Tim Lee

Gripe

The iPod is a marvelously well-designed product. But one of the things about it that really irritates me is the way it handles podcasts. If I’m halfway through listening to one, and I plug the iPod in to download new ones, it will remove the half-listened-to podcast from the iPod. This is so obviously the wrong behavior, and should be so easy to fix, that I find it amazing that no one at Apple has done so. It’s a shame that iTunes isn’t an open source project, because this seems like the sort of thing a competent hacker could find and fix in a weekend if she had access to the source code.

Relatedly, if iTunes finds and downloads a new podcast while an iPod is plugged in, why does it require me to manually push the “sync” button in order to get the podcast onto the iPod. It appears that I could leave the iPod plugged in for hours and it wouldn’t perform the appropriate sync until I either manually tell it to or unplug the iPod and plug it back in. This is another thing that really should be trivial to add.

February 8, 2008 | Comments |

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    I'm not really sure that's "obviously" the wrong behavior; if I don't finish listening to a Podcast and sync my iPod afterwards, I probably don't want it on the iPod 9 times out of 10. Apple could set some kind of option for it, but Apple's brand of user interface design takes options that are likely never to be used and makes the decision for you. I don't necessarily agree, but there's something to be said for not burdening the average user of your product with obtuse and confusing configuration options.

    Have you checked out Rockbox? (http://www.rockbox.org/) I'm not sure it does what you're looking for, but presumably would accommodate the "competent hacker" you reference. I have a feeling you'll find the user interface lacking in some way, but it'll be a good reminder that open source projects aren't necessarily the paneca you suggest they are in your post.
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    I don't mean if I stopped listening to it and started listening to something else. I mean if I've pushed the "pause" button and that podcast is still displayed on the screen, ready to resume. 9 times out of 10, when I do that it's because I plan to finish listening to it the next time I'm using the iPod. And given that one podcast takes up a trivial amount of space, I don't see what the purpose of removing it is supposed to be.
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    Regarding Rockbox: if I'm reading this correctly, it's a replacement firmware for the iPod, right? I think the problems I'm complaining about are more on the iTunes side. Does Rockbox integrate with iTunes, or do you have to run it with another jukebox software?

    Also, I'm not necessarily suggesting that Apple should turn iTunes into a full-blown open source project. I think the Darwin/Safari model would be a pretty good fit here: controlled by Apple but with outside contributions welcome. Apple engineers would still do most of the work, but they wouldn't be shutting out people who have valuable ideas to contribute.
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    If you're not worried about the space issues, then you can set all Podcasts to be left on the iPod (iTunes->Preferences->Podcasts->Keep->All Episodes - or something more reasonable like "Last 10" so they start falling off eventually).

    Switching logic based on the state of the player when you plug it in is more complicated than you might think.

    Oh, and your second comment about not kicking off syncing automatically? My guess is that it's to prevent people from unplugging the player in the middle of a sync they don't know is happening and causing data loss or some kind of unknown state on the player. Yeah, you could have iTunes overtake focus on the screen, but it'd be doing it all the time if you had a lot of Podcasts.

    Good UI design is harder than it looks!
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    About Rockbox, beats me, but the issues you mention both involve the player and whatever jukebox software you're using (it might use iTunes - I have no idea).

    I don't really see your point about Safari; the open source contributions on that project (so far as I understand) are to generate a standard-compliant rendering engine, which is more of an objective challenge than the subjective challenge of UI design. Your iPod issues you mention are probably not so much an issue with programming man-hours as they are with sound interface design. I'm sure Apple engineers have a variety of channels with which to gather feedback on product features. I hate to generalize, but based on their existing body of work open source programmers would be just about the last group I would turn to for UI advice.
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    Tim, I suspect you could easily solve your problem by creating a "smart playlist" of recently played podcasts. The rules that you can create are extremely flexible and you can create something that will include whatever is currently being removed. Then add that playlist to the items to be synced to the iPod. In the future, it will include those recent items. Although you'll never listen to the playlist as a playlist, the items you want (podcasts, in this case) will appear in the list with other similar (unplayed) podcasts. I hope I haven't muddled my explanation of this, but if I understand your needs, some use of smart playlists should work for you.
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    I have *never* had this problem. One way you could potentially solve it is to set up an Unlisted Podcasts smart playlist which just looks for podcasts with a play count that's less than one. And ensure that the iPod settings say to sync unplayed podcasts as well as recent ones. If that doesn't work, perhaps your settings are mulched and you should talk to Apple or something.
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    Apart from telling iTunes to 'Keep Last 10 Episodes' as suggested above, you can also right-click on a podcast and choose "Do Not Auto Delete". This is useful if there are some podcasts you want to keep indefinitely.

    A more annoying issue with podcasts for me is how they are listed under the 'Artists' menu. I get around this by marking all my podcasts as compilations and setting my iPod not to display compilation albums under artists.

    From what I've seen, iPods with iTunes do a better job of handling podcasts than any other mp3 player but I'd be interested to know if I'm wrong about this.
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    I have been using Amarok with my iPod, and it behaves much better than what you describe, it's not so automatic, but I like that. (I drive a stick shift car, too--I can't stand automatics--so maybe my 'user is in control' seeking behavior is a minority opinion)
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