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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2005-10-21, 15:25

Apple has a problem.

That problem is the iPod shuffle. In their conference call, Apple hinted that the third quarter was the last with the current iPod line. We saw the iPod nano. We saw the 5G iPod. But we haven't seen any improvements to the iPod shuffle - the iPod shuffle has remained virtually unchanged since it was introduced in January, with only a $20 price drop on the 1GB model mid-year.

So we're going to see a new iPod shuffle...but what could it be? The easy answer would be that we'd see a simple capacity bump to 1 and 2GB. But than the iPod shuffle would have the same capacity as the base-level iPod nano. Would Apple want to have two different iPods with the same capacity? (The closest they've come was a brief stint with a 40GB iPod and a 40GB iPod photo.) Would we want to navigate 480 songs without a screen anyway? The entire concept of the iPod shuffle works best with only a few songs. I doubt we will see a 4GB - maybe even a 2GB - iPod shuffle without a screen. You can't just keep increasing the capacity, like with the larger iPod.

Let's say the iPod shuffle is stuck at 1GB because of the iPod nano. Apple says they're upgrading it, but it can't get any larger - not that we'd want to carry around that many songs without a screen anyway.

What if Apple added a screen to the iPod shuffle? It could be a simple three-digit screen above the control circle - Apple could take a page from Sony's book and put an OLED under the clear plastic, so that it looks less like a screen, and more like numbers appearing on the surface. It'd be the 2G iPod shuffle - they could call it the "iPod shuffle (with screen)." Same capacities, same prices. Such a simple display wouldn't take any sales away from the iPod nano.

That said, I'm not sure if this is a very Apple thing to do. Whether we like it or not, the concept of the iPod shuffle is to require no input. (I'm in the "like it" camp - I like how neither the iPod shuffle nor its box have any words or letters on the front.) While the iPod shuffle would still have a shuffle mode, adding a screen goes against that philosophy. Oh, and Apple admitting their "mistakes" is definitely not an "Apple thing to do."

The iPod shuffle has another problem: the iPod shuffle itself is hardly as impressive as it used to be - the iPod nano isn't much larger (it's actually thinner). Perhaps the iPod shuffle is headed for a form-factor change?

How about if Apple made the iPod shuffle disappear? It's entirely possible to build an iPod-shuffle-style music player into a pair of headphones. Nobody would even care that it didn't have a screen! The control circle would simply go on one of the headphones, with the off/random/order switch on the other. "iPod" could be written on the behind-the-head band connecting the two (I only see this coming in white, by the way). Again, same capacities, same prices, and again, it wouldn't steal sales from the iPod nano. I just don't know what Apple would call it. My vote's for "The Vanishing iPod."

Your thoughts?
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