One of the good points for me about iTunes 5 is that all podcasts are included in the Library, or more to the point, in the smart playlists.
For a while I had podcasts arriving from two sources: iTunes itself and via NetNewsWire. I choose which podcast to listen to based at least in part on how much time I have, so I have several time-determined smart playlists. 15 to 30 minutes, for example, is perfect for ambling with our elderly dog, while more than 30 minutes works well for my daily brisk, healthy walk. Before I go to sleep I need something less than 15 minutes, if I’m to have any chance of making it through to the end.
The fact that I couldn’t get the iTunes podcasts into those smart playlists just made them useless to me and I eventually (in 4.9) abandoned using the iTunes sourced podcasts. Now in 5.0 I can return to iTunes as one source.
It’s also helpful to be able to group playlists together into folders, but beyond that I haven’t had a lot of time to really examine iTunes 5, so Pierre Igot’s detailed look at the shortcomings of iTunes 5: The New Source List is very interesting. It looks as though Apple has quite a bit of work to do on this interface.
[Via MyAppleMenu.]




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