As per standard operating procedure, Apple made some undocumented changes to the iPhone OS 3.0 software. One of these is that an iPhone or iPod touch running 3.0 is now less dependent on iTunes on the computer to manage smart playlists: it can update a smart playlist itself in a larger number of cases. Another change is that after deleting a podcast episode from the iPhone, its pre-deletion status is still synced back to the iPhone. The first change can pose a challenge to avid podcast listeners; the second addresses this challenge (for the most part).
When I got a fifth-generation iPod with podcast support, I kept the aPodcasts smart playlist, because it conveniently allowed me to play one episode after another in the order that I predetermined by dragging the episodes around in iTunes. On the iPhone 3G, aPodcasts was even more helpful, because with normal podcast playing, the iPhone automatically plays the next episode from the same podcast after finishing the current episode. That's usually not what I want.
Apparently, this is a side effect of the iPhone's new ability to evaluate certain criteria in smart playlists on its own. For instance, I have smart playlists for all songs with 1, 2, 3, etc stars. If I change a 4-star song to 5 stars, it's removed from the 4 star smart playlist and added to the 5 star smart playlist. A simple way to solve this is to unselect "live updating" for the smart playlist in iTunes, but then you have to go into "edit smart playlist" every time you have new podcast episodes.
After weeks of experimentation, I eventually found a way to go back to the old behavior for a given smart playlist. I renamed aPodcasts to zPodcasts and then added a new aPlaylists smart playlist with two rules: "playlist is zPodcasts" and "play count is 0." This again allowed me to determine the order of podcast episodes in the playlist by dragging them around in iTunes while retaining live updating. Unfortunately, the iPhone doesn't heed the new aPodcast's "play count is 0" rule.
Source
Playing podcasts the smart way
When Steve Jobs introduced iTunes and iPod users to podcasts way back in 2005, I had a third-generation iPod, which didn't receive podcast support. Mightily miffed, I concocted my own (aPodcasts) by creating a smart playlist that matches "genre contains podcast" and "play count is 0." After downloading, podcasts would show up in this playlist on my iPod. After listening to a podcast episode, the play count in iTunes would be 1, and the episode would be removed from the aPodcasts playlist upon syncing with iTunes.When I got a fifth-generation iPod with podcast support, I kept the aPodcasts smart playlist, because it conveniently allowed me to play one episode after another in the order that I predetermined by dragging the episodes around in iTunes. On the iPhone 3G, aPodcasts was even more helpful, because with normal podcast playing, the iPhone automatically plays the next episode from the same podcast after finishing the current episode. That's usually not what I want.
Smart playlist play order
Until last month when 3.0 came out, life was good. But, after installing 3.0, aPodcasts no longer showed podcast episodes in the order that I carefully crafted in iTunes, but in the Twitter/ADD inspired "most recent first" order. Yikes! That's no way to listen to my free audio books from Podiobooks. Or the news.Smarter smart playlists
Apparently, this is a side effect of the iPhone's new ability to evaluate certain criteria in smart playlists on its own. For instance, I have smart playlists for all songs with 1, 2, 3, etc stars. If I change a 4-star song to 5 stars, it's removed from the 4 star smart playlist and added to the 5 star smart playlist. A simple way to solve this is to unselect "live updating" for the smart playlist in iTunes, but then you have to go into "edit smart playlist" every time you have new podcast episodes.After weeks of experimentation, I eventually found a way to go back to the old behavior for a given smart playlist. I renamed aPodcasts to zPodcasts and then added a new aPlaylists smart playlist with two rules: "playlist is zPodcasts" and "play count is 0." This again allowed me to determine the order of podcast episodes in the playlist by dragging them around in iTunes while retaining live updating. Unfortunately, the iPhone doesn't heed the new aPodcast's "play count is 0" rule.
Deleted episodes stay deleted
However, listened-to podcast episodes staying around is easily fixed: just go to the iPod app's podcast list and swipe to delete the episode. In the pre-3.0 software, this was also possible, but then iTunes would just sync the deleted episode back upon the next sync, so you had to remember to delete them from iTunes on the computer as well. That's no longer necessary; even after a podcast episode is deleted, the iPhone syncs back its pre-deletion status back to iTunes. This means that if you listened to the episode in question and iTunes is set up to only sync unlistened podcast episodes, the episode isn't synced back to the iPhone. If you were halfway through the episode, on the other hand, it will be synced back, but the play position is updated to where you left it when you deleted the episode.Bonus tip
If enabled, the iPhone or iPod touch will skip to a randomly selected song if you shake it. However, shake-to-shuffle doesn't work if the screen is locked. The function does work if you double-push the home button to bring up the iPod controls first, though.Source
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