Because I hate iTunes, I use it for one thing only - to automatically download podcasts of some NPR broadcasts each week. When I get enough of them, I burn them to a CD and listen to them during my commute. Sometimes I don’t care to do this more than every few months. iTunes has decided that if I don’t listen to them within about 3 or 4 weeks, then I don’t really want it to download them anymore. So it stops. Well, the podcasts I download are only free the first week they are offered; after that, there’s a charge for it. I can find nothing in the options to tell not to stop doing what I told it to do. So I have to babysit it every week and make sure it is still doing the only thing I want it to do.
Is it worth 8 bucks to you?
http://www.woodenbrain.com/products/castaway/castaway.html
Seems to be Mac only, but I’ll look around. I’m a PC.
You didn’t really just say that, did you? That’s the most moronic ad campaign evar.
I believe there’s an option for when/if it deletes podcasts. I’m not much of a podcast guy myself, but I’m pretty sure you can set it to simply never delete stuff
I’ve set it to never delete the podcasts that have been recorded, but it simply decides that I must not want it to continue downloading them if I haven’t listened to any recently. It puts an exclamation point alongside the program it thinks I no longer want updated, as though it’s sticking its tongue out at me. And then I discover that I am missing two weeks of non-update-able This American Life.
Not a huge biggie, just one more thing to hate on iTunes for.
Dude. Click the little explanation point. It will resume the downloading schedule. They put that feature in there so that inattentive people don’t have their hard drives eaten up by forgotten media. If you hate the software so much, why do you keep using it?
Here’s what happens when you google “itunes podcast exclamation point”.
First result: iTunes: Exclamation point appears next to podcast
Dude. I know that all I have to do is click the exclamation point. The point is, if I don’t catch it within the first week it appears, I can no longer download that weeks’ podcast without paying for it. And I ocassionally miss that window. I use it because it is the only program I have been able to get to download the particular podcasts I collect.
Again, I know perfectly well how to turn it back on. I want it to stop turning it off in the first place. NPR’s This American Life and Selected Shorts podcasts are only available free of charge for 7 days. After that, I have to buy them.
I don’t actively go into iTunes unless I’m going to burn a whole mess of podcasts at a time. I don’t want to have to check every week on the chance it’s the week it decides to quit downloading what I’ve told it to.
Actually, I see that there are a lot more podcatchers out there now than the last time I cared enough to look, so iTunes may soon be out of my life.
Looks like the NPR podcast site gives you the choice of Yahoo or Zune as well, or you can copy and paste the URL into whatever subscription service you prefer.
This is a perfect example of software design that irritates me, because it assumes that it knows how I want things to run. That’s fine - designers have to make those assumptions all the time. But when they do, there should also be an option for me to change it, in case the way I use the software doesn’t match their assumptions.
Yes, particularly once you’ve already overridden their contradictory assumption.
Yes. I’ve tried the Yahoo one and it wouldn’t download one of my subscriptions, but I’ll try it again, and try some of the other podcatchers out there. One of them has to be more user-agreeable.
After I download them, I click play and then immediately stop. iTunes then considers it as having been played, won’t delete it, and continues downloading others in the series no matter how long I hang onto it.
I have episodes of “This American Life” from several months ago I haven’t listened to yet.
Download the Zune software. It dominates iTunes and is an excellent podcatcher. iTunes is a truly abysmal piece of software, don’t suffer with it any longer. Zune allows you to burn podcasts from within the software and will download things pretty much forever.
Thanks, I’ll try Zune first.