IPod Touch skips (jumps to the end of) the first track. Bug?

Question

Hello,
I'm experiencing the following problem with my iPod Touch and was unable to find any information about similar cases in different forums:
I have several Audible.de audiobooks on my iPod that are by default listed under "audiobooks". Recently I noticed that sometimes my Touch would jump over the first track of a music album when I would start playing the first song, directly jumping to the end of the track and starting to play the second (while the status dot stays at the end of track 1 for a while). It looks as if I had fast forwarded to the very end of the first track - and it happens with the first track only.
I've removed all the music and books from my Touch and moved it back using iTunes, but this didn't help for long. If I completely turn off the Touch and turn it back on, the problem is solved for a moment. I kept asking myself why the problem would reoccur and it seems to me that it has to do with the audiobooks I'm listening to often. I tried the following:
1. Switched off and on. Listened to music without any title jumping problem.
2. Opened an audiobook and listened to it for a few seconds.
3. Went back to music (any album) - the Touch jumps over the first track.
This leads me to believe that listening to audiobooks (maybe just audible audiobooks) creates this problem.
I also found out that after starting to play the first track (which gets immediately jumped over or, more exactly, to its very end), I can "heal" the Touch (until I listen to an audiobook again) by pressing Pause, then the back arrow twice so that I jump to the beginning of the first track, then back to the album cover and track list. After that, I can listen to music as long as I want to without any skipping or jumping, as long as I don't play an audiobook.
To me, this sounds like a bug, but I can't tell if Audible or Apple is to blame. Besides, I don't see an easy way to contact Apple about a bug that might be related to their OS, which I find upsetting (they hide their contact adresses so well that you can't tell them about bugs in their own software, or you have to pay for expensive calls?).
Maybe someone knows what to do or has already heard about a similar problem. I try to circumvent a complete reset of my iPod, as I have lots of apps that are arranged into many different groups. I'd prefer not to sort all of them again, but if resetting the iPod seems to be the only possible solution, I would try that of course. Of course I'd appreciate if someone could tell me how to fix this or whom to contact about it.
Thanks (also for reading this long description),
Alex
Message was edited by: alexhager

Answer 1

Hi MikeSpike,
Thanks for your comment! Have you tried everything to resolve it, like resetting the iPod as a new device after deleting the IPSW from your computer first? Does the error still occur?
In fact, I cannot reproduce the problem using podcasts (they work fine for me, as far as I can tell there's no effect between podcast and music on my device), but it may very well be that the error is the same or a similar one (this would be for Apple to investigate, I'll forward parts of your comment to the Apple Advisor taking care of my case, if you agree).
Yes, it is the first track. Although I had one rare occasion where only track 2 was skipped and another one where tracks it happened to tracks 1 and 2 (no shuffle, no remember position activated), the highly reproducible issue touches track # 1 only.
Thanks for precising that you're using a BT headset. Could you please tell me which one, in case that matters? Has your iPod sometimes reacted weirdly when you used your BT headset to remote control the iPod, for instance skipping more titles than you wanted when you pressed "forward"? This is kind of what happened to me on my iPad and since then I've noticed the error appear on the iPad too.
Regarding your other issues, I cannot confirm the podcast problem where a podcast starts at some random point. Podcast seem to work fine in my case, but maybe all of this is caused by one and the same error. Let's hope Apple will find it all and fix it in an update asap.
Also, I don't have the artwork problem where an album displays artwork from a different album. I have had a case where a few tracks of one specific album (and just that one) were not displaying the artwork at all, although everything was properly tagged using the software MP3Tag. If you haven't reset your iPod (as a new device, not from the backup), maybe this would at least resolve some of your problems?
While my problem is just annoying for people like me who simply want their new device to work without any errors (even if there's an easy temporary fix or workaround to these errors so that I could live with it), your errors sum up to a nuisance that makes it hard to enjoy using the device. Having wrong artwork displayed with albums (or none at all) and podcasts being played at random positions is certainly not what you'd expect from such an expensive device.
Have you thought of contacting Apple about it? Not only might they have a solution for your specific problems, but it might also be more convincing if more people would independently report the first-track-skipping-issue we're all experiencing! What they need to know is that the bug is global, not just a corner case, and that it seems to be somehow related to their iOS. They couldn't afford ignoring it if several people would complain about this, especially now that a new iOS beta is already out!
Maybe some other users who read this thread have made similar experiences without paying attention to it? To all other forum users: would you please try if you notice anything weird like first tracks being skipped, either music or podcast? Maybe related to audiobook listening, maybe related to BT headset use? I'd be happy to forward any observation to Apple (to the existing issue case number) in order to better convince Apple to investigate this - asap.
Thanks again, MikeSpike, of course I will keep you all updated if I hear back from Apple!