It’s not just because of the name’s congruence with a certain brand of female hygiene product. The real joke is that it hasn’t got the features of a 10-year-old, ebook reader bought on eBay for $60. Which doesn’t surprise me. Apple has always been about style and buzz, not about features.
When Mrs. C. got her iPhone, she gave me her old iPod shuffle. It’s nice. I filled it to the max with Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and old swing tunes. But it’s neither as convenient (needs a computer to recharge) nor as easy-to-use (has no display to tell you what’s playing) as my old iRiver MP3 player which I bought used for $20. Haw.
UPDATE: Well, I see the new shuffle tells you, in a voice, what the tune is and who’s playing it. But it still needs a computer to recharge.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
I use an iPod as my MP3 player because it’s the best one out there for me. I can see why you’d hate the Shuffle, though, with no screen. At this point, the device is pretty much moot for MP3s, anwyay, with amazonmp3.com and a hundred others taking the place of the old iTunes store (which was kind of cool until you figured out your tunes were locked.)
The latest from the megalomaniac is pitched at ADD moving picture watchers, anyway.
Did you ever buy a kindle or are you using one of those $60 ones from ebay? Kindle is going to have the same issue as iTunes with locked content, BTW. Thankfully, I’d never put anything on there I wasn’t willing to lose (just like a paperback, heh heh.)
Nope, never bought a Kindle. (The eBay thing at the link doesn’t appeal to me.) Still consider a Kindle from time to time. I’m awash in printed books. It would make sense to avoid that. One of these days I’ll get around to checking out Amazon’s Kindle library to see if it really would work for me. The Kindle’s display certainly seems to be the best around.
I don’t hate the Shuffle or any Apple products. I used a Mac at work for a decade before I retired. I just like to see what’s playing when I’m busy and can’t immediately recall the title. And it’s a lot easier to slip a AAA battery into the iRiver than remember in advance to charge the Shuffle on the computer before going off somewhere the computer can’t come along. I’m also amazed how much of the stuff they sell when there is better and cheaper to be had without much effort, in these days of free Google searches.