So I reciently saw on engadgetand heard on buzz out loud that apple have announced their new shuffle.
At first looks it is way cooler than the old one. Nice small, rectangular size and crisp edges in two slick colours. Very apple. There is a nice clip witch rounds neatly on the back and a small circular slider that sits on top. Perfect simplicity which apple are renouned for doing. But wait a second. The only functionality on the device itself is the slider?! Yes just the slider. So where are the buttons? On the headphones. On the headphones? But that would mean that only apple’s headphones would work because not all headphones have buttons. Yep. You got it folks. If you bust your headphones apple give you then you can’t just whip out some ones you got from Sony or Panasonic, they make you buy more of apple’s headphones.
The headphones have 3 buttons which control the play of the music and volume. One for volume up, one for volume down and the one in the middle plays and pauses for one click, skips to the next track for two clicks and 3 clicks for the previose track.
So these multifunctional buttons are to replace the 5 buttons ont the old shuffle. Nice, but, I think i’ts a bit too far with the whole simplicity and no buttons apple push. A few buttons are nesesary and make the most of them as you can but this may be a bit too far. I personally hate the fact that apple make you do all these things which basically means that unless you buy things only from apple then your stuff won’t work or will suck.
I wonder how people will cope with this when using it or whether people just see how theoretically difficult it is to use and buy a creative or zune MP3 player or even an iPod.
This along with all of the other products apple has launched up until the latest 17″ macbook pro have been a bit dissapointing, coincidently in the absence of Mr. Jobs. Hopefully we’ll see him in the late summer when he is said to be back. But for now apple will stay afloat without him. – And I say for now.
Posted by samwhit191 
