My officemate was looking up something about her Apple computer, and stumbled across an ad for the iPod Shuffle boldly declaring "Enjoy Uncertainty!"

Which immediately raised the question: WTF is an "iPod Shuffle?"

Well, apparently it's an iPod where Apple has engineered out the display. The only display element it has is a little green power LED.

In other words, it plays random music and you can't know what's next because it has no way to tell you. (Well, that's not strictly true - you can tell it to play the playlist straight through, so you can follow along.)

Apparently the idea is to take the thing jogging where you want it to be as small as possible - the thing is tiny. It's basically a USB thumbdrive that can also play MP3s (and AACs, Apple's format).

In short, it's an iPod that's even smaller than the iPod mini, achieved by making it impossible to choose a specific song.

(It should be noted that you can move to the next and previous song in the shuffle, it does include five controls - previous, next, play/pause, and volume up and volume down. Although I think a traditional volume wheel would have been wiser - whatever.)