Apple Inc. unveiled a minuscule new iPod Shuffle yesterday that takes its “smaller is better” mantra to a whole new level.
The third-generation Shuffle, a slim aluminum rectangle less than seven centimetres long, takes up about half as much space as the previous version even as it doubles music storage space to four gigabytes. To achieve such a tiny form, Apple had to remove most of the buttons from the body of the $99 device and build them into the headphone cord instead.
The trade-off for a sub-$100 Shuffle has always been the lack of a screen to visually navigate through the music stored on the device. A new feature called VoiceOver can, at the push of a button, speak the song and artist name or rattle off the list of custom mixes that the owner has loaded onto the device.
