A few weeks ago I finally started getting back into the gym on a regular basis. Of course, a necessity for any trip to the gym is an iPod, or iPhone in my situation. To make a long story shorter, after about 18-20 minutes on the treadmill my iPhone would start to act up, randomly skipping around tracks, pausing and playing at will. At first I attributed this to either continued bouncing up and down in my pocket (to preempt what some of my friends may comment that is NOT what she said), however today at work something very strange happened.

As soon as I started listening to music on my iPhone today at work the same type of activity occurred, even when the iPhone was laying still and flat on my desk. Tracks were jumping around spontaneously and pausing and playing at will. I swapped out the headphones in favor of a brand new pair and as Steve would say, boom! Everything worked like a charm.

To be fair, my old set of headphones had been slowly falling apart and I’d ordered a new pair for when they finally gave out. I just didn’t expect the headphones to cause the iPhone music player to act so erractically.

Here is a pic of my old iPhone headphones (notice the jack falling apart):

And here are the new iPhone headphones:

Update 3/19/2008: While running today at the gym the track skipping and play/pausing occurred again, despite me using the brand new iPhone headphones. Will have to bring this up with the geniuses at the Apple store next time I visit…