I am thinking about getting an iPod shuffle; but I hate hate hate ear buds.
Am I going to have to buy the Nano or Touch if I want to use headphones that are not earbuds? Looks like all the controls for the Shuffle are built in to the earbud headphones.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of headphones do you use?
If you use something like this, your headphone options are almost limitless.
Usually just cheap, light, thin padded, over the ears, over the head ones. Nothing fancy. Just not crammed into the ear canal like ear buds.
This looks interesting indeed. That does increase my options greatly.
I looked at that and just want to point out that it did not exactly get rave reviews on the Apple site.
Whew! I retract my suggestion. I should know not to trust press releases.
Hrm… Is the shuffle that different from the iPhone? I know the iPhone has the buds with the 4 pin plug, to handle the volume controls and other, but I’ve had absolutely no problem with using my much favored, 3 conductor plug Bose QC3 headset with the iPhone. Sure, I don’t have the volume control, but that’s not a biggie for me.
I don’t use any adapters at all, just plug the normal 1/8 stereo plug into the iPhone, and go.
Yes. As the OP implied, the controls for the Shuffle are only on the earphone.
Guess I hadn’t kept up with shuffle “technology” lately and did not realize that they removed the controls from the shuffle. Did they pass on a cost savings to anybody when they took all of that expensive hardware out of the assembly. Damn thing must only cost pennies to make now . . .
My old shuffle works great with my Bose QC3’s as well, sell them both to ya at a good price. 
I had this same issue a while ago (well, a touch and not a shuffle) and none of the inline devices that puts a control box seemed to be well rated. I have no idea why - I mean, it’s a product with widespread appeal and is very simple - no one can build a decent one? Are we so much of a walmart/chinese/cheap as possible society that we won’t pay an extra buck for something that won’t break in 3 weeks?
I ended up going with Klipsch S4i IEMS which have the controls built in. They’re good. I realize you say you don’t want something you have to “cram into your ear canal” but IEMs actually do sit in your ear canal, unlike earbuds which just hang around outside wedged between whatever that cartiledge is called. Anyway, I thought IEMs would be uncomfortable because it’s weird sticking things in your ears, but the S4i IEMs were surprisingly comfortable - much more than any earbud I’ve used.