Products · Product
iPod
Raised as a usability problem by 80 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 78 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1
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Every issue, all time, most people first
Having to use iTunes to load music makes the iPod hard to useUnreviewed
20092026- Music transfer needed iTunes; no simple drag-and-drop like other MP3 players2026-03-25
- Importing and exporting mp3 files to the iPod was painful, especially on Windows2024-01-05
- Adding songs requires iTunes, which the commenter found frustrating and hostile to use2023-06-08
Browsing becomes nearly impossible once the music library is very largeUnreviewed
20092026- Scrolling long lists to find one item means overshooting and scrolling back repeatedly2026-10-23
- Scrolling through hundreds of artists and albums with the scroll wheel is too slow2026-10-23
- Becomes nearly unusable for browsing once the music library is very large2025-05-22
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Scrolling long lists to find one item means overshooting and scrolling back repeatedly2026-10-23
- Scrolling through hundreds of artists and albums with the scroll wheel is too slow2026-10-23
- Couldn't figure out how to turn it off; hidden button2026-10-23
- User kept struggling to navigate the interface until they figured out the wheel control2026-08-25
- Menu button and dead end when playing felt odd and unintuitive to use2026-08-05
- Music transfer needed iTunes; no simple drag-and-drop like other MP3 players2026-03-25
- Can't find the thing after installing it2025-07-09
- Becomes nearly unusable for browsing once the music library is very large2025-05-22
- Users' music collections were wiped out through confusing iTunes sync behavior2024-08-12
- Previous generation's controls were a bad decision; later models returned to usual controls2024-02-05
- Screen locks and turns off while user is still referencing content2024-01-08
- Importing and exporting mp3 files to the iPod was painful, especially on Windows2024-01-05
- Adding songs requires iTunes, which the commenter found frustrating and hostile to use2023-06-08
- Getting files off an iPod is next to impossible without iTunes; files have unreadable names2023-05-12
- Having to use iTunes to put music on the device made the iPod hard to use2023-02-09
- Jailbreaking to get music playback is so annoying it needs old iTunes from unknown sources2022-07-20
- Early iPods and iTunes were hard to use, with quirky ways of doing things2022-07-09
- Required iTunes and hid files, making it annoying to navigate2022-05-10
- Albums silently disappeared after upgrades with no error, so the user couldn't tell why2022-05-09
- Keeps clicking and dragging the wheel buttons instead of tapping them2022-03-07
- Scroll speed ignores wheel speed, so fast scrolling with precise stopping is impossible2022-03-07
- UI lags and stutters when scrolling with the click wheel2022-02-09
- IPod was clunky and unintuitive, and iTunes was a horror to use2021-11-03
- Commenter couldn't aim with the scroll wheel and it didn't feel intuitive2021-10-26
- Navigation feels clunky and hard to grasp, not intuitive just by looking2021-06-23
- Browsing large music libraries was slow with up/down buttons on other players2020-03-24
- Person couldn't work out how to use clickwheel iPod and gave up2019-07-02
- Most web pages are unusable on a 2007 iPod Touch2019-04-11
- Escalating lockouts after wrong PIN attempts permanently locked the device with no warning2018-05-23
- Click wheel is scarcely usable; lock button hard to reach without removing it from pocket2017-10-24
- Changing songs takes several swipes and taps instead of one button press2017-07-28
- Choosing a playlist requires holding the voice button and clicking through spoken titles2017-07-27
- Can't tell position in podcast; fast-forwarding fifteen minutes is cumbersome; playlists hard to update without iTunes2017-02-20
- Finds selecting the actual song a little annoying2016-10-25
- Binding multiple functions to the same physical element makes it hard to use2016-10-25
- Tiny controls are hard to press, and the clip slips off when operating it2015-11-30
- Lock switch is too small and recessed to find without taking it out2015-09-11
- Old iPod touch runs so slowly it is effectively unusable2015-08-16
- Controls vary by content, so skipping forward or back is inconsistent and hard to do2015-08-06
- Has to look at the screen to pause because the physical button doesn't work for it2015-07-18
- Controls on the earbud cable were impossible to use while running2015-05-26
- Annoying interface that only worked for Mac users2015-05-01
- Generic 'An error has occurred' message gives no useful information to diagnose problems2014-12-04
- Syncing an iPod from Linux is frustrating and unreliable2014-11-12
- Interface lags so much it is almost unusable, forcing waits mid-task2014-04-14
- IPods did not act as a normal file system, making music transfer harder to manage2014-04-11
- Back button stops at the beginning instead of returning to the previous screen, breaking expected navigation2013-10-14
- Accidentally hits store shortcut while navigating back to albums, forcing extra taps to recover2013-10-14
- Commenter finds the iPod's interface annoying, though they say it's not a dark pattern2013-10-14
- Forced to use iTunes to manage files instead of mounting the drive2013-05-13