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For quite a while now I’ve had an iPod Shuffle 2G nearly permanently attached to my sleeve with earphone cables routed up through my shirt. I use this to listen to podcasts and audiobooks any chance I get, such as driving or walking somewhere. It works pretty well for me and I get an amazing amount of content consumed that way.

A couple of weeks ago a new iPod Shuffle 3G was released. It’s quite a bit smaller and has 4 times the storage as my 2G Shuffle, but it didn’t take me long to conclude that what I had was sufficient and working. Besides, Apple decided to move all the controls for the new Shuffle to the earphone cord, which has been a very controversial move. Until the 3rd party manufacturers catch up and release adapters and earphones with the controller built in, you are stuck using Apple earphones to really use the Shuffle. For a long time now I’ve used a particular model of Sony earphones (mostly because the cord is short) and I wasn’t sure I’d be happy to change.

But then my wife, of all people, unintentionally said something that made me rethink things. We were at the Apple Store (the kids like to visit, go figure) and I’m not even sure what she said. But whatever it was made me focus on a new feature of the new Shuffles: playlist support. The old Shuffles simply held a bucket of files and would play them randomly or sequentially depending on how you flip a switch. That worked okay for me, but every time I sat down to sync the durn thing I had to do a bit of manual labor moving files around. The new Shuffle works with playlists just like every other iPod out there. I’m a power playlist user, and have set up several “smart” playlists to automatically organize my podcasts and books just the way I want them.

Maybe one of those new Shuffles would be handy… I could organize my podcasts and books into playlists… And with the extra space I could even throw some music on there just in case I ever wanted a break from the spoken word… Hmm….

After a few days of deliberation I broke down and popped over to the Apple Store and picked one up.

Now that I’ve used it for 24 hours I can report the following:

• It’s definitely small. There’s really nothing to it. It’s like a small clip where they tacked on an iPod as decoration as an afterthought. http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/First-Look/iPod-Shuffle-3rd-Generation/673/1
  
• It took me a while to find the right configuration for how to wear it. Before, I wore the old Shuffle on my sleeve and routed the earphone wires up through my shirt and out the collar. I tried several different configurations for the new one, including clipping it to my collar with the wires on the outside of my shirt, clipping it to my collar with the wires rolled up to shorten things up a bit, and clipping it to my sleeve like before. None of those options really was working out too great. Then I realized I didn’t really need the Shuffle itself handy and I clipped it to a belt loop. Success! I routed the earphone cable up through my shirt and out the collar and it was the perfect length.
• The controls on the earphone cord work out perfectly for me. They’re always right there in easy reach near my neck.
• The controls themselves are a lot easier to work than I had initially thought they would be. It sounds complicated, but within about 1 minute it’s all second nature.
• The earphones work fine for me. I know a lot of people have ears that won’t hold them in, but mine hold them just fine. The quality is certainly good enough for my podcasts and books, and truthfully is plenty good enough for my music also. I’m not too critical about such things when it comes to earphones.
• Like all Apple products it comes with a year of AppleCare. This also covers the earphones, which is good because I can be pretty hard on them since I have them strapped to my body for such long periods of time. So long as they’re not obviously damaged by something stupid like closing them in the car door, I can just walk in to an Apple store and they’ll hand me a new pair.
• My old earphones were the in-ear noise “isolating” type. While I thought they were comfortable, I never put more than one in at a time so that I could still hear the world. The Apple earphones are the earbud type and don’t really isolate you from anything. I discovered I like this a lot because I can have both earbuds in and still be aware of everything going on around me.
• Playlist support is fantastic. Exactly like all other non-Shuffle iPods. I set up 3 or 4 playlists to sync and it’s all fully automatic now.
• To manage music and playlists without a screen, the Shuffle has VoiceOver. It can say the name of the item currently playing, as well as speak the playlist names out loud so you can move between them. It works quite well. I was playing an Italian opera at one point and had the Shuffle say the name. It sounded pretty good to my non-Italian-understanding ears. English words sound great because it uses the natural sounding voice that came with MacOSX 10.5. (Windows users get a different voice.)

I’m surprised and pleased that I like this little thing quite a bit more than I expected. No, it’s definitely not for everyone. But if you do have a place where something like this can fit in, give it a try.