| | The Good Small size and weight Good price capacity ratio The Bad beats solos Controls are harder to access than in previous models Limited headphone options The Price 2GB US 59 4GB US 79The third generation Apple iPod Shuffle further refines Apple s vision for the ultra small, ultra portable iPod. But, in continuing to refine and reduce the Shuffle, Apple has gone too far, removing some useful features, limiting user choice, and making an iPod that s actually harder to use than its predecessor. Looking at the third generation Shuffle, you ll pretty immediately have a question: How do I control that thing? You ll wonder that because, unlike any other iPod, this one has no buttons, no clickwheel, no controls of any kind on the device itself. It s just a tiny .8 x 0.7 x 0.3 inches slab of color with a clip on the back, headphone jack, and a sliding button on top. It s easy to see why this could have been an appealing idea. Creating an iPod with no buttons is not only an interesting user interface challenge, but also must have be something of an a plishment in a pany that prides itself on style and excellent user interface. Apple s a bit too clever for its own good here, though. The Shuffle lady gaga heartbeats is controlled music is played and paused, moved forward and backward, and so forth using a remote control built into the headphones supplied by Apple. The decision to control the Shuffle only by this remote is a misstep. First off, requiring the remote to control the Shuffle means that users can t choose their favorite headphones to use with the Shuffle. They re limited to headphones that include a remote and support this functionality. Apple promised an adapter to make any headphones patible, but it has yet to appear. There are a handful of patible third party headphones that offer their own remote, but as of this writing Nov. 2009 , those options total fewer than 0. That s not much choice.beats by dre pro And it s a real detriment. Users need to be able to make their own decisions when it es to something as basic as headphones. Putting the only way to control the Shuffle onto headphone cords has other downsides, too. For one, if you head out for a run, bike ride, or trip to the gym and grab the wrong headphones, you re out of luck. This happened to me. I picked up an older set of white iPod earbuds only to discover, 30 minutes later at the gym, that I couldn t even turn on the Shuffle with the older headphones. Talk about frustrating. Even when you remember the right headphones, all is not perfect. The second generation Shuffle had buttons to control playback on its face, meaning that changing the volume or song during a workout was as simple as reaching to where you d clipped it, or where your case was, and hitting a button. With the third generation model, reaching for the remote means locating a small item bouncing around somewhere below your chin not exactly an easy task. As a result, controlling the Shuffle is a trickier proposition than it should be. That said, the Shuffle does have some charms. Its size and weight just 0.38 ounces are appealing, especially for exercisers. In a nice touch, it adds support for VoiceOver, making the lack of a screen no big deal for the first time lady gaga beats by dre in the history of the Shuffle. And the price is right: under US 80 even for the high end model. Still, those virtues don t offset the negatives. So, Apple s done something a bit unusual: made an iPod inferior to its predecessor. This rarely happens. Even when a model isn t a significant upgrade see the third generation iPod touch , new models are usually solid choices. In this case, it s not. The third generation iPod Shuffle isn t a terrible iPod if you re looking for something light to exercise with, it merits a look; but so does the second generation model but it s not one that I r mend without significant reservation.
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