Learning from the Physical World - Case Study is Poor Security Engineering

I am on my third iPod. The previous two repeatedly got junk stuck under the click wheel that made it behave bizzarely. I also dropped one in a puddle and it worked fine for six months which still amazes me. Anyway, I got tired of the bizarre behavior from the click wheel (selecting different songs, getting stuck/non-responsive, changing volume, etc.) so when I got my third one I decided to get a case. I picked a Marware, which solves the first problem because it has a plastic barrier to keep gunk from getting in the click wheel and so on. And it might even help if dropped it or something. So far so good.

Here is the problem. There is a clear plastic window that gets stuck *on* the top of the clickwheel so as I am scrolling through artists and I attempt to click on Lee "Scratch" Perry, the plastic adheres to the click wheel and there is a 2 to 1 chance that it selects the artist above (in this case the Latin Playboys so not such a s big deal). Also the top half of the clickwheel is unusable for scrolling, turning the volume up or down.

Yes, my third iPod has been trouble free from a system standpoint, I have never had to clean gunk out of the clickwheel, but the point is that from a usage standpoint I would like to click on what I intended not where my output is re-directed by a malfunctioning protection device.

Comments

[Andy]

How many ipods do you think you'll buy and have break before you'll look for an alternative?

[pablorey]

Maybe if you didn't eat while you were using your eyePod, you wouldn't get gunk all over it.
That's why I use the Shuffle - no clickwheel, just play, pause, FF and REV. My solution for protecting it while running in hot, sweaty Austin? Stick it in a ZipLock bag. And a rather elegant solution too, I must say.