I loved this article from the New York Times (free registration required) about how the unpredictable shuffle function in the iPod has transformed the way we listen to music. It tells some funny stories of a guy who had a dinner party at his home and decided to let his iPod take control of the music, and when Guns & Roses was followed by Elton John everybody laughed at him. Or another guy who was getting "intimate" with his girlfriend and had the mood ruined when his iPod started blasting the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn." Some others think that their iPod is reading their mind and knows what to play when!!
I now have just over 1900 tracks on my iPod and it's so much fun driving along with the iPod on shuffle because I end up with the White Stripes followed by Fairuz followed by U2 followed by Madonna followed by David Bowie followed by Abdel-Halim followed by Led Zeppelin followed by.... well, you get the drift.
I'd love to go a long road trip and just keep my iPod on shuffle and not touch it at all just to keep myself entertained and guessing what's coming next..
Check your iPod before it ixplodes:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pcpro.co.uk/?news/news_story.php?id=62251
Mine is a 3G
ReplyDeleteI'm sure Apple can do something to improve the Random function of the iPod or at least add a second smarter randomization algorithm that maybe excludes artist who were already played in the last 10 songs from playing again. I have 5700 songs on my 40GB 3G iPod and yet whenever I choose Random play it keeps choosing Led Zeppelin songs. I can guarantee, whenever I choose Random within the first 5 or 7 songs there will be at least one Zep song, even though I only have the songs from the Zeppelin box set. That's 60 out of the 5700 total songs on my iPod, or about 1%.
ReplyDeleteIt used to do this with long Arabic songs. I had a couple Abdulhaleem and Um Kulthoum songs thinking that it would be cool once in a while for the iPod to play a long Arabic song in the middle of the mix. But it kept choosing them all the time till I went and ticked them off so that they don't play again unless I choose them.
But all that aside, isn't the iPod the best thing ever?