Apple introduced the new iPod Shuffle today. It's about half the size of the old Shuffle and it now holds around a thousand songs, instead of the 240 songs of the old, square Shuffle. The controls have been taken off the device and are now on the ear bud cord.

And there's a new system to help you organize the songs:

Now that the device can carry 1,000 songs, Apple has come up with a way for people to identify the music they're listening to or find songs they want. 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 _ called playlists _ that the owner has loaded onto the device.

Which is, I think, an interesting solution to the lack of screen on the thing, and kind of like the Kindle 2's reading a book aloud in a computerized voice. But part of what I like about my Shuffle is that 240 songs is just big enough that I can't remember all the albums that I put on the thing at once. I try to rip new albums onto my iTunes in groups of fifteen or twenty so I can just about fill my Shuffle. Without any way to identify the music, it lends the songs a nice anonymity—I often can't remember who I put on the Shuffle, and they're usually bands that are completely new to me, and so I have to judge the work song-by-song without knowing anything more about the song than what I'm hearing. It accidentally became a great democratic music-listening device. And now it's outdated.