Search

Categories

Opera

Archives

Recent Entries

iPod’s only weakness

I love my iPod as much as the other million plus people that own them, but one thing has been bugging me lately…

Operating the iPod without looking at it is nearly impossible. I listen to my iPod the most in my car, hooked up with a cord to the audio input on my car CD player. I normally sit the iPod in the passenger’s seat, because it slides off of my lap, and I don’t have a holder for it. But there are quite a few problems with this arrangement…

When I’m driving I of course can’t be looking over at the passenger’s seat all the time to navigate the menus and pick albums or songs or artists. So I have to instead blindly reach for the iPod to change a song. But because it is sitting loosely on the seat, many times when I am just trying to grab the iPod, I hit one of the buttons and it will either pause the song, or skip to the next/previous one. This normally wouldn’t be a problem on most electronic devices since you can “feel” the button before you actually press on it, but because the iPods buttons are so sensitive, just lightly brushing one of the touch-sensitive pads as you pick it up will change one of the settings. Yes, of course I am aware of the hold switch, which deactivates the buttons to avoid this problem. But the hold switch is not that easy to turn on and off with one hand, and I frequently just want to skip a track, and flipping the hold switch on and off every time I do that seems like too many steps for something so simple. So instead I have adopted the technique of dragging my hand from the far side of my seat to the near side, until my fingers touch the iPod. Then I slide my finger down the right side of the device until it hits the next track button. Seems kind of silly to have to do that doesn’t it?

I’ve also had trouble with “double-clicking” the iPod buttons accidentally. Again, this is only a problem in the car. I generally don’t pick up the iPod to press the buttons, instead I just leave it sitting on the seat and press the buttons from the top while it’s sitting there. But if I hit a bump at that moment and my arm briefly shakes, I press the button twice and end up skipping a song. Then if I wanted to hear that song, I have to run my finger down the left side of the iPod until it hits the previous track button. Again with most devices this wouldn’t be a problem because the buttons have some resistance and movement, so it would be much more difficult to accidentally press a button twice.

The last problem is the jog-wheel on the front of the iPod that is used to navigate all of the menus, control the volume, etc. Because it doesn’t actually move, it is impossible to “feel” where you are in the menu system. For instance with most devices I’m pretty good at memorizing complex interfaces and operations so that I can operate it without looking. Like maybe a watch that I’ve owned for a few months, I can probably skip through the different modes and set the stopwatch automatically without looking. I memorize how many clicks it takes to get to that mode, then what button to press to start/stop the stopwatch, etc.

But on the iPod there is no way to feel when you have changed to the next menu item. I’m not sure if the original iPod wheel clicked, or if it just smoothly turned and still relied on the audible click to let you know when a menu item changed, but in my opinion it would be best if the wheel itself “clicked” into position, rather than just having an audible sound. If this was the case, it would be easy to memorize the steps to change the album or artist.

• Press menu a couple of times to return to the root menu
• Scroll counter clockwise for a turn or two to make sure you are at the top of the iPod’s menu tree (normally Artists)
• Press the enter button to enter the Artists listing
• Scroll clockwise three clicks to select Blink-182
• Press enter twice to start playing the first song

Similar steps would let you easily change artists or playlists or albums, after you had memorized where your favorites were. But since the jog-wheel on the new iPods doesn’t move at all, you really have no way of knowing when you have clicked down to the next menu item. Sure there is a soft click sound, but when you are already playing loud music in the car, you can’t hear it anyway.

Now of course perhaps this could all be avoided if I made a “on the go” playlist of the albums I wanted to listen to before I left the house, and just let that play, but I would never remember to do that and by the time I get halfway to work, I might not want to listen to the same albums anymore. So I have instead started putting the iPod on shuffle, playing through all 1,300 songs, and just hitting skip until I find a song I want to listen to.

These are minor annoyances, and there are probably some relatively good ways to work around them like getting a carholder for the iPod, or buying one of the remotes so I can just use that to control the iPod instead of the interface on the device itself, but I will likely never spend the money on either of those things. And I understand the reason for making the wheel solid and unmovable, after some complaints of getting dust or debris in the bearings of the original iPod and causing it to lock up and not turn anymore, but it seems like there must be a way to make it easier to use without having to direct all of your attention and concentration at it.

You whine too much. Rather than investing so much time in writing your whinings, why not spend the same time to either get a iPod holding for cars (I found a good one on eBay for about $10), or look for a remote that will make sense for you. I was hoping you had found one as I was reading through this drivel, but no… all you have to offer is whining. I personally don’t want to hear about a problem - I like to hear about a solution, and clearly you can invest your time far more wisely and I’m sure it will improve your life. Thanks for a lot of drivel and no help.

I believe I mentioned the car holder and the remote option as possible solutions to the problem.

If you don’t want to hear about a problem, then please feel free to not visit my site again. No one forced you to come here and read the post.

And if you’re going to insult someone’s writing and web site, you could at least have the balls to post your real email address or domain name.

I’m sure you can invest your time far more wisely than by cowardly posting insulting comments on someone’s personal web site.

I think that a better ipod dock for the car needs to be made…something universal…and versatile… for ipod mini and 3G’s nobody seems to have a solid product…I have a Honda element…all of the cup holders are on the floor…not easy to see while driving…. I don’t like fastening something to my air vents…. Also the aux and power plug happen to be over by the passenger seat… too hard to reach for lighter socket holder.

I am fired up about the line in but want better access to the interface…

I don’t want to spend 300 bucks to leave this thing on my seat!
Belkin’s product is close but no cigar…plus the pricing of these products seems to be off the charts…

These things cost nothing to make in china!! but they are priced at 35 bucks or higher… after buying a case, adapter with a car cradle/holder you are well on your way towards buying an ipod mini at that price!!

anybody found something cheap cool and functional??? …I gripe but I am on the hunt… Let me know…

I agree with you about the ipod being hard to navigate with the touch sensitive wheel. I have used an original ipod and liked it much better. Too bad they don’t still make the mechanical wheel iPods.

Actually the newest iPods pretty much solve the problem.

don’t you have somthing better to be concerned about? this “whining” kind of gives me an impression of how the rest of your life looks like….
if you don’t like the ipod. sell it or dump it and don’t buy one again…problem solved

Don’t you have something better to be concerned about than what I’m concerned about on my own damn web site?

If you don’t like what I say, FUCK OFF, problem solved.