The 10 Biggest iPod Annoyances
Steven Levy's recent book on the iPod--which is, by the way, a good read--is called The Perfect Thing. Levy takes pains to explain that he doesn't think the iPod is, in fact, perfect, or anywhere close to it. But every time I think about his book's title, I think about all the little things about the iPod that drive me crazy. It's so pleasing a product, in so many ways, that I'm always startled by its failings, in ways that I'm not with most technology products.
So consider this post a rumination on the iPod as an Imperfect Thing. A few notes on the list below:
* These are the things that annoy me. And some are influenced by the way I happen to use my iPod (for instance, I listen to a lot of spoken-word audio). They're probably not your personal annoyances. Nor have I tried to list things that probably tick off millions of folks but which don't happen to stick in my craw.
* I'm not going to complain about anything that's easy to fix. Like default settings that can be changed with a few clicks. Actually, for most or all of my gripes, I know of no truly satisfactory solution, though there are cumbersome workarounds in some instances.
* Or about anything I don't think Apple will fix. There are plenty of rants out there about Apple's approach to copy protection; this won't be one of them. We're kind of stuck with it, and for the record, I think the fact that it's relatively unannoying is one reason why the iPod has been so astoundingly successful.
* Some of these are actually iTunes annoyances. The downside of Apple?s wonderfully tight integration of portable player and computer software is that when something?s annoying with the software, it tends to cause problems with the player, too.
* I don't have the latest iPod. Mine's one version removed from what Apple is selling today--it's the first "video iPod." It's possible that some of the things I'm going to carp about aren't issues with the current models.
With that in mind, let the griping begin...starting with the tenth most annoying thing:
10. That alarming "Do not disconnect" message. I get that you shouldn't be unplugging your iPod when it's receiving data from your PC. But the way that the iPod handles this, with the scary message and flashing slashmark is jarring and not very Apple-esque. It seems to stay on sometimes when iTunes is not, in fact, downloading data. And wouldn't it be possible to give it a cancel option--or even to intelligently pause a transfer if you pull out the cable , then pick it up again when you reconnect?
9. Too many accessories assume you don't keep your iPod in a case. For reasons I'll get to later in this list, keeping your iPod in some sort of case is practically mandatory. But a heckuva lot of accessories--including scads of ones that involve docking the iPod, such as speaker systems--assume that your iPod isn't in a case. True, you could remove the 'pod from its case each time you used it with another accessory. But I think that clever manufacturers could design their products to accommodate an iPod that's in its case.
8. iPods think everything is music. Why on earth does the Music menu lead you to items for Podcasts (which are, most often, not music) and Audiobooks (which by definition involve the spoken word)? You can add these items to the iPod's top-level menu, but as far as I know, you can't delete them from the Music menu. This reminds me of the famously illogical fact that Windows makes you click a button marked Start to shut down your system.
7. iPods don't understand the concept of multiple artists. If you have a track recorded by Tom Jobim and Elis Regina, you can identify it as being by one or the other (in which case it'll show up when you browse to that person) or by both (in which case it won't show up in their solo work). What I'd like is for such a song to appear with Jobim's work and Regina's--in other words, to have more than one Artist field. (This isn't an issue with iTunes, since searching makes it equally easy to locate solo and multiple-artist tracks.)
6. The iPod-computer hard disk conundrum. It's entirely possible that your computer and your iPod have the same amount of storage, especially if the computer in question is a notebook. But iTunes seems to assume that what you want to do is to keep an exact mirror of your music on your player and your PC. Which means that if you're close to filling up your iPod, your computer might have precious little room less for anything other than iPod content. There are multiple ways around this--you can transfer music manually, or store it on a network, or delete it from your computer outside of iTunes--but each one comes with its own set of annoyances. (What I'd really like is some sort of "Delete this particular track from my computer but keep it on my iPod" option.)
5. No subscription service! I'm very, very far from the first person to gripe about this, but here goes anyhow: I wanna be able to pay some sort of monthly fee to rent music rather than having to plunk down 99 cents a track. It's completely true that the Microsoft DRM used by subscription services like Napster and Rhapsody is hideously fragile compared to Apple's FairPlay. But surely, if anyone can come up with an elegant and robust scheme for subscriptions, it'd be Apple. (I hope music rental turns out to be one of those things that the company sneers at...right up until the day that it offers it.)
4. Needed: A power button. Steve Jobs' First Law of Product Design--which I just named, but it's been in effect for decades--states that the best product design is both elegant and practical...but if you can't do both, it's more important to be elegant. So the iPod has no dedicated power button, and the alternative method it offers of powering down (pressing the Play/Pause button for a few seconds) is a hassle. Worse, on every iPod I've ever owned, it just doesn't work much of the time. Which is why I wince a little every time I want to turn my iPod off.
3. Podcast annoyance #1. If I don't listen to any episodes of a podcast for awhile, iTunes decides I'm not interested and stops downloading new episodes. Um, no--sometimes I'm very interested, but there are just gaps in my listening. Having to go into iTunes and tell it to continue downloading is just maddening. (This setting might be OK as an option that's not turned on by default, but as far as I can tell, there's no way to opt out of it.)
2. Shuffle still isn't smart enough. My iPod has tons of music...and tons of stuff, in MP3 form, that isn't music, such as comedy and old radio shows (I download the latter from the amazing bounty at The Internet Archive.) Until recently, the only way I could find to prevent my iPod from playing non-music when it shuffled was to create Smart Playlists in iTunes that excluded certain genres, then burrowing through menus on the iPod to turn on Shuffle on as the default method of playback. Things are a little easier with iTunes 7--you can tell iTunes to suppress a particular track when it shuffles. But what I really want is to tell it to suppress entire genres--including anything that ain't musical.
1. That scratchy surface. I've owned several iPods in my time. And I'm consistently startled by the way that a new one, fresh out of the box, seems to be coated in a patina of fine scratches and thumbprints within seconds. (It's like buying a Ferrari and being unable to get it out of the dealer's parking lot without dinging it up.) Which is why I put my new iPods into cases as quickly as my fingers can muster. (Side note: I like Agent 18's products.) But cases make iPods chunkier and clunkier, and as I mentioned back in annoyance #9, they interfere with other accessories. I'd be thrilled if iPods became a little sturdier...even if that meant making them a little uglier.
(Another side note: At least it's surprisingly easy to polish a scratched-up iPod back into something close to mint condition-I've done so with Brasso metal polish, which works wonders...)
So those are my personal iPod annoyances. If you know of any solutions, please lemme know. I'm a sunny optimist, so I fully expect that Apple itself will eventually come to its senses and fix most or all of them...
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Regarding # 8: If you don't like the standard iPod label it gives you can download iPod Wizard, which lets you change the picture parts, strings (words), and fonts. www.ipodwizard.net
download page: http://www.ipodwizard.net/showthread.php?t=8951
Another Annoyance: My girlfriend recently got a 2Gb iPod Nano and it freezes on a regular basis. In fact it happens so often that Apple have put an 'Unfreeze' feature into iTunes. But That's only useful when you have access to the PC. Otherwise, you have to follow a convoluted process of button presses on the iPod to rectify it. Looking around, this seems to be a very common failing with all versions of the iPod.
This seems like a problem so common that everyone takes it for granted. Why can't it be fixed?
hmmmm
about thrree of your anoyences can not be fixed and i know exactly what you mean about the case
but you can do alot with itunes and you are not giving it enuff credit
for example the whole point of an ipod i simplicity which is why the itunes seems very simple and quite basic
it is not it is just that a lot of he faetures are infact hiden to make the ipod seem like a simple deivce
im sorry but if you find keeping your finger in the same place for 5 seconds then you have issues
lots of love and good luck in the future joe
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