Comments on: Sandisk Releases iPod Shuffle Killer

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:37:33 +0000

Hey, this is great news for me, precisely because of the reasons Michael wrote about, as well as a couple of others.

I love my iPod Shuffle 2G, but it no longer syncs with ANY Windows machines, not even on an Ubuntu machine I play with. It completely failed doing anything after six months but operating as a small (1G), expensive USB drive. The Genius bar folks have it working perfectly on MacOS, but not on Windows (no, don’t bring up a switch, I am not switching to MacOS and spending $5k to re-purchase all my software or relearn Mac apps, my business operates fine in Windows).

I do go to the gym and having the FM radio would be perfect to hear the news, I missed that when I moved from a larger/heavier Creative Zen Micro to my lovely Shuffle. Syncing on WMP? Fine, it’s built in and doesn’t cost me anything; better yet, I may just drag and drop because I hate software that keeps calling home to report on me (iTunes, MacOS, WMP, Vista, think about it people…).

Only $39.95? I’m there in a minute. Heck, just sending in the Shuffle for servicing will be $29.95 and there’s no guarantee it will work with any Windows machines.

Oooo, and I get a couple of lines of tezxt, too? OK! I’m sold!

By: Erik

Erik — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:29:28 +0000

I appreciate your article. I recently purchased a shuffle for working out and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I appreciate non biased articles that look at the whole picture. Even though I just bought my shuffle, I’m tempted to get one of these Sanddisk players also to try out. I feel that the FM tuner ability would be nice. It might not be a total seller point to switch over but it sure helps.

By: michael

michael — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:25:17 +0000

@Jim

They use Windows Media Player for content management.

You can do the drag and drop method on your Mac.

I mentioned it here because almost half of our readers visit via Windows, and we cover all aspects of Apple products and their competition and I really think this little device is stiff competition for the shuffle.

By: Jim K

Jim K — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:16:01 +0000

What I find interesting is that this item keeps being mentioned in apple related web sites, but the Sandisk web site shows almost none of their MP3 players as Mac applicable.

I’m guessing that these players have some kind of Windows-only based tune management software, they can still be used via USB (drag and drop) to transfer files on a Mac?

(While I’ve played with computers since 1980, I’m pretty much a Mac and MP3 player newbie)

By: Is the Sandisk Sansa Clip an iPod Shuffle Killer?

Is the Sandisk Sansa Clip an iPod Shuffle Killer? — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 17:04:38 +0000

[...] Sansa Clip that improves upon the shuffle concept in a variety of ways. I posted about this over at Apple Gazette and ruffled a few feathers by suggesting this could be a shuffle killer – but after finding out the [...]