If you have an iPod you are more or less stuck with iTunes. If iTunes was perfect this wouldn’t be that bad. However, it isn’t perfect, far from it. Apple is creating superior software, right? Wrong. Just take for example this problem I’ve found.
Let’s say you subscribe to a podcasts source and you want to download 10 episodes. iTunes will schedule all 10 episodes for download and first three episodes will start downloading immediately (looks like they have three simultaneous downloads parameter hardcoded). Nothing wrong here? From my experience there are sources that won’t let you download more than one or two episodes at the same time. But iTunes will try downloading three downloads at same time nevertheless. What gives? Third episode won’t download and will be simply marked as not downloaded. Then the fourth episode will start downloading and the same fate will happen to it. All the episodes at the third slot won’t make it as long as first two are being downloaded. And if you want to download not downloaded episodes again, you’ll have to click Get button over and over again – or pay attention to click only two episodes from the same source in a round. Highly annoying – it looks like Apple developers don’t use iTunes, otherwise they would notice this stupidity. And remedy? Simple simultaneous downloads limit parameter per podcasts source. Or per entire iTunes if the former is too hard to achieve.
But perhaps the most funny is the answer from experts in the iTunes forums:
“When downloading episodes just click the pause button on the episodes that won’t make it, wait for the downloading episodes to finish and click start for paused episodes two or one at a time.”
IOW you have to play download limiter role. Sounds like fun, even more so when you download 20 episodes from the same source. New form of entertainment? Should we forget game consoles?
Hey, iTunes is at version 7.2. Let’s hope they add simultaneous download limitation feature before version 15.0. And note that there are other annoyances within iTunes, this is just one of the most ridiculous one. But let’s look at the bright side: at least this time iTunes didn’t try to destroy your computer.
I’ve noticed the same behaviour in iTunes. But I don’t think a feature like the one you propose will be implemented anytime soon. Apple doesn’t like to leave it to the customers to choose between multiple choices. “Don’t worry bout a thing – we do all the thinking for you!” 😉