I have an iPod shuffle for running and I fucking hate it. I mean, it's fine for music, but god it sucks at podcasts and I would never try an audiobook on it.
Here's what's wrong:
If you press the back button, it will lose your podcast position and put you back at the beginning of the episode. So if you're at 2:37:45 in a podcast, and you touch that back button for one millisecond, you're going to lose your position and instantly be back at 0:00:01.
And how do you get back to your position? By holding the forward skip button for like 4 minutes straight and praying that you can find your position again. It takes forever and it sucks. You could plug the thing back in to your computer and find your position in iTunes but that's not the point of a tiny ultra portable single purpose device.
So no problem, right? Just never touch the back button.
That's the dream but it's easier said than done. The issue is that the hinge for the clip is on the left side of the device, exactly behind the back button. When you want to use the clip your thumb is going to be basically on the back button no matter what you do. The safe space you can where you can put your finger is less than 4 millimeters. I measured.
I try to use the corners but that space is still too small and I still regularly hit the back button. Also you don't get enough leverage to open the clip comfortably unless your finger is at the very leftmost edge of the device.
Sometimes I think about opening it up and breaking contact under the back button because I never ever want to press that button. I would estimate that I lose my position in podcasts about 4 times a week and it's infuriating every time.
I would kill for a firmware option to make the back button just rewind 30 seconds on podcast playback instead of going all the way back to 0:00:00.