custom engravings, I think people would like it even more.