iPod interface
BTW, I've been meaning to make a comment about this for a while, but I always forget. It's about the acclaimed iPod wheel-based interface. Sure, it's nice, everybody loves it, etc. However, personally, I think it has one major flaw that I will try to explain.
Once I am playing a song, I have a tendency to want to browse the other songs I have loaded and see what I'd like to hear next. When you do that, and you have thousands of songs in the device, it becomes a pain to go back to what you were listening to, which I want to do to see how much I have left, or skip ahead, etc. The easier way to do is to go back to Now Playing, which takes quite a few wheel clicks. Not really friendly. Another way is to scroll back and find your song again, but this is not practical when you have many thousands.
The interface feels limited in the sense that it lacks shortcuts to jump around the library in an easier manner.
I thought so from the very first time I tried a 2nd generation iPod, couldn't believe there wasn't an easy way to get back to the song currently playing in 1 or 2 clicks. And I like them, they are neat little devices. I have owned a 3rd generation, a 4th generation, a Nano, a Shuffle, and a Mini, and I've always found the interface a bit lacking. So much so, that ultimately they end collecting dust by my desk at home in a few days after the novelty wears off.
02/011/02006 10:31 PM
