I can’t help myself. I may have a problem, but I refuse to admit to it, that’s for sure. We went to Target today (what else it there to do) for some stuff, but I was really hoping to stumble across a Shuffle. I got there and the sign said something like, “iPod Shuffle Available 2.27.05” … well, that’s tomorrow. I figured it wasn’t like an Apple truck was going to pull up tonight, so I asked a guy who clearly worked around the electronics area, but not in it … he said, “yeah, we have tons of those under the counter.” He borrowed a key, opened it up, and handed me a 1 GB Shuffle. Nice. It is a nice piece of engineering, even if it is a screenless little piece of plastic. Apple touches abound — the little metal bearings in the end cap that hold the USB cover on is a fine example. The packaging is actually very cool as well … pictures below.

The nice thing is that I plugged it into my 12″ PowerBook, it asked me if it should autofill it for me, I said yes and it picked a random selection of songs. I have it on right now and it is in shuffle mode — something I never do with my 60GB iPod photo … just too much stuff to get in the way. It hasn’t played a bad song yet … went something like, U2, Dave Matthews, Grateful Dead … not bad taste if you ask me. Very cool. This is going to make the perfect refillable podcast machine. Exactly what I was looking for!