ATTN: Apple

[threeball]

The "Shuffle" feature has been avaliable on mp3 players since before the very first iPod came out. My Rio 600 which I got 5 years ago(1 or 2 years before first iPod release) has this feature. So quit marketing the feature as if you created it, or should I say, innovated it, please!

[Doug Gilmour]

Shuffling has been around for ages. My very first CD player (a Sony from 1987) has it.. Apple never has claimed to have created it, that would be preposterous. They merely have elevated the feature's popularity and now are making an entirely "random" and simplistic product based around the feature..

-Dan

[FallN]

It's a marketing gimmick... I'm sure it'll pay off for Apple.

[swy32x]

However I'd did sort of do a double take during the keynote when Steve said 'This year iPod owners discovered Shuffle ...'

Just because you put it on the main menu this year doesn't mean we didn't know about it! It does, however mean that newbies to iPods do not know about the regular shuffle feature on the iPod ...

Just seemed a bit odd when he claimed that, but they can use marketing this feature to sell their product.

[jhollington]

The other point with the iPod Shuffle is that it's a device designed expressly for that mode of operation. I don't think there's any way you can not shuffle the music on it.

The whole marketing concept here is to just be able to grab a handful of music and be able to listen to it without having to think about it or fuss with it too much.

This is going to pay off well for Apple, since I think there are a lot of average consumers out there that would use their music player in that way. The majority of consumers listen to music as background, so features like song sequence, song quality, or being able to browse/select specific songs are meaningless to them.

[ginalee]

I'm coming out of the closet here to confess that I actually these days listen to less and less playlists and just leave my ipod on general shuffle :)

But there's no way I can handle just 1 GB music and I'm not a jogger,

even so, they are very cute!

[niki0619]

I've been using "shuffle" on my itunes since day 1... it's not until I got the ipod that i really started utilizing playlists. But I agree with every one here... it's just a marketing gimmick and just hypes up the feature (since there's no screen, there's no other quick way to navigate through your songs). I encourage people to shuffle their songs/playlists all the time :-)

[polycarbon]

Originally posted by jhollington
The other point with the iPod Shuffle is that it's a device designed expressly for that mode of operation. I don't think there's any way you can not shuffle the music on it.


There is a way to not shuffle the music on it. Move the slider on the back to play your music in regular order.

[Niz]

on my first CD player it had like this memory button that was pretty cool, it was pretty much a playlist maker, but of course it gets erased when you take the CD out.

[canyonblue737]

Originally posted by threeball
The "Shuffle" feature has been avaliable on mp3 players since before the very first iPod came out. My Rio 600 which I got 5 years ago(1 or 2 years before first iPod release) has this feature. So quit marketing the feature as if you created it, or should I say, innovated it, please!

they can do what they please, and they will sell 10's of millions for it. yes shuffle has been around since the beginning, but all other companies have decided to hide it behind a complicated interface that treats it as an extra, only to be used after picking songs one by one. apple says, "look here is the deal, put some music on the shuffle and then click a button and enjoy a random mix of the songs. that's it, that's simple."

if you don't like it, don't buy it. right now apple.com is backordered nearly a month.