Just for the record:

People making guesses about Apple’s Intel strategy have focused on two possibilities for OS X on Intel:

One, that third-party application vendors would have to re-compile their code for the new architecture. Two, that Apple has developed or will develop a reasonably fast PPC emulation layer.

I think there’s a third possibility: that Apple has developed a layer which will, upon the first attempt to execute an incompatible application bundle, dis-assemble, roughly translate, re-assemble, and save the binary for the new architecture. Admittedly, I’m not really qualified to assess how impossible a task this is. Since we’re looking at a pretty constrained set of binaries, compiled for known APIs, and with known toolchains, it seems like writing a really smart disassembler wouldn’t be quite as difficult as writing a really fast emulator.

A fourth possibility: some kind of internet-based distribution mechanism for binaries. Vendors supply Apple with new binaries, or Apple builds new binaries itself, somehow. Since the binary itself makes up such a small chunk of the application bundle, why not a mechanism which checks for a simple hash in an online database, downloads, and updates the relevant bundle?

Just throwing it out there.

From Apple’s iPod Shuffle FAQ

Can I take a friend’s iPod shuffle and browse or play its content on my machine (like I can with other iPods)?
No, there is no manual mode that allows you to view or play the content from a friend’s iPod shuffle on your computer. This also means that you cannot load music from multiple computers or iTunes libraries onto iPod shuffle like you can with other iPods.

[…]

Can I use iTunes to view the songs on my iPod shuffle like I can with other iPods?
No. The iPod shuffle icon that displays in the iTunes Source list is actually a special playlist (like Party Shuffle).It lists which songs in the library are currently configured to be sent to iPod shuffle, but not what’s currently on the unit. If you see a bullet by a song, it indicates that the song was not sent to iPod shuffle. See “Some songs in your iTunes library aren’t copied to your iPod” for reasons why songs were not sent to iPod shuffle.

In sum, once you have loaded music onto the iPod Shuffle from one computer, you can’t plug the Shuffle into any other computer to listen to the music. You can either load it up with music at home and listen to it on the way to work, or you can load it up with music at work and listen to it on the way home. What you can’t do is plug it into your work computer and listen to the music you loaded up at home. This is different from how other iPods work.

If this situation is someone’s sick idea of copyright protection, it’s just stupid.