Scosche TapStick Makes iPod Shuffle 3G Significantly Less Annoying, More UsableS

Some think the button-less iPod shuffle is just okay, and others see it as near-unusable, impractical and irritating. The Scosche TapStick adds buttons and supports normal headphones, in case you hated the shuffle but for some reason bought it anyway.

The TapStick is a case that moves the awkward headphone-based controls onto the front of the gadget where they belong, which in turn frees up the headphone jack to use any pair of 'phones you choose, not just the ones Apple packages in. In effect, while these features make the shuffle easier to use, they also remove everything that separates it from previous-gen shuffles.

The TapStick also costs $29, nearly half the price of the $79 shuffle itself, and for that combined $110 you've got yourself a player with no screen, incredibly basic controls, the worst sound quality in the iPod family, and you've lost the slick look of the uncased shuffle. You could double your memory and get a far more feature-packed player in the 8GB iPod nano for only $40 more! This might just be a lipstick-on-a-pig situation. [CNET]