3 ms·

So they're using up more space on what's already terribly limited. Incredible!

• jws 18y ago
  2 seconds of song title information in a 200 second song. Irrelevant!
  • electromagnetic 18y ago
    Convert it to AAC and you'll double the storage space of the Shuffle. Their estimates are based on MP3 and I know from experience that AAC can store a song with equal quality (well the same output quality from an earphone).
• raganwald 18y ago
  You're in a chair flying in the sky and you're bitching about not getting Internet Access! Sorry, that was a poor attempt at a witty put-down. Let's start again. There is a fixed amount of space. true, 4GB seems like plenty, but so did 640K once upon a time. But the question here is whether 4GB of music and voice cues in a very small form factor is more valuable than 4GB of music only in the small form factor or 4GB of music in a larger form factor with a screen to display visual cues. It's all a question of turning the design knobs to produce the overall highest value/best experience.
• electromagnetic 18y ago
  For a $80 device, they're not going to put in an entire text->voice program capable of on-the-fly translations. It's insane to think they'll stick a 500mhz processor into an $80 device that's smaller than my thumb and it still have enough power to actually be usable. This is an amazing solution to a complex problem, and with the quality of voice from these programs it's likely understandable at a very low bitrate. Using AAC my 2gb Sony Walkman held more songs than my wifes 4gb iPod nano, now on my iPod I often use AAC simply to increase the storage capacity. I have little doubt you could get a fully understandable output at maybe a hundred kb in AAC.