Ramblings of a Programmer

Apple today released iTunes 5. It has a sleek new interface, new Search Bar, Playlist folders, parental controls, album reviews, and the ability to sync to the new Motorola ROKR E1 mobile phone.

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I have been trying to subscribe to a few podcasts tonight to try out iTunes 4.9 again. I am able to get individual songs, but each time I try to subscribe to a podcast, I get an error like the one shown at this link location… iTunes Music Store Error

With the latest iPod Updater that was released with iTunes 4.9, it appears that auto-updating Smart Playlists on the iPod are broken. I have a Smart Playlist setup that keeps up with the podcasts that I have listened to during the day. This is no longer working after installing the latest iPod Updater. The Smart Playlist does not update on the iPod until I connect it to my Mac and sync with iTunes.

Check out this thread on the MacCast Forums. Others are reporting this same issue now.

Wharp-Whistle.com has a great article on the inefficiencies with the podcast interface in iTunes 4.9.

I mentioned Friday that I had just about had enough of iTunes 4.9 and its miserable podcast support. That is in fact the case now. As of tonight, I am back to using iPodderX for all my feeds. To quote Todd Cochrane from Geek News Central, the podcast support of iTunes 4.9 is “a little hokie”. Check out his first impressions of the podcast support in iTunes.

In my personal opinion, I believe Apple rushed this out the door. It was originally thought this was going to be out around the end of July and then all of a sudden, they came out with it this past week. I wish they had waited, gotten a bit of feedback from members of the podcasting and podcast consumer community before they just threw something out the door.

It is nice to have full control over the management of my podcasts again. Yea, they are not in the Podcasts area of the iPod, but no biggie. The Podcasts section of the iPod would not let me listen to them the way that I wanted to anyway. I want to be able to just start listening to podcasts now matter who they are from and not worry about having to switch a playlist.

Anyway… now if we could just get some feedback from the guys at iPodderX.com regarding their forums. Unfortunately, they have been down since the day that iTunes 4.9 was released last week.

Unfortunately for me, and my iTunes library, I know just enough about AppleScript to be very dangerous. I recently updated to iTunes 4.9 on my Mac so that i could try out the podcasting support. I found that there were a few issues with the new podcast support on the iPod that I did not like.

So, I set out tonight to create an AppleScript that would duplicate the podcasts to a new playlist that I could then update genres on and play as a single playllist. To my horror, I have totally messed up my iTunes database as far as podcasts go.

I have one big mess of podcasts in a single playlist now and they are no longer in chronological order. Why did I ever do this? Because I am a programmer, a computer addict, and I cannot leave well enough alone. hahaha

It looks like I am probably going to go back to using iPodderX until Apple does some tweaking on iTunes to give us a little more control over how podcasts are managed in the iTunes database.

Apple has released their official specifications on what you need to do in order to publish your podcast in the iTunes Music Store. Dave Winer has more on his Really Simple Syndication site.

It appears that Apple's release of podcasts via the iTunes store has been more of a hit than people would have expected. I have not seen any numbers on the situation, but I have started to see some of my favorite podcasts like Apple News Log having to look for more bandwidth in otther places due to the unexpected increase in bandwidth usage.

The question now is whether or not Apple's release of podcasts via the iTunes store is going to have such a negative affect on some of the smaller podcasters that we will see some of the good podcasts disappear? I hope that is not the case.

To prevent such a matter, however, maybe people should start donating to some of their favorite podcasts to help with the bandwidth costs. If not, then we might start seeing the very thing on podcasts that we were trying to get away from on the radio… commercials!

Updated: Changed the article link that is pointed to on the Apple News Log.

I picked up iTunes 4.9 yesterday and started playing with it. The podcast support is pretty good at this point. The directory is coming online in the iTunes Store podcast area pretty nicely. Unfortunately, there are some issues that have disappointed me.

First, if you were subscribed to podcasts that are using BitTorrent feeds to save on bandwidth, you will have to keep a client like iPodderX or Azureus around to continue to pick up those feeds. From the Apple iTunes/Podcast FAQ:

What kind of podcasts can I play in iTunes?
You can listen to most common podcast file formats in iTunes, including MP3, AAC, WAV, and .M4B. BitTorrent and WMA are some podcast formats that are not supported.

This is very unfortunate. I was trying to use BitTorrent whenever I could to help podcasters on bandwidth. I guess it was a good thing that I recently registered iPodderX anyway.

The second issue that has me puzzled is why Apple did not include an “All” option in the new Podcasts section on the iPod. The way that it is setup now is that you go into Music->Podcasts and then select the podcast playlist that you want to listen to. When all of the podcasts in that playlist are finished, it returns back to the main menu. I would like to have the option to just play all of the podcasts so I can start it when I head out on a long road trip instead of having to fumble with the iPod to change playlists while driving.

Hopefully enough people will give feedback to Apple about these issues and they will put out an update with some tweaks.

Apple announced today that it is merging its iPod and iPod photo lines today. All future iPods will be white in color and have full color displays. The new iPods will even be able to display album art in color. There will be a 20 gig model going for $299 and a 60 gig model going for $399.

Out of nowhere, Apple also announced the availability of its new iTunes 4.9 software which includes support for podcasting. Podcasters should beware, because bandwidth useage is about to pick up.

Update: The iTunes 4.9 update and a new version of the iPod Updater software is available via Software Update.