Shuffle the light fantastic
Illustration: Frank Maiorana
I am beginning to think Connex should call the 7.25am train out of Box Hill the iPod Express. This morning, about a dozen of them eased the journey for passengers in my carriage. But how smug was I, the one wearing the new, fashionable musical neckware, an iPod shuffle, and it drew many an envious eye.
I have used iPods for more than three years to carry music and data, but iPod shuffle may turn out to be, for me, the best yet, or at least the model that most charms me.
I use big iPod as a recorder and for music, but don't usually need access to 10,000 songs. The bigger little iPod shuffle, with 1 GB of flash storage, holds more than 200 tracks encoded at 160 kbps - roughly 12 hours of continuous play - enough for lots of music and two hours from Audible.com of Robin Williams talking about Martian gargoyles, computer vampires and Lenny Bruce.
The shuffle is tiny, a mere slip of svelte white plastic that hangs on a silvery cord. It is gossamer-light, a mere 22 grams, so that very quickly you forget it is there.
It shuffles tracks, meaning it chooses randomly. There is no screen read-out to find a specific track but you can select a straight playlist rather than the shuffle.
Surprisingly, this is not infuriating. Radio is random, why not my iPod? It holds music I have chosen and know. And so I relax and listen, and muse about tiny doorways opening into vast pantheons of sound.
Just think: that tiny pendant contains Jerry O'Sullivan playing the uilleann pipes, a sound to make you weep for the joy and sadness of it, and Louis Armstrong with On the Sunny Side of the Street, and much more.
There's U2 and Mary Black, Eva Cassidy, Sting, Alison Krauss, Bryn Terfel and von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic filling my mind with Beethoven's wonderful Pastoral Symphony. Man, it's crowded in there, and that's without counting Pavarotti.
Apple's ad people say, with some justification, that life is random, why not make it so with your music? Generic flash players have tiny grey LCD screens and assorted buttons. Does one need them?
The iPod shuffle has a single button set - five in a circle resembling the big iPod's click wheel - play/pause, back, forward, louder and softer. On the other side is a battery condition switch with a tiny green LED and a bigger slide switch to choose between shuffle mode, straight play and off, the latter a battery-saving feature that ought to be on full-sized iPods.
I found the slider slightly difficult to use. Licking the thumb to dampen it helped, but perhaps ridging its matte surface would improve the grip.
Like its bigger brothers that are essentially portable hard drives given some smart and friendly software to manage music, data and photographs, iPod shuffle is basically conventional technology - a USB flash memory stick, with 512 MB or 1 GB capacity, costing $149 ($229 for the bigger one), light, convenient and a paragon of minimalist design.
Battery life is about 12 hours and charging, through the USB port or an accessory dock, takes about four hours. Control is via iTunes on your Mac or PC. You can use Autofill for a "surprise me" mix from your iTunes library, load specific playlists or divide the memory into data and music, using an onscreen slider.
You can use MP3, AAC, Audible (spoken books) and WAV files, but not CD format AIFF (iTunes does the conversion when you rip a disc and will also convert DRM-locked WMA files to AAC, MP3 or WAV.)
Like iPod major and mini, the shuffle is bound to spawn another wave of accessories. Already there are armbands, stands, docks, extension cables and so on and it cannot be long before we begin to see cases to turn them into jewelled danglers for the fashion conscious.
The packaging, a green box, is just as nicely designed, holding the shuffle, its neck cord, a spare cap for the USB connector and a CD of iTunes and other software for Mac or Windows.
Given that the public puts lawyers south of dog catchers and journalists on the popularity ladder, one wonders why corporations so often sool them on those they find inconvenient.
Apple is copping flak for swatting the rumour sites that plague it. Nick de Plume, nom de plume of Nick Ciarelli, a 19-year-old Harvard student who runs ThinkSecret (thinksecret.com), was sued in January for predicting Mac mini and iWork. Now the heat is on three other rumourmongers.
Apple wants to plug the leaks, maybe internal, more likely among outside contractors. Fair enough, innovation is their DNA, as boss Steve Jobs said. But the legal eagles who have subpoenaed the reporters' ISP, Nfox.com, trying to find incriminating emails, have been slammed for sneakiness, bullying and stomping on the sacred First Amendment.
The journalists, who work for AppleInsider and powerpage.org, say they're just doing their jobs in reporting "revelations received" about Asteroid, a device Apple is alleged to be developing to link musical instruments to computers.
Electronic Frontiers Foundation is defending the reporters, something it did not do for Ciarelli, though said Apple was "ill-advised" to pursue him.
If you have any queries about Macs, contact Garry Barker at firstname.lastname@example.org