I have a simple set of requirements for iTunes – I don’t use it for managing a music library – I use it because it is the only piece of software that does a half decent job of putting podcasts onto my iPod shuffle. I say ‘half-decent job’ – because that’s all it seems to do really – half a job. Basically – without it I can’t really use the iPod. But which one is free and which one is crap?

So I have some ‘functional’ issues:

If it fails or loses an episode of some podcast (which can happen frequently!) it puts a little explanation mark next to it helpfully telling me it doesn’t know where the audio is. IS THERE A BUTTON TO RE-DOWNLOAD? NO! One has to delete the entry, collapse the menu, re-open the menu with pressed which not only restores the one I just deleted but ALL of the deleted ones – so I have to remember which ones I haven’t listened to – and then I can re-download. Argh!

It seems to forget which podcasts go on the iPod (I want ALL of them) – and if I choose the podcast and select ‘add to Ronnie’s iPod’ I get duplicates of the ones already there (admittedly this has only happened recently since v8 – things getting better?). Argh!

Most of the time it works out which ones I have played and deletes them – but I would like to be able to set a threshold for how much I have to listen to so that I don’t have to listen to all of the credits at the end of the podcasts just so that it automatically gets deleted – this is about the most reliable feature at the moment - when I first started using the shuffle it was the worst – so there are improvements…

My biggest beef (and only because I have to do far too much clicking about in the UI – if it just sync’d up my podcasts without touching like it ought to then this wouldn’t be an issue) is the complete sluggishness of the UI. I have never seen a piece of software that takes so looooooong for something to happen when I click the mouse button – is iTunes this crap on a mac? I hope not! I put this one down to Apple just not caring too much about the PC market.

But for some reason I still love walking around the Apple store – they do make some sexy stuff! Just go fix bloody iTunes – I don’t actually care how sexy the UI is – I just want podcasts on my iPod – how hard can that be?