The new iPod software lets you do this. ”

Um… no it doesn’t… It lets you get a random selection of _everything_ on your iPod.

Personally, I have a playlist (called “Big Mix”, appropriately) that includes everything except audiobooks and novelty stuff. I primarily play that on shuffle. Movie scores and classical to pop to foreign. I’ve discovered I really like the eclectic-ness of it.

1. It’s the combination of autofill, shuffle, and a quick way to restart the playlist from the beginning (hit play 3 times) that makes the shuffle so nice.

2. If I weren’t a lazy rat bastard, I could make a playlist on the iPod that simulated this experience. I’m just too lazy, and it wouldn’t be quite as nice because the iPod is large.

That is all.

The new iPod software lets you do this.

Also, I tend to leave my iPod permanently in shuffle mode. All my playlists are big smart playlists. For some reason, while I have the anal-retentive patience to sit and rate all my songs, I can’t be bothered to put together manual playlists.

This means that the order of a playlist doesn’t matter at all, so I might as well just leave everything in shuffle mode all the time.

Even when using iTunes it’s pretty much all Party Shuffle all the time — I like being able to tweak the set of upcoming tracks, but still basically don’t want to be bothered with sorting things by hand. Better to let the machine do it.