Annoying?: Adjusting playback position of lengthy podcasts and movies

[gregw74]

Going from a Nano to the iPod Touch the one thing I miss is the ease of adjusting the current playback position (seeking forward and backward). With the Nano you can just slowly or quickly slid your finger over the wheel to advance through a track (this was fairly precise too). With the iPod touch you have the little dot-like ball that slides back and forth. I find this method a bit awkward especially with long podcasts or movies; I imagine the same would be true of audiobooks. Often, when attempting to slide the little nub-like ball, the current content being sampled will jump ahead anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes, it's not very precise. The same is true when attempting to advance a lengthy program to a specific point. Granted, this might seem petty and it almost seems wrong to even complain about it, but it can be really annoying for me. For one, I was wondering if anyone else found this problematic? I would like to offer some feedback to Apple and was going to suggest the following solution.

What I was thinking is that there would be two sliders for seeking forward and backward. Both would have a similar effect to that of the unlock slider that is used when restoring an iPod touch from sleep mode. The further each slider is pushed away from the center point, the faster the program advances, or "rewinds", kind of like a jog dial. Then, as soon as you release either slider, playback begins and they return to the center position.

This is what the play controls might look like, or what I was thinking anyway. Does anyone think there'd be much demand for this kind of feature or that it would be useful?

If someone could embed these images into their reply, it would be much appreciated, I haven't received that privilege yet ;)

The second screenshot shows specifically how each slider would adjust the playback speed.

Thanks,
Greg

URL: robertwalder (dot net) /images/new-seek-controls.png
URL: robertwalder (dot net) /images/new-seek-controls-details.png

[IceBlooMafoo]

http://robertwalder.net/images/new-seek-controls.pnghttp://robertwalder.net/images/new-seek-controls-details.png


I don't have much to say other than I think it's a really fantastic idea! I am buying an iPod touch, today, and this is an issue I never thought of, but I do listen to a lot of podcasts, and I have some audiobooks, so this will be really important to me!
It's too bad there's not a "jump to" option so that you could enter the specific time you want to go to. It's also too bad you can't "save" a position so that next time you pick that file, it goes right to where you left off.

[gregw74]

Thank you for posting the images for me, and providing your feedback!

I mainly use my iPod for podcasts as well, well... until all of these wonderful 3rd party apps become available. Now, I can do just about everything with my iPod, except make coffee. Fortunately, like the Nano, and other iPods, the current playback position is maintained automatically if you decide to listen to something else and resume later. This is a great feature that really sold me on the iPod (in general).

"Bookmarking" within a podcast or audiobook would be a nice feature, when there are key points during playback that you may want to come back to, or refer to later.

The other feature I wish the iPod Touch had was being able to view long track titles, as well as view the description of a given Podcast. Other iPods seem to do with great ease. What gives, why not the iPod Touch/iPhone??

All in all, I'm quite pleased with my iPod Touch, even with regards to Podcasts. Some refinements are certainly still needed, I just hope they see the light of day.

[qwerky69]

I know exactly what you mean!! I listen to a lot of audiobooks on my iPod touch 2G and trying to adjust the playback position has been driving me crazy for months! It seems to be a huge oversight by Apple and I hope they do something about it soon. Maybe you should send Apple your design;)

Another "bug" that's doing my head in is after I recharge my iPod or listen to music and then try to resume listening to an audiobook, the playback position has nearly always changed by up to an hour. Then it takes several frustrating minutes to try to find the correct position again thanks to this lack of precision in adjusting the playback position... ARGHHHHH!

Anyway, it makes me feel better to know that I'm not the only one that is affected by this.

[Dim]

This is a common complaint with anyone who listens to podcasts, audiobook, even movies. The scrubber is just a poor interface tool for precise navigation. I would like to see an improvement in that myself.