Revisiting the iPod Review
I’ve now had my iPod for approximately 3 months, and wanted to revisit my original review to provide a more comprehensive picture based on long-term usage. This feeling was primarily instigated by another article on the appearance of patterns within the iPod’s shuffle algorithm.
Personally, I strongly believe that the iPod has a truly random (well, pseudo-random, but definitely “random enough”) number generator for its shuffle algorithm. I can’t imagine that the programmers would intentionally include any preferential treatment for specific artists, or at least nothing that would be noticeable. Given that every iPod owner attributes different “quirkiness” to their iPod’s selection methods, I can say with some degree of certainty that the phenomenon is entirely psychological and not based on the iPod’s software.
That said, I still take some issue with the way the iPod handles its playlists. I tend to prefer extremely long playlists on the order of 1-3 thousand songs, yet my iPod will have an extremely difficult time handling a playlist of that length “randomly”. First off, the battery life is nowhere near sufficient to complete a playlist that long, nor would I expect it to be. The real issue is that every time you recharge the iPod, it resets the current playlist - effectively losing the old “shuffle order” and forcing the iPod to create a new randomization of the same list. If the shuffle algorithm were truly random, this probably wouldn’t be an issue - but every pseudo-random number generator has to start with a seed, and unless that seed is frequently updated with some source of entropy, the generator is quite likely to generate a sequence similar to the last.
For example, I start listening to my super-playlist and hear the song “One” by U2. Since the song is only in the playlist once, I should have to listen to 1300+ songs before I hear it again. However, if I recharge my iPod, it loses that ordering of the playlist, and then recalculates a new order. When it does so, I presume that it uses the same (or at least a related) random number seed, which has a reasonably high probability of putting “One” in the early part of the playlist, meaning that I might hear the song 4-5 times over the course of a week of heavy listening (and recharging), even though I have yet to make it through the entire playlist even once.
This situation is exacerbated by the iPod’s inability to edit playlists on the fly. With my Rio Karma if I had heard a song too many times recently I could simply remove it from the playlist. The iPod does have the ability to create simple playlists on the fly, but searching through nearly 7000 songs to create a new playlist of over 1000 songs that exactly replicates a single existing playlist except for the omission of a single song seems a bit tedious to me. Of course it’s entirely possible to just skip the offending song - but that method provides only a temporary solution, since it’s entirely possible the song will reappear the next time I recharge the iPod. And attempting to remember the handful of overplayed songs long enough to get back to iTunes and edit the playlist is likewise an unacceptable (and in my case improbable) solution.
The other big issue I have with the iPod is its inability to continue playback while charging. Whenever you plug in the iPod’s charging cable, it stops playback immediately and cannot resume until you unplug it. While this isn’t a severe problem, it does definitely impinge upon the “music anywhere, anytime” paradigm. I’m forced to modify my listening habits to cater to the needs of the iPod - which isn’t a good thing from a usability standpoint.
None of these problems is severe enough to make me return the iPod, so Apple has successfully captured my customership in this instance. However, all of the above were not problems in my previous player of choice, the Rio Karma - a device that was contemporary with the 1st and 2nd generation iPods. I fully understand Apple’s focus on the physical and usability design of their products to the exclusion of “lesser” features - but I don’t think I’ll purchase another iPod until I know that these issues have been resolved. And by resolved, I don’t mean by requiring an additional purchase of one or more accessories or through the application of a complex third-party firmware upgrade.
October 10th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Thanks for sharing! The playlist issue is exactly the thing that would be a deal breaker for me as, like you, I listen to thousands of songs and I would really like to be able to listen to my music without constant maintenance. Presently, however, I may just drop some MP3s onto my MDA and rock-on when I can as work rather prohibits walking around with headphones on all of the time