Macworld 2009: Does New iPod Shuffle Supports More Songs and Audio Books?

With Macworld 2009 opening Monday, January 5, 2009 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, conference attendees and worldwide Mac lovers are waiting to find out the latest technology from Apple, news about product updates and helpful tips and tools related to Apple products.

On January 6, 2009, the Expo portion of the Macworld 2009 trade conference will open and many people are looking to hear on that same day, what Phil Shiller, senior VP of worldwide product marketing has to say in his keynote speech for Macworld 2009 according to Tuaw, an unofficial Apple weblog. One interesting thing about this Macworld 2009 presentation is after the keynote address, the Apple product page will be updated to reflect any announcements made. News sites around the web will reflect all the details of product releases.

If you are unable to attend Macworld 2009, Macrumors offers a spoiler-free keynote Quicktime stream that readers can subscribe to to hear the news just hours after Phil Shiller's address.

According to AppleInsider, a new release of the iPod Shuffle may have the product shaped as thin as an earbud connector and shaped similar to a credit card. I'm not sure why they'd increase the size unless everyone wants to carry their new iPod Shuffle in their wallet. I'm equally unsure whether they've found a narrower earbud connector. Whatever the case, a smaller new iPod Shuffle currently sized at 1.07" by 1.62" would be a very small new Ipod Shuffle indeed.

Currently, the iPod Shuffle works similar to an iPod in the popular shuffle feature where songs are selected at random from all music downloaded. It also has a clip end that allows customers to attach it almost anywhere.

Will the new Ipod Shuffle cost even less than the currently listed price of $49 for 1Gb or 240 song version or $69 for the 2Gb or 500 song version? Will the new iPod Shuffle come in additional colors than the currently offered silver, blue, green, pink and red? Macworld 2009 attendees will wonder.

The Apple Shuffle Forum page has little information on a new iPod Shuffle and their support page has quite a list of problems that are mostly solved by their service agreement and warranty. iLounge posted pictures on the Flicker site for the new iPod Shuffle, 4G nano implying the new Fourth Generation may support more songs and maybe the new operating system Leopard to help customers that would like to use the new iPod Shuffle, for audio books, a feature which is already supported.

One sad news item relates that Apple does not intend to attend Macworld 2010, perhaps because like many other industries it is cutting costs, especially since, according to PCMag trade shows tend to be expensive.

[1] Robert Palmer, Tuaw

[2] Lance Ulanoff, PCMag