Annoying Playlist Shuffle. Help!

I found out when the odd behavior of my shuffle occurs. I put my podcasts on a smartlist, which refreshes everytime a podcast is played. Once a podcast is played, iTunes deletes it automatically, thus it does not show up on the smartlist. I dragged and drop the smarlist into the iPod. And here’s where the poop hits the fan:

You see, the order in which my podcasts are placed in the shuffle is the order in which they’re transferred, regardless of the order I put them in. I noticed this behavior when transferring my podcast smartlist on an empty shuffle. This while watching the transfer process closely. For example, say I have 5 podcasts. Numbers 1 and 2 transfer in order. Number 5 transfers then number 4 and number 3. This is the order in which the playlist is played in the shuffle. And it is the order the tracks are played, even though I re-arrange them in iTunes. :-S

I’m pretty sure this is a bug in the latest shuffle firmware update. Please forward this to some of the developers. This has to be easy to fix!

I tried something different this morning, but couldn’t test it completely. Here’s what I did:

I started with an empty Shuffle and my daily podcasts (about 5). My podcasts are organized within a smartlist, from there I transfer them to a normal playlist if I’m going to listen to them directly from my PC. What I used to do was just dump the smart playlist into the iPod, Sync and go. What would happen (and still does happen) is that the Shuffle plays the podcasts in the order in which they’re transferred, not in the order I put them.

So this morning I sent the podcasts to my iPod one by one. I did this and waited until the transfer of one was complete, then I started the next. The playlist looked fine and I ejected my Shuffle. I didn’t plug in the Shuffle right then and there to check if the order was ok, instead I connected it back to the PC while iTunes was up. The playlist was rearranged automagically by iTunes!.

The problem is either in the Shuffle’s firmware or somewhere within iTunes. I’ll try to test it again as soon as I have some new podcasts downloaded.

I'm sad to report that the experiment did not succeed. At the time I had to podcasts in my list. I put them in a simple order: podcast A first and podcast B second. I transferred them one by one, ejected the iPod and did not reconnected it.

When I turned the iPod on, podcast B played before podcast A. Can this be a bug in the iPod's firmware? I'm pretty sure that this behavior did not occur on firmware 1.1.3 (I upgraded about three weeks ago to 1.1.4).

I've yet to transfer an album and see if the pod plays it in order. I'll report back soon.

I transferred an entire CD I had imported into my library in it's order and it plays OK. That CD was Queensryche's "Operation:Mindcrime II". The tracks played in their correct order.

No dice on podcasts. It occurred to me to edit the track's tags and put them in order (1 of 6, 2 of 6, &c.). No dice.

Frankly I'm getting tired of this. I bought the Shuffle as a simple device to listen to my podcasts in my determined order and to listen to some music. This is not working. If I can't fix it, I'll put it up on eBay and check other alternatives.

I tried a complete Restore of my iPod to factory settings using the latest iPod updater. No dice.

I'm about to throw in the towel.

I give up. I've tried everything I could to correct this annoying behavior in my Shuffle. I'll seriously consider moving on to some other music player, definetly non-Apple. I like the way the music syncs seamlessly with the player and everything, but my podcasts are important to me.

If someone comes up with a solution soon, send me an email. If not, there should be an used iPod Shuffle soon on eBay.

I see. Is there a way to alter this in some fashion? If it's by date, and only by date, I suppose then that altering the date on the podcasts themselves would solve this issue, no?

If this is the only way that the shuffle can play podcasts, where can I send a message to suggest that this behavior is fixed in future releases of the shuffle's firmware?

But I do this! I transfer the podcasts to a playlist (not smart), order the podcasts in the order I want then transfer. No dice!

I just downloaded iTunes 7, so I haven't tried it with this new version yet.

OK. Let me retrace the steps:

I transfer the podcasts to a playlist and order them my way.
Then I transfer the playlist into the shuffle, wait until the transfer is complete. Once this is done, select 'Copy to Play order' and update the Shuffle.

Is that it?

To be honest, and to give these guys a chance, I downloaded the new version of iTunes yesterday but I haven't had a chance to test this. All of the podcasts that I've received recently I've heard while chained to my desk.

As soon as I get something new, I'll certainly give it a shot. But you're right; this was working but now is broken. This should be able to work the way we want it (order the playlist).