iPhone Garageband Frustration

About to tear out the little hair I have left. Wanted a simple way to record with my iPhone4 so my wife can use the laptop (Macbook Pro) + lets me play while she watches TV. Got an Apogee Jam & loaded GB for iPhone. Two problems:

1) Set it up, worked fine at first = "oh joy". Lasted one day. Now any earbuds I plug in that include a mic function = mic is on no matter what GB setting. Try to record guitar, mic is on, no guitar input. Cleaned headphone jack--just a bit of lint--but it only works if I wiggle the male jack around a bunch to try to get a good connection and that is tenuous at best. Otherwise I can hear myself cussing out the iPhone but no guitar input. Plug any earbud in w/o a mic function and it works fine.

Same earbuds work with my MacBook Pro/GB just fine + in a TV or whatever else.

2) GB on my iPhone does this "optimizing performance" thing mid-track/song/whatever about every time I try to do anything. Drives me crazy. This happens about every minute if I'm working on something. WTH?

Maybe I need to discard/reload GB? About to give up on the whole idea and go back to playing thru my amp only. Any other iPhone4/GB users out there with similar issues.

I posted a few days ago re. the frustrations of trying to record with an iPad. Same type of stuff. I gave up.
It all comes down to this: Apple does not want you to be able to control or configure the inouts to your iPhone because it is a "companion device" to an iMac. In other words, go out and buy a(nother) computer please! Maddening...

Man that is bad to hear.

I equate the optimization thing with the "buffering" thing that Real Player used to do. It is very annoying. I have no idea what it is actually doing.

I have no issue with the earbud thing though.

GB on the iphone/ipod is a cool little tool for what it is, especially given it only cost $5. For getting a rough idea down it works pretty good, especially with the automatic drummer thing you can randomize. I love that for rough sketches.

You should contact Apogee support, they are very good.

Also have you checked the apple support forums, a quick search produced a bunch of hits on problems with this set up. At least one person uninstalled and reinstalled garage band with success.

Thanks guys. I've checked some of the support suggestions & will dig deeper.

The Apogee seems fine I think, it's the iPhone GB function as far as I can tell. The Apogee + earbuds worked fine on my MacBook Pro/GB but not with the iPhone