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Hi there, My Name is Alex Buga, I'm from Bucharest Romania, and I am a design-addict - in the good way. I work as a Creative Director at MB Dragan - (True) Interactive Agency.
THE NEW IPOD SHUFFLE
... or how is Apple making you buy crap :)
First of all, I must say it looks cool. But don’t be fooled by their extraordinary marketing tactics.
It’s small ? Yeah ... right. There are 16 and 32 GB memory sticks out there on the market so size is not a matter in these days.
It talks ? .. NOOOT :) In the beginning of the video I thought “Wow, they incorporated a speech engine chip in there”. But that’s not true. After I’ve seen the video, there were differences in the way it speaks whether you sync in on a Mac or a PC. As you know, the speech engine battle is won by far by Macs. Alex, the voice featured in the video is awesome for reading long blog articles.
So I immediately clicked - that new feature they’re hyping about, the one that speaks to you, is in fact a database with audio files containing a recording with the song name. So whenever you’ll ask you iPod to speak to you, it will access the audio file for that particular song. Pretty clever gimmick, but not that new.
And to be evil all the way… I’m sory but my 35€ Philips SHE9700 noise reduction headphones beat the crap of those crappy iPod headphones. You know… the ones with the innovatory design that don’t stick in your ears if you have small pavilions.
But guess what… they’re forcing you to use them, because otherwise… your new iPod shuffle is nothing but a good looking memory stick.
Pardon me… a memory stick that uses a dock to connect to the computer.
So… think again before you actually buy it. It might be cool, but do you actually need it ?
14 COMMENTS
eddie 2009 03 13
Very nice, man! You might be the 1st Apple user that can see that Apple is not God and they try to sell some crappy products using their well-known marketing techniques :)
I guess the worst move they made with the new iPod shuffle is those you-cant-use-your ipod-without headphones. They force you to use only their own products :)
Zeno Popovici 2009 03 13
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s crap. I have had an iPod shuffle for a long time now. And I like it a lot.
Headphones for shuffle are being released right now by third parties (just do a google search).
I also don’t think that it matters how it “speaks” to you, as long as it works .
So in the end Apple is not forcing you to do anything ... if you don’t like the product , don’t buy it. You’re not in the target audience.
Apple still sells the old version of shuffle along with the other ipod lines. I really don’t see the “force to use” part here.
Alex Buga 2009 03 13
I’m in their target… trust me. I’ve owned 6 iPods (or maybe seven) and although I have an iPhone I still keep my aluminum shuffle.
I’m just seeing behind the “distorsion field” :)
PS: I didn’t knew about the 3rd party headphones… still I like to use mine when buying an mp3 player. The stock ones are usually crap ;)
Yeah… whatever…
chris 2009 03 13
I really don´t know what to think about. Yeah the shuffle is getting smaller and smaller but I´m not so shure about it. I had the very first shuffle (the white one) and i was fully happy with the size. So why don´t keep the size and just put in more memory? (maybe they won´t cause everyone would buy the shuffle and the nano would stay in the shops? ;) ) Just my 2 cents :)
Marcello 2009 03 17
Hey,
first of all i love your site!
and u might be right with what u say, i just think for sports this can be right cool, and there is already a third-party product aviable to let u connect your beloved headphones.
To me, i’m pretty good served with the Apple Headphones, since they changed their design, they more confortable (well at least for my ears they just perfect, but i might have apple ears! ;-) and the sound is one of the better for the prize.
I’m an Apple fan, but stay real too, they not God, and 2x MacBook Pro change because of Pixelerrors, and then accepting a lil bumb in the back of the book (ok itz veeery little) just because beeing tired of removing all data and running back to the store to change it, isn’t really that Quality and perfect as they propose in the Ads!
But however, Mac is better than Windows, Apple than many other Computer manufacturers, and the iPhone better than Nokia, Blackberry and co. at least to me, but of course they not God.
Cheers
Binny 2009 03 30
Great site. Love the design.
Noura has an article on site design, found you via that (http://bigtweet.com/c/b/twitter/nourayehia/STkb1)
But I could not agree more with you. Wrote something similar on my own site about the same thing. This a play by Apple to get their grubby mitts on a lucrative secondary market. You didn’t mention the encoding chip they have included in their design that they will use to sue vendors who try and reverse engineer the design.
http://www.biggiantrobots.com/reviews/apple-makes-a-play/
But love the site. Great stuff
Daniel Zabolotny 2009 04 06
Excuse my language, please.
Fucking AMEN!
Thank you man, for realizing that the new Shuffle is utter crap.
nszebenyi 2009 04 17
OFF: it’s… This page is very nice! The most beautiful webpage around the world!
Stefan 2009 03 13
Maybe this is a “smart” strategy to shut down the Shuffle line, otherwise I think Apple has a big problem.
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