Tearing down the iPod Shuffle may look easy – it is, after all, made of a few pieces of aluminium press-fitted and glued together – but the poor lads at iFixIt had a dickens of a time. Their complaint?

Although this step makes it look super-simple to open the Shuffle, it’s not. It took us a good half hour of prying and heat-gunning to open the little guy.
Pro tip: Aluminum gets hot when it’s heated!

That’s right: they got burned! Clearly the Shuffle, like the Ark of the Covenant, cannot be opened by unrighteous men.

Anyway, not much else to say except that it sure is small.

I’ve been shuffling all these memories through my brain, trying to figure out where I’ve seen this MP3 player before. Shuffle though I may, I can’t seem to shuffle the correct memory back into place despite some pretty intense shuffling.

As the Geeks.com product description points out, “**This is not the actual Apple iPod shuffle, it is a generic MP3 player**” – it does indeed bear a resemblance to the first second generation shuffle, though. And at $11.99 (today only) for a 4GB player, it’s much easier on the wallet.

4GB USB Clip Style MP3 Player (Black) S-550 [Geeks.com]

Want to break Apple’s hegemony over your headphone choice when using the new iPod Shuffle? This $18 dongle adds all of Apple’s functionality into a little thing that sits on top of the Shuffle rather than inline on the headset, thereby freeing you from the shackles of fear that hold us all down and, in the end, will kill us. After all, even the birds are chained to the skyway.

Anyway, it’s a really simple little dongle. This thing had to appear sooner or later.

via iLounge

We are checking into getting one for review purposes, we’ll let you know if it’s worth your $6.45 + shipping.

Monster will be updating its Beats and Turbine lines among others to include Shuffle controls. Nothing to make fun of there.

V-MODA will be dropping a Shuffle-compatible headphone line that, if I’m to believe their press release, is nothing short of revolutionary. Their words.

Scosche will have a pair of their own as well or you can get an inline adapter for normal headphones, which seems the best solution to me.

Klipsch has some as well. As if you didn’t know!

We’ve contacted Ultimate Ears to see what their plans are, but haven’t heard back yet.

As I mentioned, there’s hardly any more info out there other than “yeah, we’re making some,” so we’ll get you the news and reviews you want as soon as the gear is available. In the meantime, we also advise against getting the new Shuffle, since it sucks.

For an Apple product, the new iPod Shuffle is a bit underwhelming in the aesthetics department. It’s tiny, for sure, but I can’t and most likely won’t ever get over the fact that I have to use Apple’s earbuds. What am I supposed to do with my Ultimate Ears and Shures?

The controller itself sits a bit higher than expected and probably would be better served had it been placed a few more inches down the cable. It’s a bit chintzy and I’m sure Apple stores will see droves of folks coming in with broken earbuds.

The Voice Over feature works with non-iTunes purchased music (aka pirated music!) and flipping through playlists is easy as pie, but you have to listen to the little robotic man in the Shuffle tell you which track and artist is playing before you can get to your playlists. That’s a bummer right there. The only time I foresee myself having to use the Voice Over feature is if someone else is listening to it and they want to know what’s currently playing. I doubt I’ll be making playlists if I have to go through the whole process every time.

Is the new Shuffle worth $79? Put it this way: I’m just glad I can expense this unwanted Apple purchase.

[PSGallery=45w9faleji]

Just listen to the voice in the video above. It is completely and unmistakably on par with the best of Opie and Anthony. I dare you to listen and not hear the lilting strains of Wolfman Jack buried deep in its DNA.

This outrage will not stand. Biff, Burgermaster, Fatboy, and the rest of the Morning Zoo: Stand to fight. Howard Stern: hire someone to look into this for you. If this little square of metal can say “mumble mumble the ching chings” just like a real human, what else will it replace? Will the shuffle feature replace the drive time rock block, the shot-outs to pot-heads at 3am? The titillation of hearing a porn star pretend to have sex while you drive to your job at Arby’s? This is a slippery slope and we are at the crest.

We also have a modest proposal for radio DJs: Sue Apple! They’re stealing your jobs!

Apple Announces Incredible New iPod shuffle

World’s Smallest Music Player Now Talks to You

CUPERTINO, California—March 11, 2009—Apple® today introduced the all-new iPod® shuffle, the world’s smallest music player at nearly half of the size of the previous model, and the first music player that talks to you. The revolutionary new VoiceOver feature enables iPod shuffle to speak your song titles, artists and playlist names. The third generation iPod shuffle is significantly smaller than a AA battery, holds up to 1,000 songs and is easier to use with all of the controls conveniently located on the earphone cord. With the press of a button, you can play, pause, adjust volume, switch playlists and hear the name of the song and artist. iPod shuffle features a gorgeous new aluminum design with a built-in stainless steel clip that makes it ultra-wearable.

“Imagine your music player talking to you, telling you your song titles, artists and playlist names,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod and iPhone™ Product Marketing. “The amazingly small new iPod shuffle takes a revolutionary approach to how you listen to your music by talking to you, also making it the first iPod shuffle with playlists.”

iPod shuffle is based on Apple’s incredibly popular shuffle feature, which randomly selects songs from your music library. And now, when you can’t remember the name of a song or an artist playing, with the press of a button iPod shuffle tells you the name of the song and artist. iPod shuffle can even tell you status information, such as battery life. With the ability to hold up to 1,000 songs and the VoiceOver feature, you can now easily switch between multiple playlists on your iPod shuffle. iPod shuffle can speak 14 languages including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

The new iPod shuffle comes in silver or black and features a sleek and ultra-wearable design with a built-in stainless steel clip. iPod shuffle is the smallest music player in the world and is incredibly easy to clip to almost anything and take with you everywhere you go. iPod shuffle features up to 10 hours of battery life.*

Pricing & Availability
The third generation 4GB iPod shuffle is now shipping and comes in silver or black for a suggested price of $79 (US) through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. iPod shuffle comes with the Apple Earphones with Remote and the iPod shuffle USB cable. iPod shuffle requires a Mac® with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS® X v10.4.11 or later and iTunes® 8.1 or later; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows Vista, Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 3) or later and iTunes 8.1.

*Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information. Song capacity is based on four minutes per song and 128-Kbps AAC encoding; in 256-Kbps AAC format, song capacity is up to 500 songs; actual capacity varies by encoding method and bit rate.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Today’s Apple press event was a new, iPod party, but apparently, the cheap Shuffle didn’t get an invite. There wasn’t any news about the tiny iPod during the event, but the online Apple store reveled that the pastel color palette of old has now been replaced with four of the brighter Nano color scheme options, along with the standard silver. Pricing and storage size remains the same with the 1GB going for $49 and the 2GB for $69.

There you go kiddies. Apple has opened its floodgates for the masses. The new 120GB iPod classic, NIKE+ iPod Touch and 8GB Nano are shipping today, with the 16GB Nano’s shipping early next week and $79, two-way headphones shipping next month.

I wasn’t aware that Apple was doing anything to support the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, but it doesn’t surprise me, though. The pink Shuffles have surfaced at Target stores across the country. This particular one was captured in Santa Maria, CA and includes a $15 iTunes store gift card, but it’s still $79! Anyone else seen a pink Shuffle at your local Target? We don’t have any here in Manhattan.

Special Edition iPod shuffle Appears at Target Stores [iPod Observer]