Tip for audio books on iPod

I'd love to have an iPod designed for audio books. I use the iPod every day for audio books, it's wonderful.

I'm sure there'd be lots of improvements Apple could make for such a specialized model, but the biggest wish for me would be: an easy way to scroll back a few seconds to hear a difficult sentence once more. On the iPod it is very difficult to control scrolling precisely, and you're as likely to go back two minutes as ten seconds.

I have most of the iPod models which have been brought out. I recently bought an iPod Touch, and one of the things I hoped was that the big screen would make the above problem less. It does not, it makes it worse, since the screen is shorter than the potential scroll on a wheel.

Once partial solution which I just found is for use when not walking about: get a dock and a remote control. Funny enough, the remote control allows for much more precise scrolling than the iPod's wheel or screen!

It's a lot better, but it's not perfect. For one thing, it makes the iPod bound to the dock, and for another, the scroll action is a bit weirdly geared: it is really slow for the first few seconds, and then accelerates rather fast. So it's still not too easy to hit the five or ten seconds I often need. Though much easier.

One thing I'd like would be a button on the "iPod AudioBook", like on many DVD remotes, which jumps back the playback ten seconds with one press. Preferably the time delay should be controllable. For example, if you set it to five seconds, you could easily go back ten or fifteen seconds by pressing twice or thrice rapidly.

The button does not even have to be on the iPod itself, compromising the clean design, it could be on a remote or a control pad on the earphones lead.

Apple, how about it?
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Kronostar intoned:
While we're making wish lists for Apple I'd love to be able to book mark. Some of my audiobook/podcast mp3s are extremely long (40 minutes or longer) with no clean chapter breaks. I'd love to be able to book mark it for those times I'd like to take a break from a particular long track to listen to something else.

That is a good wish.
There is a decent solution already available: select the tracks in iTunes, right-click and select Get Info. Then select the Properties tab, and check "remember playback position". You can do this for many tracks at once.

Bill sez:
To get the audio MP3 file to chapterize, run it through Audiobook Builder and voila! Perfect ipod audiobook.

... I'm not sure how big the advantage of this app is. As described above, you can actually make the iPod remember where you are on a track. And it seems that it only adds chapter marks where a new file began, which does not solve the problem of very long files.

Bert said:
Wouldn't have to be a new iPod flavor. I would picture this as an attachment for the accessory port, with a few specialized keys, and built-in firmware enhancements. Pretty much the same approach as the iTrip, etc.

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By the way, I have emailed Amazon about the Kindle. I really like to read on the Kindle. (Though I'd like a whiter background and perhaps a slightly bigger screen.) But even though it can play music files, it is no good for audio books. You can't even see or control which file you're listening to! I hope they are working on this, I'm guessing the basics could be handled with a software update.