Doing the iPod Shuffle

Joe Wilcox | January 12, 2005, 11:05 AM

Today, Wired posted a story on the mass shuffle for iPod Shuffle at the San Francisco Apple Store. About 8 p.m. ET, a friend called from the SF store, where he was standing in line for iPod Shuffle, and insisted that I get two. So now I owe him 200 bucks. He knew people that already put the flash-based player up on eBay.

I don't know another company that could create such a frenzy over a stick-of-gum-size music player. Cool factor certainly works here, so much so Apple almost has this secret marketing thing going. You pay 99 bucks for the white earbuds--so you can be cool, too--and get a free flash-based player! Smart.