Leaked Components Point Towards iPod Shuffle Touch

John Brownlee ()

Leaked Components Point Towards iPod Shuffle Touch

Keep it secret! Keep it safe. Given Apple’s once impeccable track record of keeping their future products under wraps up until the very moment that Steve Jobs held them aloft on stage, the product-leaking Smeagol lurking around the underdark of their supply chain is really doing Cupertino a bad turn.

The latest supply-chain leak, spotted by Apple.pro, shows a tiny 1.18’ square, 3cm x 3cm touchscreen, complete with an Apple copyright branded upon the connector cable. The obvious assumption? A touchscreen iPod Shuffle, possibly as early as September.

I don’t doubt for a second that this is Apple’s next move when it comes to the Shuffle line.
The latest Shuffle has made Apple’s cheapest audio player as small as it can possibly go, but at the expense of on-board controls. As far as consumers are concerned, it’s been something of a dud compared to the second generation Shuffle, which was already about as small as most people ever wanted it to be. A touchscreen Shuffle will allow Apple to finally give the Shuffle a display without sacrificing a robust control scheme (or offload controls to the earbud cord, as in the current Shuffle).

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So yes, a touchscreen Shuffle is only a matter of time. The only question is when it will be released, whether it’ll run iOS, and what form apps on such a small display would take (simple widgets is my guess).

9 comments »

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in iPod, News, Rumors, Top stories |

  • Dustin

    Many people want to use the Shuffle for running and exercise. I can’t imagine sweating on a touchscreen.

    That kinda looks like a solar panel to me. Maybe iPods will have a built in solar panel to further improve battery life?

  • Bman

    I’m glad to see them possibly correcting a glaring issue that kept me from gifting the new line of shuffles to any family or friends, instead opting for far cheaper SanDisk and Sony models.

    Controls on the damned unit. Being tied to proprietary headphone units that boast controls but horrible fit amongst I and many of my fellow iPod using buds…is just really lackluster foresight in my opinion.

    Worse is when you have someone buy one and they are told by the waves of employees at wal-marts, targets, best buys, and etc. “You can use any headphones with these, they’ll work fine.”

    No where should anyone toss that line into a selling point of a current iPod shuffle. And there’s no mention of it by apple that you’re “limited” to headphones with controls on them or you’re bent over.

    I am certainly in the crowd that thinks the current shuffle is just a smaller, expensive, charm on your keyring.

    A touchscreen for fast thumbing through songs/volume/etc is just a good move, though.

  • Kyle storm

    It looks like Apple is about to go “touch” on all of it’s devices (if there’s a touch Shuffle, then surely they’ll be a Touch Nano). Mac Touch is also a possibility. Why not use iOS on every device they sell? Makes sense.

  • http://www.macpredictions.com Graham Bower

    Yes – it will probably look a lot like this mockup, from way back in 2008:
    http://www.macpredictions.com/2008/05/ipod-shuffle-with-multi-touch.html

  • Tim
  • Cami

    @Benny

    Yes, heaven forbid the man should let any creativity leak into his articles. I liked both references to LOTR.

  • Barry Wood

    With a touch screen there’s no reason for it to be a Shuffle is there? The whole reason for that marketing was to deal with the lack of display.

    Wouldn’t this more likely be a Touch Nano?

  • Church of Apple

    @Tim
    I like the watch idea but that one is disgusting. The reason why I never wear one is because they’re all clunky like that. It’s like wearing a brink on your arm. No thanks. =\

  • Edwin

    hi i was a bit on the touch panel. touch panels have two connectors. as you can see in the image has two connectors, one above the other below. one is for display (LCD) and the other is the touch panel connector. Bone is actually a touch panel. not a solar panel.