Android :: Headset Button - Podcast/music

Moved from an iPhone 3G. It an do more but it sure take hacking. I have a few problems but I'll start with the main one. I am absolutely annoyed by the (wired) headset button behavior. On the iPhone I used the button for three things. Phone operation (pick up when rings, hang up to end call). Stop and start (and skip to next/previous) for music and for podcasts. I absolutely cannot replicate this functionality on the N1. I tried close to a dozen podcatchers. Most worked just fine but I either had to tell then to take over the button in which case it did not work in the music player or I had to disable it in which case it worked for the music player but not the podcast app. Behavior for incoming phone calls were pretty random depending on which app I used. Some overrode the podcast and rang into the headset and allowed me to pick up with the button, some didn't and I had to scramble to get to the phone. And it is absolutely annoying to press the button expecting to pause whatever I am listening to and to get a second thing playing on top of it. Not cool. I had no intentions of developing a new hobby: unexpectedly listening to music, a podcast while trying to order food at the counter. I am waiting for the moment I'll get to try all these things while trying to pick up the phone. (I think you get the picture).

After doing some reading I am not optimistic that I'll fix this. It sounds like applications have to hijack the headset button from each other. This explains the total randomness of actions. It never is assigned to the last thing I was listening to (with priority to phone controls when needed). That would make sense.

Thinking of possible solutions (short of anything destructive to the phone), I developed a few that theoretically could work.

1, I heard of apps in which I can regain some control over what the button does. Sounds like a pain in the ass especially since I do not want to think about these things but I have not tried these yet.

2, Getting a podcatcher that downloads podcasts in the background and allows the media player to see them. This way I would never have to run the podcatcher and could do everything from the media player. So far I only messed with the defalt audio player app on the N1. When I tell the podcatcher(s) to allow the music player to see the podcasts, it usually shows up as chaos. My music directory is chaotic enough. This just does not sound like a good solution (though I admit I did not explore alternative music players and how much order they can bring to the status quo with some tweaking).

3, Theoretically speaking it sounds like if I could find an awesome integrated music player with a built in podcatcher (an app that could take care of both downloading and playing my podcasts and dealing with my music) that could work great assuming it allows the phone to take over controls inside and during incoming calls. I have not found such an app yet.

4, Anything I missed?

I am pretty much a perfectionist when it comes to this thing. We are talking about the three main functionality of my personal smartphone (closely followed by email, the browser and possibly the map which all work great). I need these things to work seamlessly and flawlessly to be happy as they worked with the iPhone. (Well, the iphone didn't have the automated podcatching capability but I was able to sync whenever I wanted so it was close enough.)