Podcasts App... Not Syncing Correctly.

I'm am seeing a complicated behavior that partially works. For podcast episodes that have been added since I upgraded to IOS 6, the played/unplayed status and the current place in playback are synced between my iPhone and iTunes on my Mac Pro. That doesn't work for older episodes. I also see cases where new episodes are available on my Mac but don't show up on my iPhone, even though those podcasts are mark for syncing in iTunes and I manually trigger a sync.

This is frustrating and confusing.

Hi i think i have solved it . on your iphone go to podcasts app and search for podcast thats on your computer ,then make sure subscription is on and auto download . working for me now .

Shaun - I understand what you mean. First, the only search in the Podcast app searches the iTunes store, not against my computer. And I already have the podcasts that I followed synced to my iPhoen through iTunes. Second, I don't see a setting that turns Auto Download on or off. the only one that I see is to use Cellular Data for the download.

In order to make sure your podcast app on our iOS Device is able to synch with your iTunes device, make sure you have the Podcast selected in the "podcasts" section when synching. This insures it carries across.

For now I have subsciptions turned off as my iTunes manages my podcasts. This works fine.

I'm looking forward to having this all in iCloud in the future as that will eliminate any synching required at all.

-Bob

pnessutt wrote:

In order to make sure your podcast app on our iOS Device is able to synch with your iTunes device, make sure you have the Podcast selected in the "podcasts" section when synching. This insures it carries across.

For now I have subsciptions turned off as my iTunes manages my podcasts. This works fine.

I'm looking forward to having this all in iCloud in the future as that will eliminate any synching required at all.

-Bob

That's what I'm doing now. I only have a few podcasts anyway and this eliminates the carrier data usage issues other have reported. I sure hope they fix this app.

go to itunes on computer select your iphone / podcasts make sure sync podcasts is checked and i have subscription on my phone turned on as i have all you can eat data .then on the phone side once you select the podcats right at the top takes you in to the settings for the podcats ie subscription on /off and in soe cases auto download. its definetly working for me now .

It doesn't sync properly IMO with subscription turned on or off. What I am looking is, first of all, to have the played/unplayed status synchronized between the Podcast app on my iPhone and the iTunes applicaiton on my Mac, and second, to have the postion synced for partially played podcasts.

If I turn of the podcast subscription on my iPhone, the episodes that are snced are controlled by the iTUens settigns. If I turn on subscription, I get a bnch of episodes on my phone that I payed long ago on my Mac.

This new Podcasts app was not well-QAed before being released. I didn't read through every post in this thread so I'm not going to say for sure that what I've discoverd as one of its buggy behaviors is its ONLY buggy behavior and therefore I won't say that it accounts for all the issues everyone else is seeing but it does seem like it probably accounts for some of the issues some others of you are seeing.

The app is really bad at handling podcast episodes with the same names as other podcast episodes. The programmers should have known better than to use NAMES as identifiers! In programming you have to use something that is known to be unique as your identifier--if you don't, exactly the kind of stuff we're seeing here happens! And I'm sure these particular programmers did great work in many regards but getting this wrong is truly mindnumbing: you don't have to know very much at all about coding to know better than to get this wrong!

• If multiple episodes of the same podcast have the same name:
  • If the Subscription for that Podcast is turned on, the app shows all episodes and, most importantly, allows you to listen to both of them. However, the date and time information displayed may be incorrect for any/all of them. So: they're there and accessible but they're not displayed properly.
  • If the Subscription for that Podcast is turned off, the app shows only 1 episode, generally (probably always but I'm not sure) the newest. As per the above, if you turn on the Subscription, you'll see that the other episode is in fact there, it's just not displayed.
• If multiple episodes of different podcasts have the same name:

  The app may display an episode associated with the WRONG podcast. In my case, the scenario is this: I have synced the episode over from iTunes for one podcast but for the other podcast, I haven't even synced over that episode--and still, the app shows the episode inccorectly associated with the podcast for which I did NOT sync it over and it does NOT show that episode for the podcast to which it actually belongs. It does play properly: so it's there and works at least, it's just not in the right spot. Incidentally, if I turn on the Subscription for the podcast to which the episode actually belongs, the episode will show up in the list as needing to be downloaded; if I turn on the Subscription for the podcats to which the episode does NOT belong, the actual episode will be "masked" by the incorrectly assigned episode (meaning that I will NOT be shown the actual episode for that podcast in the list so I can't even download and listen to it).

I don't know how common episodes with the same name actually are in the world of podcasts but I suspect that this issue probably won't render the Podcasts app totally worthless for most users and many might not even experience the issues at all. But I'm not working with "test" podcasts here: these are real podcasts I actually care about so this is definitely a real issue that needs to be fixed.

Yet more poor QAing from Apple: this forum's rich text editor lets me use bullets but then it strips them when displaying my posts! My post above looked great when I wrote it. If they would have provided even a preview option, that would have prevented this. What a mess! Oh: and while they'll let me edit this post, they won't let me edit the other. What a total mess!

My original post from July is now well out of date. As I post this, with iTunes at 10.7, iOS 6 and the Podcasts app at 1.1+, the presence of the Podcasts app on a device removes the podcast capability from Music on that device. I find that I must now remove the Podcasts app entirely in order to sync podcasts to my Mac in the way I am used to. Also, there is no iCloud syncing as of yet. In principle, a future that has Podcasts syncing podcast subscriptions and read/not read status among devices using iCloud is fine with me. No indication as to whether that will ever happen that I can find.

Message was edited by: Gary K. for clarity.

iCloud syncing does work. Just between iOS devices, however. Not back to iTunes on a Mac or PC.

Yes, iCloud syncing works between iOS devices for me too.

iTunes syncing to Mac also works for me, but it's a separate process.

As stated in a previous response, my bet is it will all work as part of one iCloud-based mechanism with the next version of iTunes.

In the meantime, I find it's at least usable now.

I am also noticing a problem with syncing with the Podcast App.

It seems that if I open the app to play a podcast on my iPhone4 in and area with limited (but some) WiFi coverage (for example an Underground Station here in London) then the podcasts that have been marked as played which are not downloaded to my phone disappear and the numbers reset to zero. Then when I arrive at an area which has good WiFi or 3G coverage all these podcasts reappear in the list but now marked as unplayed.

It's annoying and it means that the auto-download feature keeps kicking in and downloading podcasts that i have listened to an deleted already.

Anyone else noticing this or have I missed a trick with a setting somewhere?

I just wish I could figure out what the app is supposed to do. I have an iPod touch, an iPad and a MBP with Mountain Lion. All OS are current.

What I expect:

iPod touch and iPad - When I listen to a podcast on either device, if I pick up the other device, I can pick up where i left off. So, if I start a podcast upstairs in my bedroom in the morning on the iPad, and then I head out to work and grab my iPod, shouldn't I be able to listen to the podcast from the point I stopped it on the iPad?

MBP: sync my iPod and Ipad....then all 3 devices should be updated to my latest point on each. (it would be nice if the MBP automatically synced as I described above, but I realize that is not the intent, yet.).

Reality:

I listen to a podcast on iPod or iPad, and sometimes the other device updates, sometimes it doesn't. Am i missing something?

I sync to MBP and i end up with episodes marked as unplayed that i've already listened to on one of my devices. I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, and I'm quickly accumulating more and more because i can't figure out how one that has been played stays unplayed across all my devices.

What the heck did they do!!!!

I believe the problem is that the convergence of iTunes + OSX + iOS + iCloud is still a work in progress, and there are gaps and these gaps cause seemingly unpredictable behavior.

The Mac, iOS devices, and Apple TVs all subscribe to Podcasts available in the iTunes Store.

Podcast content is downloaded to Macs when available, according to user configurations. There is no streaming to OSX Macs, it is download and play only. Podcasts are always streamed to the Apple TV Podcast app... there is no download capability. Subscribed podcasts can be streamed or downloaded to iOS devices, according to user configurations.

iCloud enables syncing between iOS devices. Check.

iTunes on the Mac enables syncing of iOS devices with Macs. Check.

There is no account-based syncing for multiple devices in the iTunes Store. Big problem. The primary key in somebody's database design is device-id when it should be account-id. I think this is the source of the issues we're describing in this thread, especially when time is considered as one of the syncing variables.

If I'm right, here are the symptoms we should be experiencing:

1. No podcast progress synchronization between different Macs, Apple TVs, or iOS devices. They are all managed as independent machine ids by the iTunes store.

2. iCloud will try to sync iOS devices, but the results are unpredictable because iCloud is independent of the iTunes store, as is iTunes on the Mac, all three of which may be trying to update the iOS devices, depending on user configuration.

3. The Mac will try to synchronize the iOS devices that are connected to it, but again, the results are unpredictable because there are too many disconnected updates happening. For example, if I watch some of a podcast on my Mac and sync the progress to my iPad, that could get over-written by the Podcast app on my iPad subsequently communicating with the iTunes store.

Any of this sound familiar?

The good news is, if I'm right and this is a work in progress, something really powerful is on the way. Once there is a single master of the ecosystem, Macs, Apple TVs, and iOS devices will all fall into place and 'just work'.

Until then, here are the workarounds I'm using:

1. If syncing between iOS devices is most important, turn on local app subscriptions and turn off podcast syncing with iTunes.

2. If syncing between Mac and iOS devices is more important, turn off local subscriptions and turn on syncing with Mac.

I hope this is useful and if anyone has any additional or contrary information, please post.

APPLE, WHERE ARE YOU IN THIS DISCUSSION?