New iPod Shuffle Hates Non-Apple Headphones

By Akela Talamasca on March 11th, 2009

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Today sees the release of Apple’s new iPod Shuffle, a tiny 4 GB beauty available in either matte white or matte black, with a few new attractive features, including playlist support, spoken song notification, and a new way to control the little thing: there’s a little device halfway up one length of the Apple headphones cord that manages playback. And therein lies the problem. If you want to use the new Shuffle, you have to use Apple’s own earbud headphones.

Or! You can use your own preferred headphones and pay an undisclosed amount for an attachable dongle instead. So, let’s consider this: The new iPod Shuffle is $80 for a 1.8-inch tall by 0.7-inch wide by 0.3-inch deep mp3 player that can hold 1,000 songs with the above-mentioned features. And for an extra, let’s say … $20, you can buy a thing that will let you use your headphones with the Shuffle, which brings it up to $100. For an extra $50, you can get an iPod Nano, which holds twice the storage space, a video screen, Cover Flow, and the usual regular iPod features, in whatever color you want. Is this a value?

Now, obviously this was purposeful on Apple’s part, but surely there’s a better way to make a little extra money from your audience than nickel-and-diming them to death like this. As soon as the demonstration video rolled around to the part where they show how the device is controlled, any other cool feature was dismissed from my mind, replaced immediately with “Well, I guess I’m not getting this, because the headphones are proprietary.” Seriously, Apple, what’s with you? You have a world-class design department there that regularly churns out some of the most powerful techlust objects known to mankind, and you do stupid things like this? Listen: you and I both know that you’ll never budge, never apologize. You’re Apple; you do things your way. We’ll keep buying your stuff regardless of seemingly-inconsequential-yet-actually-significant gaffes like this. It’d just be nice every now and then to not have to have that internal debate, y’know?