In iTunes 11.1 when a podcast finishes it starts playing the next oldest one automatically.

Copaman, one suggestion: maybe don't mention the names of the tech support people? The information that you've posted and had erased (and much of which I've read in email before Apple wipes it out) has been great and useful - but I was mildly surprised that you mentioned the names of the people in tech support. Yeah, you were complimentary and giving them credit for jobs well done, but maybe simply mentioning their names is a no-no.

Consider it from the tech people's perpsective: while he or she may be perfectly happy to help you, and indeed it's their job, having their names made public probably isn't in the job description. It's easy to imagine some poor tech guy suddenly getting lots of calls from higher-up, angrily asking questions along the lines of "You told WHAT to the WHOLE INTERNET?!"

Thanks, Lost in Asia. I just put that out there, because it isn't just idle speculation or advice from an unnamed source; I spent several hours on the phone with people working this issue through to exhaustion. And I didn't provide last names or case numbers or anything else like that. I just said, "Hey, I was on the phone with this guy and here's what we tried and here's what he said."

I had a very positive experience with Apple following Friday's call; they listened to me, we tried a number of things, and then he ultimately admitted he was at a loss for how to resolve this issue. I was pleased that he tried, that he was patient with me, and that we had run the whole issue to as far as we could take it. I was pleased with what the advisor told me, and while it didn't resolve the issue, I knew it wasn't from a lack of trying. There was an issue, and there was no easy workaround. Since the end result was to contact "feedback," I decided to post that, so that Apple knew this wasn't an issue with one or two users, but many of us.

Then yesterday, suddenly my posts are being deleted without explanation. Not only are they being deleted, the person deleting them isn't adding to the conversation. Delete my posts, but why not add the "Contact apple.com/feedback"? That's what the advisor told me to do. What is so wrong with that? Edit out the name or whatever violates the terms of service, but to delete the whole post? That's awfully suspicious.

Right now, I have a very NEGATIVE experience of Apple. I was on the phone with some more senior advisors (this time I will withhold the names) whom I explained the situation. They said there was NOTHING in my posts that violates the terms of agreement - not the names, not the advice, not the story. And yet, it is being deleted. I can only assume that the reason my posts are being deleted is because in the course of my calls with Apple, we have identified two issues with iTunes.

And the fact may be that iTunes works as designed, but as the senior support person and I discussed yesterday. if that is the case, the use of this has not been communicated to the end users. Either way, it's an issue - either the software is broken or the users don't know how to control it.

But the mere fact that my posts have been deleted without explanation makes me very suspicious of Apple. So much so, I've delayed my purchase of an iPhone 5S. What else are they surpressing in these "Community" discussion forums?

Seriously? you are chosing your devices based on the behavior of one tech rep?

its probably better for apple that you get android then.

I choose my devices based on which one is best for me.

Anyway, It's pretty clear this behavior is by design so I will use the workarounds.

Thanks to all the people in the thread that tried to help.

Copaman, good luck with getting things to work!

On the issue here: in iTunes 11.1, I have a smart playlist with "Media Kind = Podcast" and "Plays = 0". If I play a podcast from that playlist, and iTunes is set to random, only one track is played - then it stops.

I've long considered this an annoying bug, but it may help for some of you.

But the mere fact that my posts have been deleted without explanation makes me very suspicious of Apple ... What else are they surpressing in these "Community" discussion forums?

Heh heh. I've posted so much in this forum in the past few days that I'm getting floods of email from all the different thread responses - and wow, my mailbox is full of entertaining rants that seem to get wiped from the forum within seconds. Mind you, very few of those rants are as helpful as your measured responses have been. The deletion of what you've posted just seems odd to me - hence my conjecture about the names.

Of all the workarounds suggested in this thread

• Creating an AppleScript or in the case of Windows batch file to kill iTunes after a predetermined time
• Playing podcasts in Quicktime (or VLC)

Creating a smart playlist as described by Lost in Asia is the only reasonable workaround in my opinon.

My question and this is directed to Lost in Asia: Why would setting iTunes playback to shuffle [random] have the effect of playing a single track [podcast]?

Furthermore having read several threads reporting this incident the answer seems to be - there is no way in iTunes 11.1 to set iTunes to play a single podcast. What I would hope in iTunes 11.1.1 is the default playback action to play a single podcast (as was the case in iTunes 11.0.x). My Stations would provide a continuous playback experience.

Right?

Guys, just uncheck the podcasts. Sure it may not be an exact fix, but if you uncheck all of the podcasts in one file, it will make it play only one at a time.

Brilliant, tcrboyscout! I had tried unchecking 1 file before but never all of them. This is the easist and best work-around. And one more thing just to clarify, you don't have to manually uncheck each podcast episode in a group. Just right click on the podcast title name and select Uncheck Selection and it will remove the check marks for all the podcast episodes in that group. I wasn't happy with the other work-arounds but this one is the winner.

On further review, it appears the unchecking method isn't that great. On every refresh, iTunes very nicely decides to add back the check mark for all the non-downloaded podcasts (the ones with the cloud and down arrow in it). And of course the other wonderful feature of 11.1 is that you can't delete the old non-wanted podcasts...or you can but they re-populate on the next refresh. It seems every work-around I find, Apple has tossed another grenade.

I've looked at playlists, using My Podcasts...too much trouble or just not as easy to use as List view. But everyone is different. I subscribe to about 20 podcasts and watch/listen to them off and on during the day on my desktop. I'm just dealing with the continuous play thing during the day. But at night, if I want to watch a podcast while I'm in bed then I just double-click my batch file work-around that just closes iTunes after 45 minutes. That's the easiest solution for me for bedtime use so that iTunes isn't playing podcasts all night.

I await the next "feature" update release....Apple won't call them bugs.

Where do you uncheck a podcast? I'm not seeing anywhere that I can uncheck. Unless it's in a column that I don't have showing or maybe it's how I have my podcasts set up to sync. I notice that my music doesn't have checkboxes next to the songs anymore too. Is this in the list view?

Reid, Check boxes are displayed in the second column in List view for Movies and Podcasts; Songs view for Music; and Tones view for Tones. When you right click on a column heading, I don't see any option to add/remove the Check column so it should be there. The first column in Podcasts view shows blue solid circles to indicate an unplayed podcast and the the 3rd column is the podcast name/episode.

You can press and hold the Ctrl key and click a checkbox to toggle all the checkboxes for a particular podcast group.

Same thing happened to me. We are not allowed to express an opinion in the new Empire.

Super annoying. The Podcasts also don't behave as per default settings, i.e. deleting old eposides. The whole UX/ UI is just terrible. I don't know why Apple is changing something for the worse when what we had before was fine! I want to be able to delet podcasts I've listened to and I don't want to have iTunes play the next podcast automatically!!! Apple, are you listening? PLEASE!

Thanks Scootercatt. That's what I thought but I don't have those checkboxes.

You enable them in Preferences>General:

Thanks Roger. They turned up everywhere except for the podcasts. I must have turned them off because I never used them.