X-Change

Music players have changed, evolving from sticks and stones and drums and violas to a box as big as a TV set, with chunky moving parts. Now we have a stick again, in the case of the iPod shuffle. Truly nifty, light, cool and convenient, even with today's flatscreens and cellphone cameras, it's amazing to have so many rock bands and orchestras fitting into something so elegant, and so slim. The iPod is a truly intelligent product, with the unusual feature of a design that makes it seem almost friendly. 

My iPod Shuffle Review
by Russell Beattie

It’s definitely sleek, and comes with a little strap that goes around your neck (that Apple calls imaginatively a “lanyard” - I’ve never seen that word before in my life). All you get in the package is the “stick”, the lanyard, an extra USB plug cap (in case you don’t feel like walking around with it hanging around your neck), two white Apple stickers and the iTunes set up disk. Oh, and a little laminated card which explains the controls and what the embedded red, amber and green LEDs on the front and back of the Shuffle mean (battery levels mostly). There’s no power charger, it gets its juice solely from your USB slot when it’s plugged in. And on a Windows PC at least, when you plug it in, it looks just like another drive like any of the number of other flash-based players out there.

There’s just two play modes - straight through and shuffle. I find it incredibly amusing that Apple’s marketing department has successfully compensated for the fact that the device doesn’t have a display for navigating your music and folders by making a standard feature on all music devices the key selling point of the music player. “Life is random” Honestly, only Apple could get away with it. Which they have and I feel good about it. They should have classes at major institutions which do nothing but study Apple marketing. I’m reading the Tipping Point now, and in the first few pages it talks about how American industry has two main competitive advantages left: Inventive technology and Marketing. This device is definitely on the latter side of that equasion.
From:
http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008237.html