The Shuffle is absolutely nothing new. We had a device that did everything the Shuffle does in the 80s, and it was widespread, and at around the same pricepoint. The only things it lacked was capacity (though you could change tapes) and on-the-fly shuffling of songs. Plenty of them had radios, so there's a function the Shuffle doesn't have. The Shuffle is not a 'computer', it's a 'portable media device'. An LCD does not a computer make. And unlike the Walkman, it also need a computer in order to get it set up.

To try and paint the Shuffle as 'brave new world' territory is flat-out peculiar. We had an appliance doing the same thing 25 years beforehand.