iPhone/iPod inconsistency

General Questions
#1

When listening to podcasts and music on my iPhone, sometimes (in the case of podcasts) there is a 30 sec skip backward button (for music there is a Genius button there) and a slider for changing your position in the track. Sometimes the button and slider are not there, and the only way to move within the track is holding down the forward and back buttons, and no way to see total time and time remaining.

I haven’t been able to figure out any rhyme or reason to it. Is this a bug, or is there some aspect to this feature that I am missing?

#2

It appears and disappears when you tap the screen

#3

I’ve had an ipod touch since 2007 and it has only happened once to me. It went back to normal after a restart so I vote for bug.

#4

I never picked up on touching the screen. It’s a little inconsistent with the rest of the interface. There are already buttons at the top and bottom, so it never occured to me to touch the middle of the screen to make more appear. Touching the buttons that are already there doesn’t bring it up, and once it is on, it stays there until you touch the middle of the screen again. Since it doesn’t fade away automatically like the controls while watching video, I never realized it wasn’t supposed to be visible at all times.