The music player for the iPhone and iPod touch has been dramatically improved since the iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update with a couple of simple but dramatic changes.  The simplest change was the addition of three new icons on the “Now Playing” screen, including an option to send a link by email to anyone that might be interested in the file you are playing, a playback speed control that gives the option to play the current file at 1/2x, 1x, or 2x the normal playback speed.  I’m not sure about the usefulness of the email link, but the option to change the playback speed is pretty cool and could be very useful to help find your place in a song  or podcast that was forced to restart, or even to play a boring podcast a little faster in order to get it finished! They also added an icon to skip back wards by 30 seconds.  This is also very cool in case you missed something and want to hear it again.  I used this today while listening to a podcast.  I was very surprised to hear what one of the announcers said, and I had to jump back to make sure I had heard it correctly. (I had)

But wait, there’s more!

The absolute best new feature in the new iPhone software is variable precision scrubbing!  This now feature allows the user to quickly and easily navigate through a media file by changing the scrubbing rate depending on where you finger is on the screen.  If you swipe your finger across the media bar it will be the same old high speed scrubbing we were used to hating.  There are now three additional  scrub rates (Half, Quarter, and Fine speeds). The more precise the scrubbing gets, the easier it is to navigate to a specific spot in the track.

I used to complain about how fast and imprecise the scrubbing was before.  It seemed that every time I lost my place in my playlist I simply couldn’t get back to the exact spot I had been at in the media file that I was listening to.  This will help with that problem in a big way!