Posted by Jeffrey Kabbe on February 28th, 2009 in Media | Permalink
I can name that tune in…
February 28, 2009John Gruber over at Daring Fireball wrote a piece today asking for text-to-speech capability on the iPod Shuffle. John’s usually pretty insightful, but I have to disagree with him today. For most avid music listeners, I think this would work better in theory than in practice. Reading the artist and song name would take at least 3 or 4 seconds. In that time, I could have been listening to the song and probably have identified which song it was. Text-to speech is needed on the Nano because the Nano has text menus. The Shuffle is an entirely different animal. And Apple isn’t likely to “improve” that animal with a feature that adds cost and which most people will want to turn off anyway.
ps. I tried desperately to find a way to make this law-related, but I just couldn’t. I’m sorry, and I apologize for the distraction!
Last I checked the ADA was a law, and arguments have been made for various tech-accessibility provisions. But I agree-the shuffle is audio-only anyway. I just think there’s a legal side to it.
Posted by jon u | February 28th, 2009 at 10:28 pm