The iPod Shuffle ’loses’ controls

MiD DAY is among the first in India to get its hands on the new iPod Shuffle. iT ADDA gives you the low-down on what it's like

The iPod Shuffle 'loses' controls

MiD DAY is among the first in India to get its hands on the new iPod Shuffle. iT ADDA gives you the low-down on what it's like

An inscrutable exterior of anodised aluminium in black or silver. A cute size. But if you're new to iPods, you'll ask, 'Nice, but er, how do you use this?'

Well, that's the thing. The engineers at Apple have made away with all controls on the panel, and moved them to the ear cord. So if you are among those who feel all clumsy handling touch screens, this is just for you. There're no screen to touch and no buttons on the music player to figure out.

Talk to me

The amazing new feature on this Shuffle is that it can talk! It announces the name of the song, in English, French, Spanish in 20 languages, in fact! Apple calls this application VoiceOver.

When we put in some songs in Hindi, Kannada and Tamil, the names get amusingly accented. But then, you will still make out what it's saying.

Flip the Shuffle switch to the left, and it plays your songs in random order. If you want it to play in the order of your play list, flip to the right.

That's an interesting new feature. You have everything at your fingertips, quite literally, as you can move forward, backwards, and increase and bring down the volume by pressing the appropriate buttons. You'll need to get some help initially, from the manual or their website, but you will soon get used to the operations.

Still no FM

The Apple philosophy still does not allow iPods to incorporate FM radio. So forget about switching between radio and your own play list. But iPod users have by now got used to these snobbish Apple ways. Given its petite size it's smaller than your car key the iPod shuffle holds 4 GB worth of stuff (about 1,000 songs). It works with iTunes 8.1 or higher.

Given that music players now have to compete with mobile phones, which are offering more and more memory, it makes sense for iPod to incorporate features such as VoiceOver. The new Shuffle is priced at Rs 4,000.

QUICK TAKE
>>Apple's new iPod Shuffle features a new technology called VoiceOver
>>All controls have shifted to the ear cord
>>However, you still don't get an FM radio

How does VoiceOver work?
If you think that your iPod is really 'talking' to you, you are mistaken. Actually, iTunes reads your song information and then uses the new VoiceOver Kit to generate the announcements. You'll hear different voices depending on what type of computer system you use when you sync your iPod shuffle. If you sync your iPod shuffle with a PC or with a Mac running Mac OS X Tiger, you'll hear the English voice included in the VoiceOver Kit.
Source: apple.com