I've wasted an hour of my life trying to trouble shoot a stupid problem. It's actually pretty stupid and pathetic. I have a "Smart Playlist" in iTunes that dynamically keeps track of all the podcasts I've downloaded, but not listened to yet.
Every morning, I drag and drop this "Smart Playlist" onto my iPod icon in iTunes and the contents of that list gets copied into my iPod. You'd think I'd be happy and leave well enough alone.
But, no. I "had" to get the Autofill feature working.
The idea behind Autofill is just like it sounds-- you're basically telling the iTunes software to automatically fill your iPod with content. That content can come from a static playlist, or one of the dynamically generated "Smart Playlists."
Except the Autofill feature is crap. Oh, it works great if you use one of the built in playlists that comes with iTunes, such as "Purchased" or "Music." But, the second you try to use a home-made Smart Playlist, it refuses to copy anything from that list. It doesn't matter that you can click on the Smart Playlist and SEE the darn podcasts in there . . . or that you can manually drag the Smart Playlist to the iPod icon and it will copy the podcasts just fine.
I've dug through multiple articles on the iPod Support forum, tried the suggestions, but nothing works. You think I'd just do the smart thing and give up on the stupid Autofill feature. I've got too much to do as it is without wasting my time/life on trouble shooting this nonsense, but here I am still bitching and complaining about it.
At least I was smart enough to take care of the more essential things on my "to do" list first . . . like putting out the recycling, mailing in that insurance info to the credit union. But, damn, this kind of nonsense really bothers the heck out of me. It's clearly a known issue, but there's apparently no fix for it. What's the point of having a smart playlist if its just going to be locked away on my laptop computer?
Did I mention I also downloaded the gOS Live CD and tried it out? Yup, you guessed it-- doesn't support the proprietary wireless network card on my Dell laptop. Pretty much useless without a network connection, although I have to admit the interface was user friendly without coming across as "too cute."
I'm sorry, but somehow I don't think God put me here to fix other people's mistakes for the rest of my life. Or, if he did, then I sure as hell better get paid good money for it.