Rotten Apples: iPod Shuffle g3 jumps the shark

I need to vent a little spleen about the latest iPod shuffle. First, some background:

I have been something of an Apple fanboy ever since I was more-or-less forced into using Macs in my undergrad physics computer lab in the late 90s. Looking back on it, this was kind of an ideal time to hitch one's wagon to the Apple juggernaut: the original iMac had just been released (I had shiny green one in my office during my honours year), and Mac OSX was just around the corner; the iPod was still several years off.

After honours, I moved into laptops, beginning with a second-hand PowerBook before progressing through several generations of the more economical iBooks. More recently, in late 2007 I returned to desktop-land and picked up a 20" iMac, which quickly became the all-purpose home entertainment centre in my cramped apartment in Camden Town.

In parallel, I also worked my way through a series of iPods. I began with a 20GB original model (which in hindsight seems incredibly bulky). I have since acquired two iPod shuffles and two Nanos (as far as I can remember -- I may be forgetting one or two). Some of these I was able to palm off to less tech-obsessed relatives; the others I was able to justify since I was travelling a lot and had a diverse range of audio entertainment requirements.

For the most part, I was (and remain) extremely happy with the overall quality of the main Apple product. But along the way I began to notice a series of irritating, though initially minor, issues with peripherals and connectivity:

First off, the iBook didn't feature an audio-in socket; this was supposedly due to a lack of room, but it smacked of a cynical attempt to differentiate the iBook from the more up-market PowerBook line.

Similarly, the lack of a standard monitor output was irritating --- and led me to buy one of their ridiculously overpriced adapters to fit with their own "mini-DVI" port. This was compounded by the fact that when I later bought my iMac, the shape of this "mini-DVI" port had changed -- for no apparent reason -- rendering my adapter useless. 

Yet another example is the change in the power supply socket between successive iBook models. Again, pointless and infuriating as it renders the older one useless when it may otherwise have served as a handy backup.

[As an aside, I now have a box filling up with obsolete adapters and cables resulting from this cynical and senseless practice. Multiply that by the millions of similar fanboys around the world and we're talking about a significant waste. Any government that would legislate to disincentivize this profligate behaviour would get my vote...]

And so to the point of this rant. Recently, my g2 iPod Shuffle has become a bit flaky, repeatedly cutting off and requiring me to press play. When this happens ten times in quick succession, while you're jogging along a busy street, it quickly becomes very irritating. I've soldiered on with it for a while, hoping the problem might go away, but lately it's become worse. Here's the downside of the sleek, compact design: it's literally impossible to open up with breaking it. And even if I could, what are the chances I'm going to find what's wrong with it?

So, resigned to the end of my shuffle and, acting by unconscious consumer impulse, I decided to check out the latest g3 iPod Shuffle. At 79 bucks for a 2GB model, it seems like pretty good value. It's even smaller than the previous one and looks pretty smart. However, looking more closely there is a big problem: they've made the "design" decision to take the buttons off the actual iPod (supposedly to facilitate the size-reduction), and onto the headphones. So now, in return for a size reduction that, quite frankly, wasn't at all necessary, we have to use Apple-branded custom headphones with controls built into the cable. So no chance of using your own Sennheiser earphones if you happen to be a prissy audiophile (I'm not -- but, hey, I would like the chance to become one...). And what if you lose/damage the flimsy Apple headphones? You have to buy a replacement from the Apple Store for 39 bucks. Or take your chances and hand over 20 bucks for a Belkin adapter which, according to the reviews, seems to work great -- for about a month. This may seem like small beer, but for goodness' sake, when the whole thing only costs 80 bucks it seems a bit ridiculous.

So, I'm taking a pass on this one. And I'm going to think twice about investing in any further iProducts unless I can be sure I won't be getting an iShafting by getting locked into over-priced peripherals.

Disgusted,

Tunbridge Wells (Now Cherrybrook).