Products · Pattern or everyday thing
MP3 players
Raised as a usability problem by 12 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 12 threads.
People raised many different problems with MP3 players, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.
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 12 complaints
- UI grinds to a halt with a 9500-track library loaded2026-01-24
- Touch wheel has no velocity and dead spots; shows filenames instead of track names2025-02-14
- Tiny screen and slow next-button response made skipping songs painful2025-01-06
- Hard to browse and select music; buttons sometimes unserviceable2024-01-24
- Button presses depend on context and sequences, and the first press is ignored, so the screen must be watched2023-12-16
- Hard to find specific songs while driving with few buttons2023-10-13
- Common controls like skip and fast forward need looking at a touchscreen2019-07-03
- Showing timestamps requires consulting a manual and remembering a hidden tip2018-03-11
- Earlier MP3 players had many features that were terrible and confusing2016-07-16
- Older MP3 players showed technical details like bit rate that ordinary users didn't need2013-08-25
- No easy way for normal people to load or buy music2012-05-15
- Song management software was so awful that users gave up loading music2009-09-15