A flurry of news broke out over yesterday regarding the
proprietary headphones required by Apple's new iPod shuffle, and now that Monday's here and everyone's back in the office, some things are starting to get cleared up. For starters, both Macworld and Boing Boing Gadgets have confirmed with Apple and various third-party vendors that the
new shuffle headphones do in fact contain a proprietary control chip, and that would-be headphone makers have to pay to license it from Apple as part of the Made for iPod program. Yep, that's bad news, confirmed -- but all hope for inexpensive accessories isn't lost, as we're told that the chip isn't encrypted or otherwise locked down in any way, so it's easily cloned by companies who'd rather not pay. Still, eschewing Made for iPod certification pretty much dooms a product to niche status in the Apple universe, so it's a pretty weak consolation -- when this all shakes out, we're guessing only Apple-taxed headphones will be widely available for the shuffle, and that makes the value proposition somewhat hard to see. Just say no, people.
Read - Macworld
Read - BBG
posted March 16th 2009 4:09PM
lol @ "Low Budget" while referring to Apple -.-
It's not even for style. Why do I want to dick around with controls that are swinging on a cord, twisting the wrong direction, slipping away from your fingers because they're not secured...
Look at that picture: It proves that there's plenty of room on the surface of the player for controls. Even that's irrelevant, because nobody was bitching that the previous one was TOO BIG. They could have kept its design the same, boosted its memory, and added this asinine controller in the headphone cord. Everybody happy.
This turd will join the Mighty Mouse, the puck mouse, the FireWireless MacBook, the glossy-screened laptops, the defective headphone jack on the first-gen iPhones, and who knows what else in the collection of evidence that undermines the Apple "elegance" myth.
You know they've really churned out a piece of garbage when the apologists are so roundly beaten down by the chorus of disapproval. It's high time they were called on this crap.
You guys forgot the "not-surprising" tag on this article.
well what was uber surprising was the last sentence... engadget telling us to say no to Apple!?!? i feel so proud!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH....
takes a breath/
AHAHAHAHHAH!!!!!!
Well there you have it folks, you have a choice, buy the old shuffle or buy the new one and keep exchanging the headphones for a year or as long as your Apple warranty has been extended...
So Apple is basically saying that this is a premium product for people who know moose code and don't mind violated walletly...
"people who know moose code and don't mind violated walletly"
... OW, MY BRAIN. UN-F*CK IT NOW.
So will the new Shuffle work with my Shure SE530 IEM's?
Short answer: No
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Unless you buy an Apple certified adaptor of course. Huzah!
For the millionth time, yes.
Your Shures will work as well as any other earbuds which don't have any control buttons. Which means you can listen to music, you just can't change tracks, volume or pause.
Personally, I find that to be less than satisfying, so I won't be buying a Shuffle. But how can anyone say it is unexpected? Did people just expect the Shuffle to grow buttons on it if you plugged in headphones that didn't have buttons?
Forget the talk about DRM. Forget the talk about what is proprietary. Just remember, if you plug in a line out cable or earbuds without controls on them, you can't do much except listen until the battery dies.
Your money would be best spent on Westone, who makes 3-driver ear
buds for around $200 or so. Many swear Westone's ear buds are better
than Shure and a lot of musicians use them when performing live.
My guess is that shure will have an adapter coming out. It will almost certainly be $50 though like the one for the iphone. It probably doesn't make much sense to purchase for the shuffle alone, but if it works with current and future iphones, its not so bad. It would be cool to have the volume control on the iphone headphones. I'm not totally sure why they didn't do that the first or second time around considering they had this on the remote of the 3G ipod "classic."
The current shure adapter button does nothing on the new shuffle. It would be great if it did since I could set volume normalizing on (done through itunes) and just use the button to navigate and all would be fine. I have no interest in investing more money into the shuffle, so I am going to just stick with the buds that came with it. Its not going to be my primary player. Any headphones play fine, once you turn the shuffle on, it just starts going, so assuming you set the playlist and volume the way you want, you could just head for a run with any headphones and let it do its thing, but that's a bit silly.
I find this situation a little frustrating even though I always intended to use the stock phones. I'm (I guess) one of the few that actually really likes the design idea. The controls are pretty intuitive and straight forward. If you can tie your own shoes, you'll probably be fine. The buds that came with it are not that bad. They seem much improved over any I've tried from apple (didn't touch the ones with the iphone, so they could be the same). I'm used to using really nice phones from grado, sennheiser, and shure or really nice speakers from b&w. They are about right for the scenario I expect to use the shuffle: working out, jogging, biking. They are especially good if you want to hear what is going on around you.
I was at the apple store on Saturday (14th street NYC) and now it looks like all the apple-branded earbuds (even the $80) are now this new style with the volume controls in addition to the mic and button. The strange thing is the set that came with the shuffle seems to lack the mic (I did not confirm this through testing), so maybe its a slightly different model than the earbuds they are selling separately. With the shuffle earbuds on the iphone, you can use the normal button controls, but the volume controls have no effect.
This probably is further evidence that additional product refreshes are coming (iphone, I'm looking at you) as I don't see them doing this purely for the shuffle. I don't have a current-gen nano or classic to test the functionality on to see if its already there.
The Apple faithful will gladly bend over and take it just as they always do.
lol
Next step: Apple devices only play Apple-licensed music.
I really hate that one. I hate that I can't play music I bought in their store on stereos I didn't buy from their store. It's asinine. Now they want me to give them hundreds of more dollars to do so.
Buy CD's? You have them forever, they come with cool art, you can copy them literally anywhere plus the quality is fantastic.
I'm stunned that this many people care when almost none of us will actually buy a shuffle anyways. A shuffle is great for a kid or someone just needs something to listen to when working out or something. For $79, those headphones and the shuffle are just fine. I know I'll get negatively ranked for this, but the point is worth making. If you want to use a shuffle with nice headphones, you should probably be looking at least the Nano.
So how quick am I gonna get negatively ranked?
I was going to and then I saw your last name, which I misread as "Boner-heimer" at first. You've suffered enough, brah'.
I actually was considering buying one of these purely to workout with. The problem is that the included earbuds suck to workout with. They simply WILL NOT stay in my ears. When I workout, I wear headphones that are water resistant so you can rinse them off and have remove-able plastic pieces that wrap around the ear so the earbuds stay in. There's no way I'm paying extra money for the ghey adapter to use my current head phones, or buying new headphones w/ apple's special chip.
You actually do make a good point. So no down ranking is needed.
People that buy a DAP and want great sound through a good set of headphones are not likely to buy a minimalist DAP. Most audiophiles I know generally like the larger iPods, Zune, Creative, etc. devices.
Even so, the Nano is still acceptable to jog or work out with and it's price isn't much different than the shuffle considering the headphone situation.
"A shuffle is great for a kid"
Good luck teaching a kid how to use the controls of this thing.
News to you. Kids break shit. It's not so painful when you can spend £3-4 on some cheap phillips ones, but ponying up £25 every time would get painful. The apple headphones are pretty skanky in build, and fall apart easily. I was considering one of the new shuffles as a nice little player for when I want to go without my N800, which despite having a good music player is not exactly pocketable. Now I'm looking at something else, probably the sandisk ickle one. That Macbook Pro isn't looking so appealing now.
Agreed. The nano has equalizer preset functions and other sound "enhancing" features. The shuffle never did, so its doubtful this will be a "BIG" deal. However it does mean someone cannot use their currently favorite headphones.
I think the point here is, what happens when this spreads to the other iPods or Apple's computer lineup? Proprietary has almost never been designed to help the customer or save them money.
weak apple, weak. what's next, chips in after market mice, web cams, keyboards, power chargers, speakers... etc?
And what if there isn't? Blab Blab Blab with 1 model
Apple would never want you to use speakers on an ipod... then they would some how have to charge each and every person who can hear the music. the music that only you paid the rights to listen too.
I know, it's amazing - electronics require chips! Those electrons don't just magically route themselves...
I have a hunch that Apple sees themselves much higher on the pedestal then they really are. I hope they don't destroy themselves because I still like much of their wares.
Bad bad move apple way piss everyone off your Jobb less era is not going well at all............
Sad thing is Apple will still make huge profits off this. It was the same with glossy Mac displays, the transparent Leopard menu bar, and so on... in the end people still bought all those products and loved 'em and it'll be the same with this shuffle.
L-O-fucking-L. This better take top honors for Worst Gadget of the Year when the 2009 Engadget Awards roll around. I'm nominating it as of now.
I like your style, Dude.
It'll end up on the "Best Gadget of the Year", since it's crapple.
Did Apple not learn ANYTHING from the first-gen iPhone headphones??? Or is this their way of committing iPod shuffle suicide? Apple, if this is a joke, it's not very funny.
worst gadget of 2009
not according to much of the "free press" - they seem to be "reporting" their standard issue http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_news_release
Ssshhhhh!
You haven't seen the line-up of new iPods this Fall yet!
For realz? What about the proprietary chip inside the shuffle? What about the proprietary chipz in your monitors? On your graphics cards? What about that huge frakking proprietary chipz that execute your code? I don't even want to think about the proprietary chipz in your keyboardz and mousez.
OMG! There are proprietary chipz in my phone! In my phone, I say. What do I do now? How can I protect myself?
Please Engadget, provide guidance on how I can steer clear of these proprietary chipz!
Oh, all you're really saying is that there's a circuit in the button doohickey to encode button presses but it's not protected in any way, someone can just reimplement it? Nevermind.
I don't think that there are "proprietary chipz" in monitors that keep users from seeing things the way their new iPod keeps users from hearing things.
Yeah, I'm sure you would be just fine with a proprietary chip in your keyboard or mouse that prevents you from buying a reasonably-priced alternative.
"Oh, your mouse died? For only $75 we'll give you a brand-new one-button mouse!"
@required:
The closest I can think of is HDCP for DVI and HDMI, it uses "chipz" for authentication but not all monitors have HDCP.
But Howard there is a chip in your keyboard and your mouse that force you to buy a licensed product. Its called USB and every USB item you buy has a license fee attached to it.
SO SHUT THE ^&**& UP.
Um, asshats - you can hook up standard earbuds. They'll work for sound. You just can't control the thing (because you have no controls...).
Anyone who thinks that hooking up plain old earbuds won't produce sound is simply *wrong*.
Joshua Ochs, if you can't make it play music...
Yeah, there are chips in everything. But if you had to buy a non-standard power cable for your monitor at a significant fraction of the price of the monitor, you'd bitch too. Unless your nose was firmly planted in Steve Jobs' ass.
In the interest of continuing with our absolute outrage about this, we must low-rank you. Never mind that you make a valid point.
"SanDisk is revising its Q2 earnings upward on projections of increased Clip sales due to widespread consumer disatisfaction with Apple's new 3G shuffle. Industry experts state that this may heald the general rejection of industrial design and the Mac myth that 'It just works'."
Forex, is your quote some part of a news report, or of your own creation? Source/cite? Interesting stuff, either way. ;)
Made up. So it's not interesting in the slightest.