itunes stopped saving my rss podcast ID/password

I'm sorry, man, but I'm not seeing your cause/effect here. Why? Simple: because it's been demonstrated that downgrading to a previous PC iteration of iTunes solves the problem. Now, how could that be if Microsoft "patched" protocols? Doesn't it follow that whatever patching that might have occurred would also "break" older versions of iTunes?

You're not answering that "elephant in the room" question. And as to why Apple's Mac iTunes works and the PC version doesn't just isn't relevant, in my opinion. It's two entirely different code bases.

The podcasts I deal with (OK, yes, RSS feeds) do use Akamai as a CDN. BUT authentication occurs locally, and only then is there an actual handoff to Akamai for content delivery. And by the way, it's an Apache server that authenticates. And also note that there are ZERO issues with saving authentication credentials from any other methodology of receiving the podcasts, whether it's through a web browser interface or any number of podcast-catcher apps people might use on smartphones (Google Listen on Droids, Podcaster on IOS, etc.). The PC-based iTunes alternative called Ziepod (www.ziepod.com) works fine with saving authentication credentials, and always has. How could that be if this patching has occurred as you theorize?

Bottom line: It's iTunes that doesn't work now. All other methods (browsers/other podcast-catcher programs) of authentication work fine. So sorry -- I'm just not seeing your MS theory as viable.

One other note: podcasts that have email user names are problematic with this workaround you offer, even with "URL Encoding" to avoid special characters. That's my experience. So, while I'm happy that your solution was provided and is useful to some, it's not a universal remedy.

I will wholeheartedly agree that Apple has no incentive to fix the issue. But I think it's kind of glib to just suggest that content providers take the financial hit from Apple to "fix" the problem.

PatFerr, good exposition of this problem. I subscribe to the same podcasts as you do with the exception of Kim Komado and like you I have had problems with all except Laura Ingraham's show. I ended up having to uninstall iTunes 10 something and installing iTunes 9.2.1.5 and now it works perfectly. The only thing I have to be careful of is not downloading the newest version of iTunes when they periodically ask me if I want to do that. I used to do it automatically so now all I do is read what's new in the upgrade to see if they have fixed the problem and of course they never have, so I click Quit.

Thanks to this message board I found this simple solution. It doesn't seem to need special characters except for the colon separating USERNAME and PASSWORD.

Place this URL in "Advance" then "Subscribe to Podcast"

http://USERNAME:PASSWORD@rss.premiereradio.net/rushlimb/podcast.xmlPASSWORD@rss.premiereradio.net/rushlimb/podcast.xml

BTW, "This Week In Tech" reported Apple plans to eliminate podcasts from iTunes.

Best Regards

That worked for Rush's podcast, but I cannot get it to work for Glenn Beck's. Maybe because the username is an email address with the '@' symbol? I am not sure. But thank you much for the fix to the Rush podcast. That is great.

Regards.

Update.

Disregard this. I found Lensman's post to use html encoding. Thanks much.

They still have not fixed this and likely have little incentive to do so. The big problem is that no viable competitor exists. They would be more responsive if they might lose market share, but the number of users with paid podcasts is minimal and they can freely ignore those users, in spite of the frustration it involves for those impacted.

If it was a problem with Windows, how does the authentication ever work? Clearly the problem lies with how Apple is storing the information. My bet would be that they are storing in their own format now, hence their own dialog, and they messed the storage up. That would also explain why the older iTunes works when the current one fails.

I hope none of you are in product testing....

This is never going to be fixed by Apple I resolved it months ago by using Lensman's fix of putting your UID and password in the subscription URL string. I know that purists don't like that fix, but it works and I have had no problems.

@hawkchev --

The problem I've seen is that this "fix" doesn't work universally, particularly when there are email address user names. And yes, I'm talking about even after using what is known as "URL Encoding" to replace special characters. So, it's probably a great workaround for most users, but not all.

By the way, for people wondering -- there have been times in the past when even Macintosh versions of iTunes have lost the podcast password saving functionality. Apple eventually fixed it, but at their own whim, of course.

That's a good point....I must have missed that in the previous discussions. Thankfully, my UID is not an email address. Thanks for the update.

I have the same problem. I contacted Apple support and they refered me to this thread. I have read thru most and have tried a couple things.

I set the podcast to manual and prayed. That alone didn't work.

I did notice that the id/pw challenge only comes up when i hit Refresh Podcasts. If I just click Get or Get All on the podcast, I don't get challenged, and the download works fine. So I could just hit Refresh Podcasts, cancel out of the id/pw challenge, then click on Get All on the podcast and everthing works fine.

Also, putting the id/pw in the URL for the podcast worked, and allows me to just hit Refresh.

I agree this is an Apple issue. It could be considered a "security" issue, but apparently they do remember the id/pw behind the scene for Get and Get All, they just won't display them to prefill the id/pw challenge box on Refresh. Maybe the "security" concern is with displaying your login information, in case someone else is using your computer.

Ugh.

Moving on with life.

Don Pl

I feel Apple has let us down by not dealing with this issue, since the last iTunes update. They have known about it and just don't care. All they care about is selling music at the iTunes store. A RSS feed makes them no money. That is why this issue has not been fixed.

premierradio.net is my down load. For over a year now, not since the last update, daily when I log into iTunes, I am asked to re-enter my user and pass before it will download

THANKS FOR NOTHING APPLE :-( Go DROID

Can't even begin to tell you how frustrated I am with this. What is even more maddening is that it has been proken all along since the update and I thought I was doing soemthing wrong.

Sadly, it is still broken in iTunes 10.7.0.21. I came looking for solutions because I recently subscribed to a paid podcast. I will try the one "fix" of exiting out of the sign-in and then hitting "update all". Hopefully that will work!

GTK Apple's responsive to user's problems/issues. </>sarcasm

*sighs* Getting more and more like Microsoft every day. Well done.

ATTN: THIS MIGHT BE FIXED NOW WITH VERSION 11.0.

Please download/install 11.0 (available now) and verify. I installed 11.0 and then added my premium podcast credentials. I then exited the program and then restarted it. I was not prompted for a password or user name. I rinsed and repeated (lol) and got the same behavior: NO PASSWORD PROMPT.

But I won't believe this until others verify. I'm going to reboot now after this forum post and then try iTunes again.

Note: 11.0 looks quite a bit different. If you need to add a podcast, it's now in the "File" menu vs. "Advanced" (there is no Advanced menu). And to get the file menu to show up, you need to click on the top left icon in iTunes and then click "Show Menu Bar", or Ctrl-B.

Wow hopefully they've finally fixedit. Had to believe it's taken them nine months.

Now maybe by next Christmas they'll do something with the useless Podcast App that isn't even capable of downloading premium content.