““Four, you do not have to buy content from the Apple Store.””
Let me clarify that, now that my wife is awake, and jogged my memory.
For the shuffle to work, you had to hook up to iTunes. To hook up to iTunes, you had to have an iTunes account. There is (was) no anonymous access. You had to fill in all of your personal information, neither of us remember if a credit card was needed.
As far as the 2 shuffles on one computer, it was because a computer could only be registered to iTunes once. You could not register the product, it was the PC we were logging from, so when one kid would plug in the shuffle, it would go right to the iTunes thing, and update her list from there, which was very different from the other kids list.
Our solution was to register each shuffle on a different PC, which means we had to use up the HD space of 2 computers. It was a pain, and the songs we bought back then, would only work on 1 device. Dispute this all you want, but when we transfered them to the other PC, and the other daughter would go to the iTunes store, it would direct her to buy the usage rights. The iTunes software would not accept the license agreement connected to the song, if the song was transferred via our network. It had to be registered to the particular shuffle.
You can scream and kick all you want, and claim that is not true, but when we got on the net back then, the posts to this fact were found all over.
Maybe the shuffle has changed. I think we bought ours Christmas 2 years ago (not including this Christmas). It was a stroke. I think by Feb, we replaced them with the cheapest music players they had at Walmart, and never had a problem after that.
Actually, an Apple ID. But if you want anonymous access, feel free to use any of the other programs out there that manage music on your iPod. If you want to register your product and get full support and online features, use iTunes with the Store. No, it is not a duty of a manufacturer to inform you of competing products.
As far as the 2 shuffles on one computer, it was because a computer could only be registered to iTunes once.
And then each iPod you plug into it will be recognized as a different device. iTunes will remember the settings and playlists for each device. You can put the same DRM music on up to IIRC five iPods. Remember, I did this with two Shuffles and a Nano on a PC, and it included one DRM album my wife bought (I was not happy on principle since I had refused to buy DRM music).
Dispute this all you want, but when we transfered them to the other PC, and the other daughter would go to the iTunes store, it would direct her to buy the usage rights.
Now you know why Apple fought with the record labels to remove the DRM requirement, it's a PITA. You wouldn't have had this problem if you'd stayed on one computer.