Everything you need: unbiased reviews, product specs and great deals.
|
Apple iPod Shuffle 1st Generation White (512 MB) MP3 PlayerThe first generation iPod shuffle was designed to be easily loaded with a selection of songs and to play them in random order. Owners of...
Read More
The first generation iPod shuffle was designed to be easily loaded with a selection of songs and to play them in random order. Owners of existing iPods had often left the music selection to “shuffle”, and the iPod shuffle was a way of implementing that in a much more cost-effective fashion. It relies on the use of an “autofill” feature in iTunes, which can select songs at random from a user’s music library (or from a specific playlist) and copy as many as will fit into iPod shuffle’s memory.
Minimize
|
|
106 Reviews from Shopping.com
|
iPod shuffle - just what I needed
| Author's Rating: |
|
Pros: Very small (~1 in3) iTMS/AAC support, simplicity of use, build quality, good included earbuds
Cons: Not many I can think of
The Bottom Line:
Great little player that does everything you need it to
I bought the iPod shuffle (iPs) because it was just what I needed: it's small, light, has the right capacity for me, and it supports iTunes Music Store (iTMS) *.M4P encrypted AAC files as well as *.M4A unencrypted AAC files.
The packaging of the iPs is very nice. You lift up the adhesive tab at the top of the box, lift up the cardboard tab, slide out the inner package, remove the green documentation package from the inner package, and pop out the iPs from its plastic holder.
I already had iTunes v4.7.1 installed, so I won't get into detail about it. v4.7.1 is required for use with the iPs, and adds a feature called Autofill. When you plug in the iPs, it by default automatically fills it with a random selection from your music library. If you have less music than the full capacity of the player, you'll end up with all your music on the player. However, you aren't limited to a random selection. You can source the music from any playlist or smart playlist as well.
You can reserve part of the iPs for use as a UPS drive by enabling "Disk Mode" in iTunes and dragging the slider to say how much you want to reserve for data.
The included earbuds are standard iPod earbuds, which are much better than most of the earbuds that come standard with music players.
Many people are badmouthing the iPs because it doesn't have a screen. With the iPs, you'll find you don't even need one. Also, you don't have to shuffle all the time. There's a 3 position switch on the back allowing you to select Off, Play In Order, and Shuffle.
On the front of the iPs you have these buttons:
________________
/ Vol Up \
|Prev PLAY Next|
| /PAUSE |
\____Vol Down____/
On the back you have the aforementioned 3 position switch as well as a button that shows the battery status.
On the front underneath the plastic there are 2 LEDs (orange and green) to indicate different status messages. This page (http://www.apple.com/support/ipodshuffle/reference/) at Apple Support lists all the different blink codes.
I think the iPs is a great player, and would highly recommend buying it.
Back to all reviews
