I agree there is some slick marketing involved in part of Apple, but the Shuffle doesn't seem to be too bad without a screen. Once again, the power of iTunes makes the iPod Shuffle a lot better than the hardware alone seems to indicate. With itunes you can control the degree of randomness that goes into the shuffle by having it sync only higher rated songs or certain playlists. As for not knowing the song that is played, you can always look at their names when you plug it back into the computer. I think for tracks with vocals on them, you should be able to at least narrow it down to an artist. whatever is on the shuffle is on your computer as well. Chances are, if you are a regular itunes user or who uses itunes to rip cds, your songs are already highly organized already.
I use an ipod 3g on my daily commute and I almost never take it out to look at the screen. I pick a playlist to play and switch songs by pushing the fast forward button mostly. As I have mentioned, I dont use itunes when I am on the computer but I rate songs from the ipod which gets transferred over to itunes when ever I sync. I set smart playlists to create and _maintain_ playlists depending on such settings as genre, play count, last played, and rating and then I can use those auto-generated playlists to sync to the shuffle.
of course having a screen would be better on the shuffle, but not having one doesnt make it impossible to use. like tyrion said, not for everyone, but it will work for many of us, especially those that already own ipods.
