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Comment by quiffledwerg | Hacker News Reader

The best thing I ever used was iPod shuffle mini.

It was the perfect design, nothing could be added nor taken away to make it better.

But apple being Apple they redesigned it to be crap then discontinued it.

On the topic of designing great things and Apple …. Can I say that I hate Apples “minimalism above all else” approach to design. For example I want computers with lots of ports - what’s the point in buying a minimal Apple computer only to instantly plug it into another box that provides the basic ports I need for keyboard mouse external disks and camera? Somehow though the designers at Apple think this is the optimum design. I do acknowledge recent Macs bring ports back but still not enough.

I also hate it that Apple got rid of the standard headphone jack - for gods sake why? Answer: Apple designers.

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I loved the original iPod Shuffle - the one that looked like spearmint pack of gum. This may or may not be what you're referring to, but to me it was Perfect; the only Apple product I've truly enjoyed without the 5-25% incredible frustration I typically hit when I stretch my usage of any other Apple product. It felt like Apple philosophy distilled - beautiful, minimalistic and stylish but usable and useful too, even well priced and reliable. In fact I still have mine!

The following generations lost the allure somehow. Smaller, but that smaller form factor didn't actually work for me; it did not fit in my hand or in my pocket as nicely, you now needed a cable to charge it (how very Un-Apple in theory, how very Apple in practice!).

But the first one was just perfection. I got a couple of other MP3 players since in as similar format as I could find, both no-name clones and big-name versions, but nope, none of them were as smooth and easy.

P.S. Do *NOT* get me started on loss of 3.5mm port ;-<

Never used a Shuffle, but the original iPod Nano was absolutely beautiful. Just a bit too easily scratched and maybe too small.

I was skeptical, I liked my ports. Now I plug in all my devices at once, through a dongle. I like that a lot. It works well for how I work: either at my desk, with everything plugged in, or away from my desk with nothing plugged in.

They probably should've moved the ports to the power brick. That would've been ideal.

Power brick as cable hub is a really interesting idea. Feels like you'd have to move away from "brick plugs directly into the wall" to make it work though - imagine sitting in a cafe with your power plug six feet away, and wanting to use both that and some other device.

They did this for the new iMac, albeit only the ethernet port. It's the one that makes the most sense and doesn't appear to result in a larger brick, which I imagine would be considered a requirement by Apple.

I believe there's some third-party hubs available that provide power and ports galore via one or two thunderbolt cables, but you're looking at at least $200.

Which one?

The early shuffle mini.

There's no such thing, the Shuffle and Mini were separate models.

The Shuffle was the size of a USB drive, used solid state storage, and had no screen, the Mini was the one with the first touch Click Wheel and metallic colour choices, and used a 4GB spinning hard drive.

the 2nd generation Shuffle moved to a more miniature clip-on design and required a dock to charge and sync, I gather that’s what OP is referring to

Probably the 4th generation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Shuffle#4th_generation)

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