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View Full Version : Just bought an i-pod shuffle, ummmmm



ian elliot
October 18th, 2010, 08:28
My old Sony mp3 player gave up the goast after 4 years loyal service, and im thinking i should have stayed with the same make. My old player needed no software for it to run fine so i did raise an eyewbrow when i realised i had to download a 70 mg driver package for the shuffle to work, although it seems most of it is gear'd towards getting you to sign up for an i-tunes acount rather than the nuts and bolts of runing the player.
But the biggest pain is the performance of loading it up with tracks, esp complete albums, normally it was a case of copying an album to my music and just copy-paste the wma album to the sony and away you go. With this thing, first you copy the album to your pc the normal way and then i-tunes has to convert the wma-mp3 tracks to another format before there reconised by the shuffle ( which seems to take twice as long ), and then you realise that you cant play complete albums ( well actually you can but they take some finding, say you have 4 albums and you want to hear the 3rd album first, you have to go through the tracks one by one before you get to the start of the album you want ) so you have to create a "palylist" ( thats compilation in English ) of the album tracks in order, re-transfer them to the shuffle and then your good to go, jeezzzz!
On the first night of playing around with this thing, i was tossing a coin between asking for my money back and taking a hammer to it, but now im getting the hang of it, i actually quite like it. But i do wonder, if making something simple complicated was an olimpic sport then Apple would certainlly be in line for a silver, possibly a Gold,
I did notice, while looking on the net that someone had released software that did convert your i-shuffle (probably an older model ) to a normal no frills copy and play player, ummm intresting.
cheers ian

Emil Frand
October 18th, 2010, 09:16
there are 4 various ipods in our house, first one was a shuffle and I agree its harder to figure out at first but once you got it its easy and get itunes its great for buying the one song you want here and there.

Lewis-A2A
October 18th, 2010, 11:30
I love my shuffle, great for listening to tunes whilst I skate. But like you I am annoyed at Apple. Great hardware coupled witht he forcing of the users to 'use our way or the highway'. Its one of the big things that really erks me about Apple as a whole. There working practices for the end user can be such a pain in the ass.

The cheap mp3 players might not be as innovative hardware wise but that all important drag and drop is still nice and easy to use.

traindriver98
October 18th, 2010, 11:38
I'll stick with my Sony. The drag and drop is nice, plus it works with i-tunes.

Quixoticish
October 18th, 2010, 12:05
I'm stuck with Apple as there's nothing on the market with a capacity as large as the Ipod Classic and I hate being forced to use their software and their atrocious library.

stiz
October 18th, 2010, 18:35
I love my shuffle, great for listening to tunes whilst I skate. But like you I am annoyed at Apple. Great hardware coupled witht he forcing of the users to 'use our way or the highway'. Its one of the big things that really erks me about Apple as a whole. There working practices for the end user can be such a pain in the ass.

The cheap mp3 players might not be as innovative hardware wise but that all important drag and drop is still nice and easy to use.

ditto .... btw .. anyone tried the new one with the controlls on the earphone lead?? tried one the other week ... ugh horrible design!

Lionheart
October 18th, 2010, 18:36
I was never really into music till I got the iPod Touch. Now Im in the iPhone and I am a worse music-aholic. On a night when I cant sleep, I'll stroll through iTunes listening to a hundred diff samples (maybe 200 or more actually) to find some new music and albums.

With iPhone OS, you can select the albums by album art, artist, etc, with options like Genre (say Christian for instance) then turn on Shuffle and go. Pretty nice.

I also like changing out the album art. I might even make better ones then some of those that come with the music.


I have held off buying the Nano, the new one with the screen. The thing is the size of a slightly large postage stamp. It calls my name at night, but I ignore it, clutching my iPhone.... cold sweat dripping down my forehead....