One of the obvious additions (or probably the only addition, save for some bugfixes) of the iTunes update is the explicit provision to handle Podcasting. I’ve never discussed it before like I did with RSS, and I won’t today.

Suffice to say, it’s a great thing to have, and either you’re down with it or not. Obviously I am ;)

What this post is about however is not about Podcasting per se, but some design/UI flaws I saw with the iTunes interface when it comes to the said feature. No life-threatening stuff at all, but still quite irritating… and I hope they fix/correct them on the next update.

Deleting Podcasts

For some reason, it doesn’t act similarly to when you delete your regular audio file. If you delete a song, from the main library listing, it will ask you if you want to also delete the physical file from the disk. If you delete from a playlist, it simply takes out the song from the list, but not the main library listing, and certainly not the hard disk.

You can also physically delete a file (or make the dialog box popup to allow you so) from a playlist however – by clicking ALT-CMD-DELETE You may think these functions are trivial, but believe me when you are organizing tens of thousands of songs, that single feature alone will prove to be invaluable.

Now, when in the Podcast section, none of these deleting methods I’ve discussed can make you delete from the hard disk. You have to do it from the Finder (which means “manually” for non-Apple users). Sure there’s a “show song file” option to show the folder where the file resides in for you to delete manually, but seriously, couldn’t they have at least put some way to delete it from iTunes without the extra steps?

This is important because podcasts are usually bigger than your average song file. Even at lower bitrates, podcasts are still full length discussions that can eat up space in double digits. Imagine if you had deleted podcasts (from the iTunes list) you’ve already listened to – to gain some valuable hard disk space. A regular person would’ve assumed that deleting it from the list would delete the file, but noooooo, they’re still there friends – and you have to remember to delete it yourself! This is not the case with your regular songs.

It would’ve been appreciated that even the ALT-CMD-DELETE method, which is already available for songs, be recognized for ANY type of file, maybe they just missed that part, after all the podcasting section is a new feature.

Podcast favoritism

Unless I’m missing something, the only way to get your podcasts to display in that special Podcast section is if you get it (or subscribe) from the iTunes Store.

Example: I have a bunch of podcasts BEFORE upgrading to iTunes 4.9, and they would normally appear as your regular audio files (music to be exact). Podcasts gathered from the store on the other hand, appear in the new, dedicated “podcast” section iTunes has added.

I checked the file attributes of the podcasts aggregated from the iTunes Store, and they are still your regular MP3s, no special tagging as far as I saw. Yet they are neatly organized in the podcast section.

This really sucks because I’m an organization-freak when it comes to data/files. I mean I don’t purchase music from Store, but I chose iTunes because no software can touch it when it comes to organization. And it’s very disturbing that something as simple as this (making iTunes recognize podcasts with a little ID3 tag perhaps) has been overlooked.

So now, when I want to backtrack some topics and listen to old stuff, I have to check wether it was in the podcast section, or my main music library. Which can be hell just thinking about how “messy” the physical folders are in my hard disk (all iTunes aggregated podcast go into a “podcast” folder in the music library… similar to how “compilations” are grouped).

Looking back…

This next thing isn’t actually a bug but a complaint. I’ve been using the [podcast] section and noticed that podcasts are now bookmarkable (meaning it plays from where you left off in case you played something else). And this was previously reserved for audiobooks. And I actually have a hack that converts AAC flags to make them bookmarkable.

I had initially thought that it was a inherent metadata-ish feature of the AAC/M4A format. But checking these podcasts that “resume” (which suggest bookmarkability) in the new iTunes version, I find that most are MP3s! This means that iTunes could bookmark an audio file in general… so why not have bookmarks available to a certain genre, or have a special tag for it (like the compilation tag)?

I admit that not everyone will have use for this feature on different scenarios other than podcasting or audiobooks, but it would be nice to have it available anyways (I sure could’ve used it for audiobooks that I encoded myself). So looking back, now it makes me even think that their “audiobook” implementation was flawed too (favoritism).

Moving along

At least that the physical file still reflects the changes of a renamed podcast in iTunes, good to know they got that right.