The headphone shuffle

"Apple’s announcement of the third-generation iPod shuffle brought something many of us never thought we’d see (other than in a Saturday Night Live skit): an iPod with no buttons. There’s a switch for turning the shuffle on and off, but the familiar—and easy to use, I might add—five-button control pad has vanished.

So how do you control the new iPod shuffle? The bundled Apple earbuds—similar to the Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic the company has been selling since last fall for use with other iPod models—include a small, inline controller with just three buttons: volume up, volume down, and, well, let’s just call it Button. You use Button for nearly all playback functions: Press it once to play or pause playback; twice to skip forward a track; three times to skip back a track; twice and hold it to scan forward; three times and then hold it to scan backward; once and hold it to tell the shuffle to speak the name of the current song; or once and hold it longer to tell the shuffle to speak the names of playlists, using the volume buttons to “scroll” through the list—press Button again to choose a playlist. (I'm reminded of The Onion’s MacBook Wheel parody: a laptop with no keyboard—just a big Click Whe"