06.28.05
iTunes 4.9
A while back I created an AppleScript to manage podcasts in iTunes. That script, which has brought more traffic to this blog than all my other posts combined, just became obsolete. Today Apple released iTunes 4.9, which includes support for podcasts.
Rather than putting enclosures into a separate playlist or genre, iTunes 4.9 keeps them separate from the rest of your Library. Clicking “Podcasts” in the “Source” window brings up a list of all your podcast subscriptions, each of which can be expanded to view all the individual files that have been downloaded or are available to be downloaded. The iTunes Music Store now has a Podcasts genre, and the directory contained all the podcasts I currently subscribe to except one (the exception was My Silver Mount Zion, a post-rock music podcast, which I’ve submitted for inclusion). Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a way to subscribe to podcasts that aren’t already in the directory. This is incorrect — see update below.
The part that makes my script redundant is in the settings for the podcast source: you can tell iTunes to keep all episodes, just the most recent episode, all unplayed episodes, or the most recent 2, 3, 4, 5, or 10 episodes of each podcast. I’ve set mine to “all unplayed episodes.” Unfortunately, there’s no way to use ratings to save or keep episodes regardless of play count, so my script still has some functionality that isn’t duplicated in iTunes — but I could probably script a way to manipulate play count based on ratings. I’ll look into it.
Update: You can add podcasts that aren’t in the directory, simply by dragging a link to the RSS feed into iTunes. I’d tried this before and it didn’t work, but I was trying to drag the URL from NetNewsWire. Dragging a link from Safari works just fine.
