Boy, the Cheap-Ass Skinflints sure had a banner day, didn't they? Because in addition to being able to buy a modern Mac for just $499, now they can also join the rest of us in iPod Nation (ten million strong and growing!) for only 99 smackers. Yes, the flashPod rumors were right on the money, and the iPod shuffle is shipping now in $99 and $149 configurations, meaning that customers can now enjoy portable digital music for less than half the cost of an iPod mini (albeit with an eighth of the mini's storage). Sure, it doesn't hold all that many songs, but it holds more than its competition, and for a lower price-- plus, it's tiny, weighs next to nothing, requires zero cables or disposable batteries, and best of all, if you get hungry, you can eat it. Oh, and it comes with white earbuds, meaning that customers can score with iPod groupies for a fraction of the original entry cost.

On the whole "screenless" thing, well, we were a little skeptical, but Apple did it: they built a player that holds up to 240 songs, and yet basically doesn't let you pick which one you want to hear. The idea is that so many people just use shuffle-play all the time anyway, why not sell an iPod that more or less relies on that behavior to be a viable product? Your control is limited to skipping forward or back one track at a time, either in playlist order or (preferably) at random. That's considerably less control than the competition offers; sure, their controls and screens may suck rocks out loud, but at least they let you listen to "Unskinny Bop" if (for some reason) you want to and you're willing to wrestle with the crappy interface to get to it. The iPod shuffle's edibleness might not be a strong enough feature to compensate.

It's a gutsy move, but if anyone can pull it off, it's Apple-- and truth be told, we do tend to listen to just one or two playlists on our iPods on any given day, and usually on shuffle play. So if the public can relinquish its illusion of control to the fates, this little slab o' white plastic has a good shot at boosting Apple's share of the portable player market still higher into the stratosphere. Personally, we expect a fair number of them will be bought by existing iPod owners as sort of their "big" iPod's lil' buddy; it's perfect for those times when you only need to tote a dozen or two albums' worth of tunage with you instead of your whole collection. Let's say you're skiing, or something-- are you really going to do anything with your iPod other than toss on a playlist and occasionally skip tracks? Exactly. And since you can eat the iPod shuffle, you won't even need to pack a PowerBar.

But regardless of how you do use it, the issue of how you can use it raises an interesting question: is the iPod shuffle really an iPod? Obviously from a marketing perspective, an iPod is whatever Apple says is an iPod, but does that really stand in a deeper philosophical sense? The iPod is now a cultural icon, and it resides in the gestalt consciousness as "the thing that lets you carry all your music everywhere you go"-- and unless your music collection is pretty freakin' anemic, an iPod shuffle with a 240-song capacity ain't gonna qualify. So there's a chance that Apple is watering down the iPod's identity with the iPod shuffle.

Then again, some of us thought that the 4 GB iPod mini might do that, too, and that obviously never happened-- and of course, if your personal definition of "iPod" is "stylish white and/or metallic thing that plays music through charisma-boosting white earbuds," then you're covered anyway. At the end of the day, it's more than likely that the iPod brand and cachet will turn the shufflePod into a raging success in spite of its limited song capacity. After all, anyone who wants to carry more songs would have bought a regular iPod anyway, right? The bottom line is this: the shufflePod is white, it's stylish, it has the trademark iPod earbuds, it autosyncs with iTunes, it's teeny-tiny and feather-light, and it makes for a tasty snack when the hunger is pokin' atcha pokin' atcha. What's not to love?

Oops, wait, this just in: literally six dozen AtAT viewers have now written in pointing out that the footnotes on Apple's web page include the command, "Do not eat iPod shuffle." To which we can only reply to Apple: you ain't the boss of us. Now where'd we put that ketchup?