MP3
Posted: Wed 23 February, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Thoughts 3 Comments »Today, Diamond Geezer’s writing about his new iPod Shuffle. I do kind of like the idea of the Shuffle, but the two main ‘selling points’ are the ones that would irritate me the most. No display, and an enforced random play. I like having the option to go through tracks randomly, but sometimes I want to just listen to the album straight through. And no display annoys the tits off me, and would do so even more with added random play.
My first ‘stick’ MP3 player was a 128Mb Phillips ‘wearable’ MP3 player (hey, they called it that, I didn’t) which didn’t have a display, and also had the bloody annoying habit of resetting itself to the start of the list of tracks for no good reason. But the 128Mb was enough to suffice for what I wanted – two or three albums worth, and no joggling or blipping when on the move. But it also had no display, and that bugged me after a while – I wanted to know what was playing, or whether it’d decided to reset back to the start, or what would come next. This was obviously a regular complaint about the product, as I notice that the latest one has a display on it.
Unfortunately, that one had a kind of canine-related accident. In other words I’d left it in the USB port on the computer (it also charged up via USB, which was kind of handy on occasion) and the dog’s wagging tail knocked it out, slightly knacking the USB plug. Ooops. So I ended up buying an iRiver 256Mb stick. It’s got a display, which is nice. I can choose whether I want to play sequentially, or randomly through an album, a selection, or through the entire 256Mb. It can also record and encode MP3 on the fly through an onboard microphone, or from the built-in radio. Well, it would if the radio function weren’t utterly shit. But recording line-in or through the microphone isn’t bad at all. It also gets about 40 hours of playback from one AA battery.
I don’t need a huge memory on the stick – yeah, sure, I could have bought the one with 1Gb of memory, but I wouldn’t have really utilised it. 256Mb holds six or seven albums, which is fine for a couple of days of walking to work, working, going to the gym, etc. Then I just wipe what’s on it and start again. Suits me fine.
Having the display is – for me – far better. I can navigate easily through the file structure to find the album I want without it turning into a nightmare of guesswork. (How many tracks on that album? How many keypresses will it register for skipping through the tracks?) The iRiver suits my needs – particularly now I’ve got the sound equaliser sorted, and at decent volume the bass comes through beautifully. And Pressure Drop’s “Food for Love” and “Elusive” albums illustrate that perfectly. But more about those – and some of the other music going through it – at some other point.
I had an iRiver (now have an iPod) and would say although it has a screen, it has the most bazaar and strange menu structure on the planet, that it might as well have a “Whale Squeak” interface for all it’s worth.
It took me a while when going from iRiver to iTunes to stop trying to force the iPod to use my folder structure. At some point I realised that if I didn’t care about folder structure and started caring about music, I could just pic the music I wanted, without having to worry about where or why it was. I just could listen to the right music. That’s when I realised why the iPod/iTunes was so successful, is that the menu and interface is written in “easy to fucking use” rather than “whale squeak”.
As a side note, I agree on you that not having a screen is not suited to me. Expect when I’m running, or in the gym, or really on short commutes like the bus. So maybe it is. I suspect that many users of the Shuffle are people who will use it for sport (ever tried looking at a screen when running flat out?) and people who realise just how bloody cheap it is (for its space). What I suspect will happen is over the next year the Shuffle will get cheaper and a Shuffle with a screen will arrive at the price the shuffle is now.
Also I think many people will buy a full size iPod AND a Shuffle. One for sports and quick trips and the gym, and Saturday nights and when they want something ULTRAprtable and light. And one for storing their entire music collection on.
My 2c anyway.
I was a bit put off by the enforced random thing too, until I found out that you can play it straight through too.
Also, it doubles as a keydrive, and within itunes you can set how much of the space you want to be used for music and how much for data.
Since I’ve been looking to get both an inexpensive music playing beastie (I don’t have a long commute and I’m not all that often on my own for it) and a keydrive (for work stuff) I’m now convinced enough that I intend to get a 1gb ipod shuffle as soon as the old bank balance permits.
Maybe I’m odd, but I’ve always preferred my music randomly assembled. I also prefer to listen highlights rather than complete albums, so enforced shuffling suits me fine. If I had no other way of listening to music I know the lack of a display would drive me up the wall, but I recognise all the tracks I’m listening to at the moment without needing to check what they are.