iPhone 4 IOS 4.2 iPod play/pause button "size" (hitting skip forward/back)

I like to listen to podcasts or audiobooks while I go for walks and I am forever accidently losing my place when I am just trying to hit pause/play.

Glad I'm not the only one who finds this hugely frustrating, upset to see this thread was started in 2010 and it still has not been fixed.

I'm with Salvion, surely this is a very easy fix for apple to implement? Does apple staff actually monitor these forums? Are we all collectivley wasting our time by posting here?

Add me to the list. In fact after so many frustrated failed attempts to pause/play I searched Google for "iphone annoyances pause lock screen" and found this thread with 62 posts and thousands of views.

The most annoying thing is that is so unneccessarily bad and ridiculously trivial to fix. C'mon Apple, get it together.

Ditto! Please fix this. I'm so sick of accidentally skipping to the beginning of a podcast or song.

I'll add one more to the stream of complaints. I don't have oversized fingers by any means. I skip tracks all the time. Without the Airplay button, I only have 3 total. The skip buttons should be near the edges, and the Play button in the center to avoid accidental hitting.

Please fix, Apple.

I'm always hitting rewind or fast forward on accident, and my fingers are of a normal adult size. Not fat at all!

For eff's sake Apple, just give a programmer ONE HOUR to fix this. ONE HOUR. There probably aren't that many issues with iPhone that are THIS easy to fix.

What i don't understand is that originally the buttons were spaced out. But at some point someone descided that it was better this way!

This is really an issue which i find annoying on a daily basis, i can't see any benifit in keeping the buttons so close. I also don't understand how the descision was made to move them so close together.

@jkpolsar -- Yes, as a programmer I find this especially annoying, it being so easy to fix.

I find it ironic that so many companies invest a lot in "going social" (twitter, facebook, etc). But very very few actually staff employees to respond on message threads like this one. That would be a real opportunity for communication at the grassroots (and you see it with smaller companies.) I think it's embarassing for them that they haven't responded on this thread.

Second, as much as I love iOS this is an excellent example of the disadvantages of closed source software. In spite of all the people that this annoys, *no one can fix it*, and feedback to apple falls on deaf ears. It probably remains the case that music listeners outnumber podcast/audiobook listeners and the former wouldn't care as much about this.

In an open source context something that's this easy to fix could be fixed by anyone annoyed by it.

I just upgraded to iOS 5.1

I haven't used the iTunes option to play music in a while (I usually listen to audiobooks & use Audible's excellent "Button-Free" section in their app to control my music.

However, I just looked at the iTunes buttons and they seem to have been spaced a bit farther apart. Is this my imagination since I haven't used it in a while? Or did they finally address this issue?

Nope, still not addressed (unless there is some hidden setting somewhere that I do not know about)... how can we make this seemingly minor annoyance (to people who do not listen to audiobooks and podcasts) get a little more traction? Please Apple developers, read this thread and help us all out! At least space them apart for audiobooks and podcasts, it's so frustrating when I hit "back" on accident while listening to a 4 hour podcast and then have to figure out where the heck I was within the file. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE APPLE, give us a fix!

We could try spamming this thread. I'm usually not a fan of the tactic, but we've given them enough time to fix this and they have said nothing. This is by far the most frustrating thing about the device, and it's unbelievable that it seems they haven't even considered fixing it.

Will spamming this thread actually work? I'm ready to try anything at this point.

I've tried bringing this up in person at an Apple store but they just told me to post here. Is there any other avenue for us to get this issue highlighted?

Should be such an easy fix, this is driving me insane!

I hope someone replies and this actually gets raised as a bug. So far I feel these support discussions are just to mollify customers, I don't think anyone who can do anything reads them.

jonfitt wrote:

I don't think anyone who can do anything reads them.

You are absolutely correct. This is a user-to-user tech support forum. If you want Apple to be aware of your concerns, submit your feedback using the appropriate link on the Feedback page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

Ok, I may have submitted feedback before, but I went ahead and did it just now.

We should definitely all use that feedback link as well as posting here.

Okay, I just submitted my feedback to the link provided.

If everyone who posted to this thread would also submit feedback, Apple developers will most likely get the message.

http://www.apple.com/feedback