IPod re-shuffle keeps Apple in top spot

Technofile: When Apple released its latest cut-down version of the iPod recently, the Shuffle, many thought this was the final straw for Apple's dominance of the MP3 player market.

But there's more to this little piece of plastic, priced at €99, than meets the eye. To make the iPod Shuffle cheaper, Apple discarded the need for a display and replaced the hard drive with a smaller Flash drive.

This effectively makes the Shuffle a USB memory drive with the ability to play music. It also means it has no moving parts, unlike normal iPods. The Shuffle has four major features. It holds one gigabyte (240 songs),and, while it won't be able to hold your entire music collection, 10 to 20 CDs' worth of music should see you through a few long journeys. Secondly, it is easy to use. Its buttons are even simpler than the sparse arrangement on normal iPods.

The third feature is style. Although it's not a full-blown iPod, the Shuffle still has that sleek iPod design.

Fourthly, Apple has undercut its aggressive major competitors to entice the very bottom end of the market, who would only be interested in a cheaper, Flash-memory MP3 player.

The Shuffle is the size of a packet of chewing gum, has no screen and just a grey ring of button controls and two hidden LED lights greet the user.

There are two ports, a plain headphone port at its top and a metal USB jack at the bottom.

Made from the iPod's signature white glossy plastic, it resembles a cigarette lighter with detachable headphones.

The Shuffle is not designed to replace earlier iPods. Unlike the iPod and iPod Mini, which are expandable with many third party accessories, the Shuffle just plays music and stores data.

However, a Shuffle, like its brethren, is compatible with PCs and Macs, and includes Apple's market-leading iTunes music software, and plays back MP3 files, iTunes songs and other formats. You can also allocate a portion of a Shuffle's memory to store data files for plug-and-play storage and USB transfer to another computer.

The Shuffle got its name because, with such a simple device with no screen, being able to scroll and select songs manually would be impossible, especially with 20 albums' worth of music. Instead, the Shuffle will play songs or "shuffle" them randomly.

Apple needed the Shuffle. The iPod has dominated the markets for medium and high-priced portable digital audio players, but was missing out on the growth in low-end Flash memory-based devices.

It tried the market out with the iPod Mini, but the Shuffle is its best shot at this market to date.

It promises 12-hour rechargeable battery life, but reviewers to date have got it to run longer to 18 hours.

However, the Shuffle has its limits. It lacks support for two of Apple's proprietary audio formats - AIFF and Apple Lossless Audio - which are huge files and unlikely to be played on such low-capacity devices.

Then again, you can play back even smaller (though lower-quality) files than normal iPods in addition to almost all of the same high-quality MP3, WAV, AAC, and Audible files.

The Shuffle isn't perfect but but it's cool, convenient, and cheap.

So cheap that Stateside, families have been buying them in batches and so convenient thata few minutes after picking your 240 songs, it is ready to wear or pop into a pocket.

Never has the KISS maxim - Keep It Simple Stupid - been better applied.