IPod Shuffle
digital audio player
The iPod Shuffle (stylized and marketed as iPod shuffle) is a discontinued digital audio player designed and formerly marketed by Apple. It was the smallest model in Apple's iPod family, and was the first iPod to use flash memory. The first model was announced at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 11, 2005; the fourth- and final-generation models were introduced on September 1, 2010. The iPod Shuffle was discontinued by Apple on July 27, 2017.
Overview
1st generation
Released on January 11, 2005, during the Macworld expo, the first-generation iPod Shuffle weighs 0.78 ounces (22 g), resembles a pack of chewing gum sticks, and was designed to be easily loaded with a selection of songs and to play them in sequential or random order.
It is based on the SigmaTel STMP35xx system on a chip (SOC) and its software development kit (SDK) v2.6, a flash memory IC, and a USB-rechargeable lithium cell. The STMP35xx SOC and its software was the most fully integrated portable MP3 playback at release time and SigmaTel was Austin's largest IPO (2003) capturing over 60% of flash based MP3 player world market share in 2004. In 2005, peak iPod first-generation Shuffle production occurred at a hundred thousand units per day, at the Asus factory.
It lacks a display, click wheel, playlist management features, and the games, address book, calendar, alarm, and notes capability of larger iPods. Due to the formats not being ported, it is incapable of playing Apple Lossless and AIFF audio files.
“IPod Shuffle” enters the record as digital audio player. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what IPod, Shuffle and digital can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“IPod Shuffle” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, IPod, Shuffle and digital provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q214950. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005, 2010, 2017 and 2003.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “IPod Shuffle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.