iTunes 11.3 freezing when refreshing podcasts

I too have had "beach-ball" freezing issues since updating to iTunes 11.3. I normally use list view and create my on playlists on an iPod classic. I have over 100 subscriptions with over 1000 stored podcasts. I also have a music library of over 40,000 songs (All paid for). I have been collecting Cd's and AAC/MP3 music since I was 15. I am now 48 years old. I also cannot use iTunes match because I am an outlier in Apples business model. I can of course create separate libraries to use iTunes match but why would I spend money on a MAC to make things inconvenient for myself. I can do that with Window 8 any time I wish. I realize this is a broken section in the update in iTunes 11.3. Apple will have to decide which costumers they choose to serve. I do not people will continue to spend thousands of dollars on systems that no longer serve their needs. It appears that podcasts were low priority on the new iTunes update. It further appears that Apple may be discarding podcasts altogether. Apple needs to at a minimum explain this change, or fix it.

My iMac is a 27"

• 3.5GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz
• 32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB
• 1TB Flash Storage -Two one T external WD MyBook
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 4GB GDDR5

When I called Apple Support about the eternal beachball and having to force quit and not being able to get out of podcast list view, he ended up having me drag these three files to the trash:

com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist

com.apple.iTunes.plist

com.apple.iTunesHelper.plist
It got rid of the beachball for me. I think they were in a Library folder somewhere—I should have been taking notes.

I'm still going to avoid list view and I can't perform an automatic refresh to get, but at least for now things are working a whole lot better.

I Had a scare yesterday. I have about 12,000 podcasts with approximately 140GB. Same beach ball symptoms. Anyway I did a search of my podcast library to see if I had any duplicate podcasts of The Six Shooter. After looking I clicked on the x to go back to view my full list view of podcasts. However, every podcast had 0 podcasts, 0 GB. There still showed the full unplayed number in the sidebar. Thought I had a major problem. I then clicked on music then back to podcasts and everything was back. Wondering if this is also a bug in the latest iTunes. This never happened before while doing a search.

hi cdrumm

glad to see that you got out of the worst of it

and the fact that Josh has been informed by now and/or found out by himself? makes me very very humbled and grateful. That's really Apple-worthy speed that a hellp desk is in the know on the 11th or 12th day after the desaster- remember the poster from Japan whose help desk assistant promised him to alert Apple USA and who 3 or 4 days into it was new to it ??? The one thing all those wizards seem to be really good at is bragging how quick on the uptake they are, that they are the future and so on and so on. If they weren't such impressingly smart people I might suspect that they suffer from delusions.

Anyway I wanted to alert everybody to the fact that today is thursday, second thursday after the desaster in fact, and thursday is Apple update day in Germany - will there be a surprise? - will I dare to install it?

Why does Life have to be so full of uncertainties?

notcloudy

Recent episodes havenʼt been downloaded because you have multiple unplayed episodes.

and Apple wants to nanny me into keeping my backlog small? They are so nice.

I don't buy the "not everyone has the problem" - that is typical "customer shut up" reply practiced by shops and dealers since mankind produced the first one, probably even before the stone age came along - the you are the only one/one of very few who has this problem is useful in making the customer feel he is a nuisance being somehow all his own fault.

A working computer program shouldn't select the way your help desker claimed and if it did so it should post warnings

Tevseric

I am pretty sure that there was a change on their website i.e. that iTunesU and Podcasts were previously NOT listed together. ABIK there are expectations that there may be money to be made in iTunesU aka online schooling.

While they are trying to figure that one out and land the big one (like they are trying or have done in Turkey) why invest time and effort (aka money) in keeping those podcast listeners happy who get everything for free. Once the Turkes (or whoever else) will be happy with their online education provided by Apple podcast listeners will be fed the crumbs (if they are lucky). But as long as the parameters aren't clear why bother about that nuisance demanding that they'll be able to continue to use their hardware for the purpose they bought it and refuse to go with the times and buy Apps and Songs and all that other cash cowing penny-stuff.

kevin

as I said before - podcasts is now full of inexplicable mysteries*) - I feel like I am back to working on a PC with 20 MB hard drive like my first one had.

after trying to get some system back into it and keep only my most treasured because selecting in MyPodcast view is so time consuming I came to the conclusion that I'll save externally all downloaded since

*)to paraphrase Churchill in 1939:

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Apple. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Apple's corporate*) interest."

*) and I mean corporate in becoming domineering not only money wise.

... another suspicion which gets stronger with me every day is that Apple has a severe problem linking its less fashionable traditional items to the cloud world. For example if I have allowed a text edit document to be stored in the cloud and I afterwards dis-activate text edit from the cloud the document is gone on my hard drive also. As I am not given a choice but am forced to either stay on with the cloud service or first saving the document externally I think this is a nice way with just a free-of-charge cloud size of 5 GB to force customers into buying extra space.

Once upon a time Apple bowled me over and over again by being generous on choices allowing me to indulge my every whim to the hilt ... now I feel more and more like I am getting "nudged" to marching in column.

(one of the authors of the much talked about book Nudge enlivened his book talks by telling how much cleaning cost a company saved by painting a fly into the urinals thus "nudging" the users to trying to hit the fly. He was keen on promoting that as the ideal example for nudging successfully and unobrusively - his co-author is/was an Obama advisor.)

Silkefromdeu wrote:

remember the poster from Japan whose help desk assistant promised him to alert Apple USA and who 3 or 4 days into it was new to it ???

Since I am the "poster from Japan", let me add that I was advised that Apple Support send the report to Apple HQ and Apple HQ normally are able to get back with a proper response in a week. Then I am contacted personally by Apple Support in Japan. A week has not yet passed. Apple Support in Japan and the wonderful specialists here have always kept their word to me.

Silkefromdeu, I am curious when you contacted Apple Support in Germany what the specialist advised you. Apologies in advance if you had posted what Apple Support had advised you.

Cheers! 🙂

Darren

Japan

dear ozdazza,

I installed 11.3 on Friday July 11 in the morning, realised in the evening when I got home that the system beachballed and beachballed to the point that the ventilator couldn't cope any more and all I could do was force quit and give my MacPro 13" and its 4 GB RAM time to cool off.

Saturday morning I tried again, realised that the automatic update I had chosen provided in List-View Settings would go on beachballing and thus I'd never have a chance to switch it to manual and thus be able to look at what was going on. So I called the help desk. Verena made me do something which I forgot to remember or was it the deleting of files in Systems at 3 different locations which did it. Anyway I was able to open iTunes without it starting beachballing immediately and I switched the settings to manual. Then I showed her the problem while she was switched on and she decided to update or re-install or whatever OSX. By then 5 hours had passed and her working day was over and the updating lasted 2 hours anyway during which nothing could be done. Sunday was her day off and she promised to call me again on Monday after her shift started at noon. Never heard from her again. By then I had realised that more hours with her on the phone were useless because she had convinced herself that with my collection of podcasts I should have a 16 GB RAM model (price 2.600 € instead of 1000 for the current model I have which is already about more than double the price of an equivalent PC). After having slept on it that advice told me all I needed to know (and by then I had gone to the communities threads where somebody's remark that updating all in My Podcasts View didn't lead to excessive beach balling)

Whatever I have read here (with the exception of your experience in Japan) tells me that Apple will never admit that it did me wrong.

Oh and Verena told me another thing that my habit of deleting so much is likely to damage my hard drive while at the same time she thought a 500 GB hardrive would provide me with enough room so I wouldn't have to delete - the absurd thing is that now Apple itself provides in MyPodcastsView a choice to automatically delete stuff that has been listened to.

As soon as the lovely summer weather is over I'll go to the local computer shop and have him help me set up something suitable for me. My trust in Apple is gone. I am no longer the kind of customer they are interested in. I fell in love with them through Podcasts on iTunes on my Microsoft laptop and I fell out of it through Podcasts on iTunes on my Mac.

and BTW I'd never have expected them to sink so low to put the blame on the customer.

and another btw that 5 hour long session with Verena did my humble little inadequate (by her standards) machine a whole lot of good.

Good luck to you with yours and congratulations that you have helpdesk personnel that is willing to acknowledge that Apple may have made a mistake.

ozdazza

It seems that the people with the problem either always are connected to the internet or have their system set to connect to the internet as required. Have you tried not disconnecting/not connecting to the internet and then going into ITUNES to see what the DOWNLOADING window options are set to and are doing?

Apple going from OS9 to OS10 copied my most of my internet connection - and added auto connect - I mention it because I had at that time to disconnect the modem connection so it would error out - as I had some setting that I had to enter - along with unchecking - connect to the internet as required and unchecking keep trying.

Have not been able to find documentation on it - but based on what it looks like you may be able to set it to not try to do multiple downloads at the same time and also cancel downloads that are not complete.

At some point since I loaded my CD's into ITUNES - noticed settings have changed to add multiple libraries, and not options on which devices to sync with.

I do have multiple libraries in IPHOTO because a single one was a bit sluggish as I load the entire picture not just thumbnails so guess ITUNES is the same.

I tried opening itunes with the internet disconnected and had the same beachballing-on-list-view problems.

Verena, the woman from the help desk, went through a disconnect/connect with the internet routine with me - it didn't make any difference ever - she never suggested though to switch to another view and actually the more I think about it what better proof is there that Apple messed it up with one view is operating with lots of mysteries included (which the changes the BBC made suggest to me may be due to some podcast providers lagging in their adjustment to 11.3) and the other one crahses the program.

It is Apple's task to right this, it isn't my task to find ways around their sloppyness - this all reminds me of the early days of computer (before internet) when customers were supposed to check the thing for the manufacturers - I'd have expected there having been some progress since then instead I find they've gone into regression.

PS:

... and customers seem to be as willing and as proud of their ingeniousness to solve the manufacturer's Problems

once upon a time car manufacturers expected the same from their customers, these days they have to pay through their noses if they try such behaviour but apparently computer, sorry Mac, manufacturers still get away with it.

Why did you buy a lap top if you are using it as a desk top?

You do not want to hear that you purchased a system that is too small for the vast amount of podcasts you want to download.