I’ve three problems with iTunes 11, which did not exist on iTunes 10. At least one of them happens on both Windows and Mac.
I have an iPhone 4S running iOS 7. The new podcast application does not see all the podcasts uploaded by iTunes. iTunes may say they’re there, taking up space, but the podcast application denies they exist—so I can’t play them.
So I got my 3rd generation iPod Touch out of the draw. It runs iOS 5. iTunes says it uploads the podcasts. The iPod Touch says it’s tried to do so, but got it wrong—the titles are greyed out and the podcasts can’t be played. Great.
Actually, it turns out I can force things to work with this sledgehammer:
- Select the podcasts I want on the iPod
- Sync
- Turn off podcasts on the iPod from iTunes
- Sync
- Exit iTunes
- Disconnected and reboot the iPod touch
- Restart iTunes
- Reconnect the iPod
- Turn podcasts back on on the iPod
- Sync
Now, it’s probable not all these stages are necessary. Since all I want is to listen to my podcasts, and now I can do so, I’m not willing to more time working out an exact recipe to avoid a bug that Apple should fix soon.
So I got my 1st generation iPod Touch out. It runs what I would now call iOS 1. One problem: I’d lent it to family, and had to restore it. iTunes 11 will not do so. After it’s erased what was there before, it complains of unknown error (1), leaving the iPod in emergency restore mode. Online documentation suggests this is a hardware error.
Hardware error? That is total bollocks. I have Snow Leopard server with iTunes 10 running in a virtual machine. It can restore the iPod. Once the iPod was restored, iTunes 11 seemed to work with it. But I only got this going last night, and have only listened to one podcast, so it’s quite plausible there are problems I’ve not found yet.
I’ve lost faith in Apple’s ability to produce working software. Podcasts are essential for me, and they simply don’t work properly on any of my Apple devices. My next phone is going to be a Nokia.