Joy of the Shuffle

I'm finishing off some old posts that have perpetually been in the Draft section. Geez these things were meant to be published months ago

A little self-indulgence isn't that bad when the holidays haven't exactly been joyous and merry. So to cheer things up, I picked up an 1st Gen iPod Shuffle a couple of days ago. Not that I'm an Apple fanboy or anything but that it was the best option available for a shoestring budget. The Shuffle is pretty bare-bones and sparse on features.

The best part is that this little device is a psychic. It can really your mind. The device almost always starts with a Steely Dan or Bob Dylan number. After a serving of "Peg" and more of Dan's gems, it invariably plays a song from "Blonde on Blonde" or "Blood on the Tracks". A few songs later, Moby and Paul Simon vie for a play.

The songs maybe different but the order of the artists is always the same. Weird.

My guess is that the random play alogrithm is tweaked to be more favorable to songs with high play counts or better ratings. You see, iTunes dilligently counts the number of times you've listened to a song. It is also possible to rate songs based on your taste. A qucik scan of my playlist revealed that most Steely Dan songs had a play count of well over 50. Same for Dylan and Paul Simon.

I cannot help but marvel at the ingenuity of the engineers in Cupertino. The Shuffle is deficient on features - no LCD screen to list navigate, no FM tuner, averagish battery life - but it really knows my personal taste. I don't really miss the LCD screen, I trust the Shuffle to belt out my favourite tunes. Thats the beauty of Apple, they make products that lack features miost of us take for granted (video recording in a camera phone anyone?) but they get one big thing right. that makes the device so personal.