When I had my 3rd gen, I worried about this too. I also use a favorites playlist, set to random. On the bus trips to and from school, I'd already have the playlist pre-selected, and all it took to start listening to music was to reach in my pocket, flick the hold switch...then pull my hand out of my pocket.
Since the 3rd gen is completely touch sensitive, I found a little technique that would let me orient myself, by feel, with the buttons. Now, this admittedly took a little practice because since the buttons are touch sensitive you can't feel around for them, but you could hit the play button through your pants. raising and lowering the volume just appeared as if I was tracing a small circle on the outside of my pants where my pocket would be.
With my new 5th gen iPod, changing songs while driving (since it's connected to a FM transmitter where the volume controls don't matter), I just run my finger across the wheel until I feel where I'm supposed to be and click down.
If you want to pick specifics, then yeah, you've gotta look at it, but the clickwheel buttons set at the compass points make it pretty easy to know where the buttons are.
Slashdot Mirror
When I had my 3rd gen, I worried about this too. I also use a favorites playlist, set to random. On the bus trips to and from school, I'd already have the playlist pre-selected, and all it took to start listening to music was to reach in my pocket, flick the hold switch...then pull my hand out of my pocket. Since the 3rd gen is completely touch sensitive, I found a little technique that would let me orient myself, by feel, with the buttons. Now, this admittedly took a little practice because since the buttons are touch sensitive you can't feel around for them, but you could hit the play button through your pants. raising and lowering the volume just appeared as if I was tracing a small circle on the outside of my pants where my pocket would be. With my new 5th gen iPod, changing songs while driving (since it's connected to a FM transmitter where the volume controls don't matter), I just run my finger across the wheel until I feel where I'm supposed to be and click down. If you want to pick specifics, then yeah, you've gotta look at it, but the clickwheel buttons set at the compass points make it pretty easy to know where the buttons are.
Google didn't even do it, Keyhole did way back before Google did. Google bought them and released it for free.
All apple uses for its trackpads are synaptics anyway. It's in the driver.