Tangled.
Pressing, grave problem: I spend about a minute disentangling my iPod earphones every time I take them out to use them.
I used to wrap them around the iPod, but the plastic of the phone casings would scrape against the housing, and the cord right at the plug would bend quite sharply (causing me some concern that I was fatiguing the wire inside). So I started just making a small loop out of the earphone wire (wrapping it around my hand, usually), and this is what leads inevitably to deep and inextricable tangulation. The iPod’s earphone wire is so pliable that it tends to get knotted much more easily than any headphones or earphones I’ve ever owned (including a pair of Philips ear-wrapping phones which have the skinniest wire I’ve ever seen on good-sounding audio equipment).
I’ve seen ads for the Sumajin Smartwrap (pictured at right). Anyone have one of these, or some other clever cord-coiling creation? Or is there some crazy new wrapping technique out there, requiring no additional hardware, that I’m not familiar with?