- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 614 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
-
14 out of 15 people found this review helpful
1.5 stars
"Shuffle didnt meet my Expectations"
Pros: Creative AutoFill feature, Good pricepoint, and stylish look.
Cons: Worst designed Apple product that I have ever purchased. Missing some essentials like a power adapter. Forget Using it to listen to Audible Books.
Summary: I am a gadget freak and I normally respect Apple products because they are well designed. Just look at the elegant Powerbook power adapter and you can see that Apple's product development team puts a tremendous amount of thought into every design detail.
That's why I had pretty high expectations for the Ipod Shuffle. Afterall I've owned several hard-drive based Ipods, and was accustomed to their brilliant user interface. The Ipod is not as feature rich as some of the other MP3 players, but it is unmatched in usabilty, design, and style, which makes it such a wonderful product.
However the Shuffle dissapoints because of its appalling lack of usability. I hate it not because of its simplicity, but because of its poor design.
I have four major annoyance with the Ipod shuffle which I find to be inexcusable.
First, The Shuffle was designed to be charged via a powered USB port. This may sound okay to some people, but apple really should include a power adapter at the very least. I dont want to keep a computer on for hours each day just to charge it.
Second, you can not sync songs from 2 different computers onto the shuffle. If you try to sync the shuffle to a second computer, all the music content on the shuffle will be erased before allowing any song to sync to it. No other Ipod has this limitation. Apple needs to get rid of this restriction.
Third, You cannot listen to the Shuffle while it is charging. It's unbelievable that Apple didnt envision that some of their users would want to do this.
Finally, listening to audible files on the Shuffle is pure torture. Apple has to come up with a better way of forwarding and rewinding through these long files. The forward and rewind functions are incredibly slow. I hope to see this fixed.
I like the simplicity of the Ipod Shuffle. I also really like the Autofill feature, where I-tunes can fill your shuffle with random songs from your music library if you want it to. I like the dimensions of it as well. I just hate the annoying details that Apple has completely overlooked. I like the Shuffle in concept, but its production is a subpar offering from Apple.
- 3 replies to this review
-
I got this Ipod free from Audible. I agree that the fast forwarding and rewinding is torture, but that wouldn't matter if the support wasn't broken. The stupid shuffle jumps ahead EVERY SINGLE TIME I turn it off. Sometimes, I only have to rewind a bit to find my place, but other times, I have to find the spot in Itunes and resync with the computer.
-
Who?s it for? Me!
It seems like only yesterday I bought a Sony Walkman (maybe late ?70?s) That was the coolest. You know, I didn?t want to invest time in my music management, which is why I waited before I bought an MP3 player. (Is it MP3 still?). Plug and play is what I wanted.
I?m old school. What I wanted most is this: Great sound. I?m spoiled by my component-based audiophile stereo system.
I have a pair of 7-port USB duplicators ? 14 in total. Belkin?s design cofig is 5 ports plus 2 on top. So my iPod stands up charging and I take it with me when I want. Simple. Everyone?s complaints are non-issues for me.
The only problem is you kids in the gym might think I bought it to look cool. -
Bonghodrum,
You do not have to keep your computer on the charge the IPOD shuffle. One cheap solution I figured is to purchase a USB to PS2 converter. The PS2 port always has power running even when the comps off.
Where to buy
Apple iPod Shuffle (512MB):
$76.69
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Amazon.com Marketplace
|
$76.69 | Yes |
|
%20user%20review%20and%20rating%20-%20CNET%20Reviews&srcUrl=http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/apple-ipod-shuffle-512mb/4864-6490_7-31256885-3.html){kind=small}