Apple just released a bunch of new iPod Shuffles the other day, and although I’m a huge fan of the color orange and that’s one of them, that’s not what’s inspiring this post.

No, what’s behind this is my continued thinking (dreaming) about the iPhone. With its 4 or 8 GB storage capacity (2-6 GB for stuff outside the OS), I’ve been thinking about how it will fit into my life (and those of others) as a possible iPod replacement. After all, much of Apple’s target audience for the iPhone is users who carry both a cell phone or a smart phone in conjunction with an iPod.

Those of use who were reared on the old-school hard-disk based iPods that have up to 80 GB of space, tend to have enormous music collections as a result of all of this capacity. Mine is upwards of 25GB, and I know there’s more on the way. So, what are we to do with a measly 6 GB of space on our new device?

One word: Shuffle.

I love the concept of the iPod Shuffle. The lack of UI and its sense of “randomness” relieves me from having to make yet another decision during my day (I crave options, but I hate decisions) by simply loading X amount of tunes at “random” each time I sync with iTunes.

Well, it’s time to take this concept forward to the larger capacity device space. Last night as I was trolling the InterWeb, I came across this post about creating a much more robust shuffled playlist (for any size device). Needless to say I tried it out and gave it a whirl on my commute this morning, and it worked damn well. The biggest drawback to this type of solution, though, is the fact that it’s not built into iTunes. This means that the playlists won’t randomize with each sync of the iPod, but need to be handled manually (or scripted, as Mr. Briegel points out in his post).

It’ll take more playing, but perhaps an Automator action could do it, or possibly Pod2Go’s AppleScript launcher. In reality, I’ll have to wait until the iPhone is here, and then the games can begin.