I love my new iPod touch for many many reasons. Hell just look at this thing, it’s pure hotness.
However one thing I don’t like is I feel that I’m a fish out of water if I’m in a situation where I can’t/don’t want to take the thing out to navigate the menus or mess with the volume. One reason why I loved iPods over any other MP3 player was how I could navigate the menus while the thing was in my pocket, or in situations where I didn’t want to take my eyes off the road. Hell even if I’m laying in bed I don’t want to have to pick the thing up and put it right in front of my eyes to do the simplest tasks.
Sightless navigation Suggestions. There should be a “Travel mode” where the screen goes blank but it accepts these commands to navigate.
- Stop/Start: Double Tap with two fingers.
- Next Song: Double Tap right side of the screen.
- Last Song: Double tap left side of the screen.
- Fast Forward: One finger hold and slide second finger to the right.
- Rewind: One finger hold and second finger slide to the left.
- Volume Up: same gesture as zooming out a picture (pinch and open).
- Volume Down: same gesture as zooming in.
Hopefully we’ll see something like this in an update.
Update: I checked out the manual - http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iPod_touch_Features_Guide.pdf
If you double click the home button it enables the navigation controls on the lock screen. Two problems with this.
1) When the screen goes blank again the input stops working so you have to reclick the home button.
2) You have to guess where the controls are. If you can’t see the screen it should use the entire size of the screen and methods like I mention above. You can easily figure out which side is up because of the home button and where the earphones come from.
