Why the iPod Shuffle sucks, part one
One year ago, yours truly switched banking institutions. As a thank-you gift, the bank gave me an iPod Shuffle. I was suprised and happy. I had been trying to find ways to save up enough to buy one for months, so this was a very welcomed and appreciated gift. Granted, it was the low-end iPod model and I woud have really preferred a hard drive model, but I finally had an MP3 player, one which would work itself perfectly into my Mac love and could entertain my daily commutes.
But now, one year later, I can say with confidence, disgruntlement, and poise that the Apple iPod Shuffle sucks.
I listen to music a lot. Quite a lot. My Shuffle has had quite a workout, easily playing tunes 4 to 6 hours a day, five days a week. However, the initial enchantment of its ease of use and wonderous integration with iTunes has since worn into regular reminders that I’m happy I didn’t have to shell out money for the thing. This is why I feel compelled to bring you the first of a five-part series which will express the individual reasons which have brought me to publically voice the end of the honeymoon between my Shuffle and I.
Reason Numéro Un: The DRM
So I would take my Shuffle to work, listening to it on the bus, casually eyeing people around me to see if they noticed I was sporting the distinctive white wires of the iPod’s earbud headphones, thus considering me cooler than they were. The snug presence of the buds would remain right into my office space where I would settle in, pour myself a beverage, and prepare to tackle my day, as they stayed sunk into my ears, resonanting with the sounds of my favourite music artists.
The one day I was tired of feeling the bulge of the diminutive speakers, I got the bright idea of stuffing my iPod into my work computer, copying the files to my hard drive, and spare my eardrums from the decibel spike by listening to the music from the computer’s speaker. When I plugged the Shuffle into the USB port, the computer asked me if I wanted to “assign” this iPod to this computer. If so, the contents of the iPod would be erased.
I had been introduced to Apple’s Digital Rights Management system.
By glancing over my current iTunes library, I would roughly estimate it being made up of 80% RIAA free music. Most of the music I listen to comes from scowering the Internet to find original and unknown indie artists who offer free MP3s of their work. Then, if I like it, I’ll buy the CD. I don’t buy MP3s. In this respect, the iTunes Music Store has always been an afterthought of mine. I had never really been confronted to Apple’s FairPlay DRM and its limitative playlist exporting and whatnot.
Imagine my shock when my iPod, which I owned, didn’t allow me to transfer music, which I had either bought or had obtained with consent from the artist, onto another machine. I had no intentions of distributing the songs across a P2P network or upload them to a Carracho server for users to download. The idea was just like bringing a CD over to a friend’s house to listen to it. Only I wanted to listen to a lot of music from a lot of different artists without having to lug 25 compact disc cases with me, which is the whole point of owning an MP3 player in the first place.
It was doubly frustrating because most of the music which is on my Shuffle isn’t even subject to the RIAA’s itchy woolen blanket of rights protection, one of the reasons why Apple built this stupid “feature” in. How dare Apple assume that I only listen to RIAA member music?
Sure, I could have just activated the “Enable Disk Use” option, copy files onto the iPod’s disk portion, and transfer them to the new computer upon arrival, but then I couldn’t listen to the music on the Shuffle on my way over to work. The model I have is the 512MB one, which contains about six hours of music. So even if I enabled 50 percent of the disk to be used as storage, I could only get about three hours of tunes on the work computer before stuffing the earbuds back into my head if I didn’t want to hear the same songs over again, which was kind of against the purpose.
Obviously, I eventually found out about applications like iGadget and Broken Helix, which allowed me to have my Shuffle act how I wanted it to act. But had I paid for the device, further irritation would have overcome me since I would have had to look to third party software to overcome such garbage.
That was the earliest blow to my enjoyment of my iPod Shuffle. It felt incredibly embarassing to tell someone that I couldn’t let him listen to a few good tracks I had because the device wouldn’t let me.
Part two next week.
Yuck, sorry to hear that. But your rant is really entertaining. I’m looking forward to part II.
I own an ipod shuffle and one of the new 30GB ipods. I wouldn’t know about the DRM considering my work won’t let us plug any device into our PCs for fear of viruses (and fear of too much fun being had at work). I loved my shuffle but I felt the need to upgrade to the real deal.
I highly recommend getting the new 30 GB at some point–best of all, you can watch a movie on it! Talk about being cooler than everyone else, LOL!
I totally agree, the DRM on these players is totally out of control. Luckily, there is a ton of third party software available that allows you to hack your iPod to bring it to its full potential.
I totally agree, the DRM on these players is totally out of control. Luckily, there is a ton of third party software available that allows you to hack your iPod to bring it to its full potential.
Dude, hate to break the news to you, but what you experienced is NOT Apple’s DRM. What you experienced is simply Apple’s decision that an iPod can only be auto-synced to one computer at a time. You’d experience this even if you filled it up with nothing but your own CD rips which has NO DRM the songs at all. I’m not saying I, or any one else, likes this behavior, but not liking it doesn’t make it DRM. Yes, there _should_ be some way to allow multiple computer libraries to auto-sync to an iPod, but there isn’t, and that’s the breaks.
While I haven’t personally tried it, my understanding is that if you turn off auto syncing and only manually add/remove songs to the iPod, you can perform this on multiple computers. Again, I don’t know this for a fact because, personally, I only need to sync my iPod to one computer.
DRM, on the other hand, is what Apple uses to keep _iTMS-purchased_ music under control. It makes your songs only playable on your iPod and your computers. And I think it’s generous enough to allow you to enable up to 5 computers to play the music. But again, this ONLY applies to iTMS purchases. If you’ve bought some music from the iTunes Music Store, you can enable both your home and your work computer to play them.
Blog your disdain of DRM if you like…I doubt you’ll find many people who’ll say you’re wrong. But at least understand what DRM is and where it applies and quit blaming DRM on things that are unrelated.
unfortunately the angry Apple fan-boy is sort of correct, if you turn off auto-sync you can plug your iPod into any computer of the same format (apple to apple, windows to windows) and listen to your music via iTunes that way, though it must be iTunes and you cannot copy your music onto the computer. Again if you’re going across Operating Systems it won’t work, and I’m guessing has something to do with differences in the iTunes software for each platform. I can plug my USB mini drive into a Mac or PC and not have problems so the issue probably isn’t hardware formatting but again I don’t really know.
Luckily the angry Apple fan-boy, being a fan-boy, became so huffy he completely missed the point. For starters not being able to copy music from your iPod completely constitutes DRM. DRM isn’t some magical code that is encoded to MP3’s or DVDs, but refers to all measures or technology used to stifle peer to peer sharing whether by internetworks or good old fashion tape trading. The AAFB, also like the rest of his herd, thinks that Apple has blessed his lowly people by being generous enough to allow them, in their DRM, a whole 5 machines to put your iTunes bought music on. I guess Apple market research figures this is the average amount of computers the Apple Fan-Boy has in usage at one time. It’s not generous, just annoying. Apple is really saying, p2p internet sharing is not okay, unless it’s only with five of your friends who you’ve given your iTunes password to. The main point being is that I paid for the mp3, the mp3 itself has thus become my actual property (though not intellectual) so I should be able to do with it what I want, even if what I do with it is illegal.
Please Angry Apple Fan-boys of the world, before you come into our home on the internet and tell us what to do, please at least read up on the subject you have become so huffy and indignant about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management
I drive a lot. My vehicle is a pre-Compact Disc model.
I live in Texas. Cassettes melt over the span of less than a month.
So I can
A) Keep buying overpriced and increasingly hard-to-find cassettes
B) Record my own cassettes with a small stereo that doesn’t work very well or even belong to me.
C) Listen to the smegma that is modern radio
D) Listen to nothing, fall asleep, and die.
I walk uphill five miles in the snow to get to school.
Also, the community radio station plays decent music and good variety, BUT
Their station makes my long-dead back speakers rattle like Jacob Marley’s chains.
The Shuffle is not so bad if you use iShuffle (freeware) to run it. Then you can use it on any computer any time. It is iTunes that sucks, don’t blame the hardware!
Meh. My sister helped test the early Macs at Notre Dame and came back with a huge disdain for the company which filtered to me. I always preferred my brother’s Amiga.
I have yet to buy a portable digital audio player because of A) The cult of Jobs B) There are precious few that use the fun to say Vorbis .ogg format and C) I already listen to a crapload of music anyhow so I find getting away from the constant flow of music is a nice .
“The Cult of Jobs”? Dude, I bought the iPod because I wanted a portable player, and it the nicest looking one out there. The others, with LCD screens, in black or red, just seem to me reminiscent of cheap digital watches. For the style-conscious, iPod is the only alternative. As for the format, .mp3 is what most people need, right? It would be nice to be able to use the .flac format though. However, I’m sure someone will develop an app to let you do that soon. The Shuffle is great for use with alternative OSs.
I’ll agree with you completely on the style issue, Bruce. When it comes to design, the iPod is above all others. Most other MP3 players look like something pulled out of a cereal box.
Whoever said “Apple fan boy” was angry? There’s another misconception…emotion doesn’t come through well in comments. No one’s angry. At least not that I can see.
In any case, the only reason I’m replying again is because I’d used the option to watch for additional comments–because I wanted to ready responses to this. I’m most willing to hear other opinion on whether I’m wrong.
But I’ve watched long enough and no longer care to get notificationis, but your wp-subscription-manager.php file is gone. The manage link produces a 404. Ya wanna handle that?
Hm. Interesting. Thanks for the heads-up, Lee. Let me take a look at that.
geez if I knew you were so rational I wouldn’t have tried to incite a flamewar in the first place.
When I said Angry Apple Fan boy I didn’t mean you specifically, only just that your post was kind of the boilerplate response that The Cult of Mac makes to any kind of derision of apple products.
Your point about Mike’s ineptitude with the autosyncing was spot on, and in fact if it wasn’t for his boneheaded-jump-to-conclusiveness we wouldn’t have had any misunderstanding in the first place.
“Dude, I bought the iPod because I wanted a portable player, and it the nicest looking one out there. The others, with LCD screens, in black or red, just seem to me reminiscent of cheap digital watches. For the style-conscious, iPod is the only alternative.”
I prefer functionality over style and thus far I have not found any iPods I have tried out or had demonstrated to me have anything really blow me away. The unified style of Mac lines just bothers me on a concious and subconcious level.
I would actually prefer an older looking Soviet kitsch style player but that’s my own style going through. I actually enjoy my computer boxes being beige and monsterous looking (brutalism is a valid style bastards) instead of the dominant trend to eschew sharp lines.
Some of it is also my distate for candy colors (the other colored iWhatever stuff). Most of the items I own are in one color: gray/silver.
[…] - Why the iPod Shuffle sucks, part 1 - Why the iPod Shuffle sucks, part 2 - Why the iPod Shuffle sucks, part 3 […]
You’re obviously not all that smart with iPods are you? Well you do know you can sync your shuffle and put it on 5 different comps right? And you can just go into ‘My Computer’, show hidden files, go to iPod_control, copy the music and send it to iTunes without syncing it too? THINK about things before you post about a topic you don’t entirely know the truth about.
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hey, my bf just got me a shuffle, the blue 1GB, and it does suck. Obvs i cant tell him that, but it wont keep songs on it n e more, like after i put them on, they dont stay on when i go to unplug it, and luckily today there are a lot better looking mp3 players out there then just the iPod. Its a sad thing though that it keeps doing this because i really like the thing at first. and its funny that a bunch of guys who can talk all technical and nerdy and stuff, and i dont really know anything, but i already knew how to connect a shuffle to multiple computers the first day! all you need to do is play around with it and not be arfaid to experiment with it, and i learned this doing it secretly at school! i also download songs at school and have downloaded azureus , and hitman contracts says im a ninja extrordinaire! yeah im totally random, but i need to go try to fix my ipod now!! you guys are great entertainment!!
hey yeah i figured it out already all i need to do was check off update checked songs and convert higher bit rate songs and now it works, see? did that take little ol me very long to figure out by myself at school with two teachers around me who are totally oblivious?? naw!!
People of Earth. I am Zok from the planet Zorko. We have decided to invade your planet and destroy all human life on it before it too late. People of Earth, you are a parasite and must be destroyed. A virus will be unleashed on your people in November 2007. Within 3 months from this date most of the human life will have been wiped out. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
iPod shuffle = irritating. I bought one for my wife to put in her nice shiny new car, which unlike Sev’s vehicle has an Aux in jack (now, MY car… that’s a different story. Sigh.)
iTunes is just plain irritating - I really just can’t get my head around the interface and how I can’t organize things into folders and the like. But maybe that’s just me.
Biggest problem I see with the Shuffle is the complete and utter lack of display and the complete and utter lack of being able to put multiple independent playlists on it and flip through them one by one. But again, maybe that’s just me and I don’t know what I’m doing. I held out from buying any Apple stuff for years and this is the first foray.
Sigh.
And DRM is just.plain.annoying. In general. Ask me about my Sony Minidisc sometime and its draconian rules about what can and can’t go on it. Terrible, terrible stuff.
P.S. Yes, I know I am *very* late to the party with this comment.
ipod shuffle sucks, get something like a touch or, classic. your not cooler than someone with a classic. or touch. I mean really, your not cooler than anyone there at the commute like you thought cause they could just come and show you a touch than whos laughin.