From Video to Shuffle: an iPod story

A few weeks ago I had my black 30Gb iPod Video stolen from my car while it was parked less than 30 feet from the front door of my house. I certainly could have protected it a little bit better than I had, but that is not what this post is about. This post is about my new iPod Shuffle that I recieved as an Easter gift. Now that I have had a Shuffle for about a week here is a list of some of my favorite things about it.

1. The Price

This little sucker will run you $79.99 which actually pretty good when compared to other 1 Gb mp3 players, which range from about 70 to 120 dollars. Also, this is much easier to replace if stolen.

2. The Included Dock

My favorite part about the iPod Shuffle is the cool dock that comes with it. As you can see instead of some sort of usb port on the Shuffle, there is only the head phone jack, which doubles as a data port when docked. This enables the Shuffle's size to be even smaller than before.



3. The Size

The most obvious feature about the iPod Shuffle is the miniature physical size of the device. Here I have my Shuffle compared to a U.S. Quarter, and you can see this iPod takes up far less pocket real estate than my Video iPod.



4. Song Selection

When I got my new mp3 player, I was worried about how my songs would sync with the device considering I now had 1/30 of the amount of space that I used to have. Well iTunes has really thought this one through and gives you many options for syncing your music with your iPod. You can have it set to sync a predefined playlist, or you can have it load random songs from your library. Even better, you can have it load higher ranked songs more often so that you get a nice random mix of songs that you actually want to listen to. It is because of this feature that I have totally abandoned trying to replace my Video iPod with another high capacity media player.



5. The Simplicity

Last but not least, is the fact that this thing is extremely easy to pick up and use. Although this is true with most Apple products, it has never been more true than with the iPod Shuffle. All things considered I need an mp3 player, and that is all I need. I don't want a video player, or an external hard drive, or another game device. I already have devices that do those tasks much better than any iPod.

So thats it I hope you have enjoyed my little rant about why the iPod Shuffle is my favorite mp3 player on the market. I strongly urge you to seriously consider a Shuffle instead of an iPod Video or Nano. I had a Video, and now I have the Shuffle and I am not looking back. Thanks for reading. Peace.