New iPod Shuffle – Too Small?
Apple has seen fit to grace us with an new version of it’s iPod Shuffle. This is the tiddly version of their insanely successful music player, that eschews such unnecessary luxuries as a screen, or an on body control, in favour of being so minuscule that you could fit it in your ear [do not try and fit it into your ear].
This is both the genius and the downfall of the shuffle for me. It is so incredibly small that you can’t fail to be impressed that they’ve got a little battery, amp, computer and 4 gig drive into this chewing gum sized package, but I have a nano that I usually lose once a week, falling out of my bag, down between the seats in the car, or dissappearing through a penny sized hole in my trouser pocket (yes, I know I need new jeans). How much worse then if my expensive and fiddly new iPod is smaller than the lid of my pen? A friend of mine bought a MacBook Air, saying that he wanted to save the weight in his travelling case, a point I could almost concede if the weight saving was any more than a pair of socks. Here we’re talking grams of difference between this and a nice big, screen-having, control faced iPod classic, with a battery that’s going to give you much more time between charges.
Probably good if you’re a hardcore jogger, or being launched into space and trying to save weight, otherwise just keep wheeling that phonogram in a pram.