Why the iPod Shuffle sucks, part three
Reason Numéro Trois: Pausing for nothing
The following email has enticed me to begin the third part of my five-part series on why the iPod Shuffle sucks differently than I had initially planned. The excellence of its timing is coupled only by how frighteningly relevant it is to my next point.
Hey,
Seems to me youre only complaining about the functionality of the ipod shuffle. How can it suck when youre just trying to get it to work but obviously can’t? Don’t come out here to bitch and whine about stuff that works which doesn’t work for you. I don’t know how you can complain about the interface when thousands of Ipod users agree that the interface is the best part of the ipod. Why did you buy it? You could have returned it, you know. Seems to me like this is just a ploy to get some easy hits. Loser.
Many thanks to AnonymousMailer@beHidden.com for the words.
Firstly, I would venture to say that the “thousands of iPod users” who collectively agree on the greatness of the device’s interface are raving about the standard iPod or Nano interface. There is no interface with the Shuffle; it’s just play, pause, skip next, skip previous, volume up, and volume down. There’s nothing great about it, it’s just about as basic as it can get. If people are indeed raving about that, they need to get out more.
Also, I didn’t buy it: it was a gift.
But my anonymous friend is right on one thing: my previous write-ups had mostly to do with the usability of the Shuffle which is something terribly subjective. Rest assured that usability is not the only issue I have with the device (albeit it being a rather substantial one). No, there’s also that little situation where my iPod Shuffle just stops playing.
I believe my home to be haunted. Honestly. On rare occasions, I have heard a girl crying late at night when everything is quiet and the windows are shut. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s undeniable when it does. The first time my iPod Shuffle stopped playing was at home as I was on the couch reading. Suddenly, no more music. It just stopped abruptly in the middle of a song. My first thought was that our ghost had taken up poltergeisting for more attention. However, the iPod was displaying the exact same behaviour while I listened to it at work, and I was pretty sure the ghost wasn’t commuting with me.
It’s a sudden cut, exactly as if one had pressed pause in the middle of a song. Normally, when you hit the play/pause button for a break in the music, a blinking green light flashes at the top of the iPod to indicate its status. In this case, no light. In fact, pressing the play/pause button in this circumstance actually causes the Shuffle’s green light to blink, as if it had been paused. But there is no music. So you’re basically pausing…
THE VOID.
Pressing play/pause once again doesn’t restart the music. The light stops blinking, indicating that it has left paused mode, yet not a sound eeks into the earbuds. It’s like being caught in MP3 limbo: you can pause and play your music files, but you can’t listen to them. It’s a RIAA wet dream.
Calling Apple support is just as useful as reading the manual: press start/pause three times fast to reset the playlist. If that doesn’t work, turn it on and off three times fast to effectively reboot the iPod. While either of these solutions do succeed in getting the Shuffle to work again, they also carry the burden of resetting the playlist. Thus, the playlist will either start over from its initial place or a new one will be generated. Either way, you’re either going to end up listening to songs which have just made their way into your ears or will have to skip over them to hear the new ones. So not only did I have to deal with this annoying bug that no amount of Shuffle updates have succeeded in eliminating, but I have to subject myself to my second gripe, which is not good.
And sometimes, late at night, when the moon is dark and the iPod is silent, you can hear the melancholy cries from within that Quebec City home…
another dissenting voice here. iPod user since the beginning, think I’m going to be in the market for a flash mp3 player soon and I gotta say the Nano isn’t on my list. I picked up a nano for my wife for her birthday and she’s had no problem with it, which is nice considering the fact that she went through 2 3rd gen ipods both of which locked up and died on her after less than half a year of use. That being said Sony’s New Walkman looks damn sexy, is the size of a thumb drive, and is also damn sexy.
The only problem with your solution is the Sony part.
damn sexy.
Wow, I didn’t know you were trolling [sic.] for hits. Why would anyone link yo your post unless agreeing? Maybe the anonymous coward was linked here from a Dutch message board…?
I have had so much trouble with Sony products throughout history that I refuse to buy most anything with their name on it because of all the strange breakdowns and stoppages.
PS: Brutalism is still a fucking sweet style.
Daaamn. Sexy.
[…] In our last exciting episode, our hero (me) was assaulted by inexplicable playback interruptions while listening to music on his iPod Shuffle. Now he is faced with the dire Apple recommendation of resetting the playlist to be able to continue enjoying talented musical acts on his portable MP3 device. Will he do it? What grim outcome awaits his day of musical pleasure if he does? […]
my ipod shuffle isn’t working it has no songs but i did put songs on there but it doesn’t show and doesn’t play but it stil takes up memery in it
I just bought my wife an iPod shuffle for Mother’s Day. Wal-Mart. 40 bucks. Hot pink. Yay.
It originally gave me a problem because it appears as an external USB mass-storage device on my Windows XP system, and I can drag and drop songs to it, but when I try to play the songs, the little light on top blinkies orange and green. After deciphering the sequence using the near-useless instruction card, I have determined it thinks there is no music on it. Why won’t this retarded thing play my music?
HERE IS THE SOLUTION……..
I don’t know why its so hard to determine this fact, and THIS is the only website I found that explains it.
Your iPod doesn’t play mp3’s.
Apple devices speak the antiquated “Quicktime Format” language.
Duh.
Get thine self online and download itunes from here…
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
Its free, its stupid, and you need it to convert your mp3s’ to quicktime. It will also show you how to do the secret Apple user handshake and give you the password to the Secret Supercool Apple User Clubhouse in the woods near your place.
Just download it and bang around on it for a bit. Eventually you will accidentally convert your music to Quicktime and load it onto your iPod Shuffle. Whoopie.
You know, I seriously think the Chinese mp3 player I bought at an electronic liquidator is much better. It plays any format of anything. It plays ANY video, ANY audio, I think if you could jam a cheese sandwich in there it would play it. It has a radio for some reason, and a calculator, calendar,voice recorder and a spork. It was about 50 bucks.
The iPod Shuffle is cute. But its just a flash memory card with a knob on it.
Thanks for letting me rant, or as they say in Quicktime “Golfclub Hairstyle Fish!”
Rick
Ipod shuffle sucks because of the following:
1. No playlist option
2. No LCD Display
No Playlist means = boring… You mean to tell me, I can’t group songs together in playlists or folders. It is just a one shot deal where I dump 200 songs into the IPOD shuffle and play. damn, I feel stupid for not knowing this before I bought it. I am going to return it ASAP. There are a shit load of MP3 players in the market for ~50 to $75 that play everything (only mp3 not mp4). Mp4 players are newer and a bit more expensive. The only good thing about IPOD is that it allows you to set the volume and equilizer for the songs.. which is cool. Where as commercial Mp3 players just copy files straight into folders… No software, just firmware. Copy songs put them in folders and that’s it.. Sometimes you get a built in equilizer.
IPOD 1st gen 10GB. Had this for 1 year then the problem started creeping up. It just froze like (windows) and all other buttons pressed after that would be irrelevent. Usually, it took 2 or 3 days for the thing to reset itself. It would literally stay frozen till the battery ran out! This freezing thing happened once or twice every week for the last 2 years. And now the damn thing completely crashed. It shows 8 GB data but then it can’t find any playlists. ITUNES Windows won’t recognize it, Mac doesn’t recognize it.
shuffle makes you less cool
ipod shuffle dont bloody suck but its wierd that it dont have any screen