OT iPod shuffle function seems pretty useless

[keno]

I created a music playlist on my wife's iPod. I activated the shuffle function. The playlist has two modes: the first being the original order of the songs, and the second being a shuffled version of the playlist which always comes up in that order. In other words, the deck was shuffled once. There is no randomness to what is played next in the suffle mode.

Is there a way to create a random choice (I expect not) in a playlist?

My Zune, on the other hand, seems to move about randomly in a playlist, an album, an artist if shuffle is selected.

keno

[cp43]

I think (I haven't looked into it that much) that if you slect "Shuffle Songs" from the main menu that it will re-shuffle the songs. It will also start playing a random song, from amongst all of the songs on the iPod.

Hope this helps.

Chris

[znfdl]

The shuffle sonds on my Ipod Nano is very random. I would call apple.

[Michael Maddox]

There is a way to reshuffle, which escapes me. Check the docs.

By the way, the "random" nature of the shuffle is actually pseudorandom. :)

/end math/software guy rant

[znfdl]

There is a way to reshuffle, which escapes me. Check the docs.

By the way, the "random" nature of the shuffle is actually pseudorandom. :)

/end math/software guy rant

True, they do not use a random generator to assign which song plays when.

[giordana93]

somewhere in the settings for shuffle there is something like "make it more likely to play sth. by same artist" or such. I think it's something you set from the computer when syncing, and not just on the ipod. my ipods shuffle normally. but I don't use playlists much either, so random is more random when calling from the whole collection

[SoCalSteve]

If I understand the original posters question or comment...

Yes, you can either shuffle within the entire iPod or a particular Playlist.

In the menu settings you can turn this function on or off. If off, then it will play in alphabetical order (or the order you have set it up in)--- (either within the playlist OR the whole iPod).

Hope this helps,

Steve