Will the buttonless iPod Shuffle make in-line headphone controls standard?

Monster (I know) just sent me a press releasing saying that future revisions of their entire headphone product line will include the buttons compatible with the new iPod Shuffle. Now add a microphone and I’m willing to accept the new click-cord controls as standard, especially if they’ll work with the iPhone. (I still think the buttonless Shuffle is dumb.)

1. [nixiebunny]

   Will the new headphone button interface be a standard like IEEE xxxx, or is this just another case of the aftermarket having to reverse-engineer the ever-changing Apple cable pinouts and protocols?

   I am quite tired already of having them change the interface specs with every new model they put out.

   Let’s ALL (aftermarket, customers, press) just ignore the new Shuffle, and maybe Apple will see the light.

2. [hohum]

   Is the control scheme interpreted by the remote or by the shuffle? That is, could somebody create a remote with more buttons? Or at least something that makes sense, like double tap vol up for next track, down for prev… Double tap and hold vol up for FF, down for REW… Rather than having to morse out APPLRULEZ just to navigate a playlist…

3. [Anonymous]

   @Nixiebunny: Oh, the pinout and the protocol will be standardized; but you’ll need a world-unique cert, cryptographically signed by Apple, if you want any iPods to talk to it…

   I’m joking, for now; but it is a mid to long term risk. Just changing pinouts and jiggling protocols now and again used to work; but when the OEM/Generic mills of the far east will have a compatible adapter on ebay within a week, not so much. Cryptographic verification, especially when you can assume networked devices, is far harder to break.

4. [grimc]

   So instead of one simple, tiny thing that allows you listen to music, you’ll need two simple, tiny things. Pass.

5. [Anonymous]

   I absolutely loath headphone cords. My ears are tiny so I can really only use earbuds, and I find the cords seem to catch on everything and pull the buds out. The new Shuffle looks like one of the Apple bluetooth headsets. Why not do us all favor and forget the cords? Make the unit into a headset and pair it with a wireless bud for the other ear. Then hide the controls right on the case like the jawbone headsets do …

6. [devophill]

   I used to use the in-line remote that came with my Toshiba gigabeat pretty much exclusively- of course I used it pretty much like a Shuffle. I never looked at it, and kept it on random all the time. The advantage of the remote was its tactile-ness, I didn’t have to look at it to use it. Of course, it had a cord of reasonable length, and you could plug any earphones in it…

   @HOHUM- I think other companies are making remotes with more than one button, but I may be wrong.

   I kinda want this shuffle to not suck, so I can buy one… the gigabeat’s long dead.

7. [usonia]

   I want this shuffle not to suck too. Despite how much it does. I was pretty batshit for the first one (which I still have & love, even if it’s devolved into a thumb drive), and I try so hard not to be an apple freak. Wouldn’t a normal Apple product evolution been more along the lines of magic touch buttons on the tiny case or some such? Even the control scheme is stupid, though I doubt it would take long to get used to.

8. [Tensegrity]

   @1
   

   Let’s ALL (aftermarket, customers, press) just ignore the new Shuffle

   Haha good luck with that.

9. [ihaveseenenough]

   Anyone with an iPhone has been doing this for months. It’s not that big of a deal, in the end- although i don’t understand why they didn’t just drop the price of the current shuffle and add this in.

   I actually love it on my iPhone (and yeah, I bought the $30 adaptor with mic so I could use my own headphones)- I don’t want to have to take it out of my pocket, turn on it, try and press the tiny non-button button every time I want to skip or reverse a track. As touch displays become more common, this will likely become the standard. You can’t reach your hand in your pocket and quickly flick the track unless Apple gives you a button, which christ knows is against the rules.

10. [Anonymous]

    What if I want to listen to music while I’m doing something that shouldn’t have a cable dangling in front of me while I’m doing it? If I run the cable under my jacket or shirt, I have to partially disrobe to control my music player now?

    Face it, this is a dumb idea. Keep the buttons on the device where they belong.

11. [SeeChao]

    I realy hope not, because as, apparently, the last non ipod customer in the world, I don’t want an extra remote dangling around me when I walk. It seems stupid for me to have to buy earbuds with a remote just to make a few retarded people who bought a stupid product happy. Make an adapter, sell that, heck, maybe even include it with ipod specific sets, white ones or something. Seems to me like making all products compatible with one product in a sea of others that wont benefit the other products, and even cause problems with them, is silly. Especialy since apple will release a new shuffle next week that won’t be compatible with it either.

12. [haineux]

    Anonymous #5, Bluetooth headphones are quite expensive, and they reduce audio quality.

    The trouble is that they all take analog in and then convert to digital for transmission, so there’s an extra roundtrip through the digital domain.

    This is made even worse because these headphone systems will compress the audio data using lossy algorithms to minimize the amount of data being sent to the headphones, because otherwise the batteries wouldn’t last very long — Who wants an earphone with a giant battery attached?

    Earbuds, really, are the problem, and there are many alternate kinds of on-ear and in-ear speaker systems that work better, including “street” headphones, on-ear cups that clip on, tiny speakers that hang outside the ear canal (AirDrives is one brand), in-ear plugs (Etymotic 6i plugs are well under $100 and sound great).

13. [granite monkey]

    @ HAINEUX – Thanks for the suggestions on the different ear phone types. My problem is that my ears are so small that if I use the on-ear styles, the middle of the speaker ends up centered on my lobe. The in-ear variety end up as buds anyway because the clip hovers above my ear. Even if I found something that fit, I’d sacrifice quality to be rid of cords. Between climbing, biking, and running, the cords are just always in the way!

14. [kawayama]

    i want real headphones (that cover the whole ear), with built in audio player and noise cancellation, please. no cords.

15. [strider_mt2k]

    You are seriously asking if THAT control scheme will become a standard after only a few days?

    Holy crap, when you guys “buy in” you don’t take half measures do you?

    Are there any tech blogs that take a CRITICAL stance towards this thing?

    -or at least a slightly less fawning one?

    I’m just trying to find some balance SOMEWHERE.

16. [strider_mt2k]

    You know, scratch that. I’m an idiot.

    Uh, you didn’t mean an _industry_ standard, did you?
    Ugh, I shouldn’t multi-task or do half the crap I do in the morning.

    Sure, controls, great. No problem.
    I’m, uh…just gonna go…shut up for a while…

    Sorry.

17. [pmhparis]

    I assume that all you people who are happy with using Apple’s new format are also happy paying Apple $20 more for the DRM chip they added in?
    http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/03/apple-adds-still-more-drm-ipod-shuffle