Shuffled

Today Apple released the iPod  Shuffle upgrade. This has been by far my favorite Apple product and perhaps the most valuable one given price / feature breakdown. We’ve given away hundreds of them to partners, folks reading this blog, business associates, employees..  I think the Mazek family alone has  at least half a dozen of them. They are convenient: for running, for cars, for training and for flights. Quick, simple, battery lasts forever. You can just stick your hand into the pocket, hit a few buttons while doing something else and you’re done.

Today, Apple either screwed all that up or is about to revolutionize the way headphones work. I’m betting on the former. By shifting the controls to the headphone it forces folks to mess around with the headphones, etc.

If I had to call it, this is the biggest failure since Microsoft changed their office UI from dropdown menu system to ribbons. At least Apple isn’t risking a multibillion dollar line of business.