iPod Shuffle

My wife's father suffered a stroke several years back and has been in nursing homes since then. He's wheelchair bound, mostly aphasic, obviously depressed.. a very sad and unhappy man.

We visit him every Saturday to give him what comfort we can, spending hours talking to him, wheeling him here and there to give him some different scenery.. it's not much, but we hope it gives him some relief. Someone from the family visits each day, so he's never alone for long.

He does seem to enjoy music. Another family member had brought in a CD player and we'd play that for him when it wouldn't disturb other residents. But the CD player had to be plugged in too, so recently I bought him an iPod Shuffle (second generation).

The Shuffle has no screen; it plays its songs either randomly or sequentially. That's fine for him: he wouldn't be able to select songs anyway. As it holds 500 songs, a random selection should keep him amused without repetition, and the 12 hour play time for a full charge means that he can have it playing the entire four hours or so we spend with him. As these things are very inexpensive ($49.95), other family members could buy one, load theirs up with a different set of songs he enjoys, and he'd then have music a good part of every day..

I did have a little trouble with this. When you first connect it to iTunes, a window comes up with the choice "Register Later" or "Continue". I chose "Continue", but nothing happened - I just got a blank screen. More disturbingly, iTunes didn't then offer me the choices the on-line video tutorial showed that it would - I could put music on the device by dragging to it, but I couldn't delete anything and couldn't choose a playlist to synchronize from. I tried restarting iTunes, ejecting and replugging the iPod - nothing changed..

When you click on the iPod in the left pane of iTunes, it should show you what's currently on it and have some tabs in the bottom pane that let you refill or add to it from a playlist. I could see that in the tutorial video, but I had no such thing. I tried it on Windows also; same result.

Out of frustration, I finally reset and chose "Register Later". To my complete surprise, iTunes then asked me to name the iPod and once I did, it showed me what was presently on the device and now the other tabs that let you synchronize from a playlist.

I still have no idea what "Continue" is supposed to do, but if you buy one of these things, try "Register Later"..

Tony Lawrence 2008-07-13 Rating: 4.0