*Shock* *Horror* I got me an iPod Shuffle!
Went out to a team lunch the other day, to celebrate the fact that we released dealscope onto mergermarket, and apparently, everyone liked it lots and lots, both internally and externally. So, to thank us for this, the boss/company gave us each a 512MB iPod Shuffle. Bonus!
Warning. The next little bit is the techy part, so if you dont care about techy stuff, skip over it to the important bit (the bit near the bottom).
I was under the impression that these were pretty crappy devices, and installing the iTunes software really reinforced that idea:
- I had to put in the devices serial number
- I had to provide registration information
- I had to register the ipod with them
- It reinstalled quicktime, which was already on the computer
- It put icons for quick time and itunes in quicklaunch without asking
- It loaded quicktime in the tasktray, without asking
- It wanted to reboot after installing
- Its outright confusing to use.
- For ages, I couldn't figure out how to sync my ipod shuffle
- It asked if it should find files on my computer - I said yes, and it promptly did... nothing.
- Selecting is odd - hold down shift, use down arrow to select files, then hit up, cos you selected one too many - and it extends the selection from the top
- Click on a heading, and your selection disappears
- Random little arrow icons *everywhere* (3 times per song), that you have no idea what they do, until you click them, and suddenly find yourself on the apple website...
- Throws an icon in my task tray, without asking
- Registers to startup with the computer without asking
- I didn't need to use iTunes with it (uninstall - check!)
- I
couldmight be able to use Windows Media Player (much more user friendly interface) - It works as a usb flash drive
- Its rechargable via usb
- It *doesn't* force you to put a random selection of music on the ipod (like i thought it did)
- It *doesn't* force you to listen to the music in a random order (like i thought it did)
And loading iTunes didn't help either:
But, once I managed to figure out how to use it, I discovered that:
So, all in all, its waaay better than I expected it to be. But, then again, being given one as a gift is A Good ThingTM <IMG alt=":)" class="emoticon" src="/images/emotions/emotion-1.gif" border=0>.