I have a second-generation iPod Shuffle that, for the most part, I love to death and back again. I bought it to replace my — *sigh* — LOST iPod Classic 80G. It’s a great little bit of gear. The EQ sounds great to my ears with the stock earphones. It gets about 13 hours or more of battery life between charges even after a couple of years of hammering. It does just about everything right.

Except one thing ...

Syncing can be a total bitch. Oh, the physical replacing of songs with new ones is a given and is as easy as 1-2-3. The problem is that sometimes it decides to not mark songs as having been played. Now, I’m COMPLETELY anal about this. If I listen to a song, I want my library to reflect that. And more and more these days, the Shuffle doesn’t say, “Hey, I listened to this!”

According to what I’ve read online, the issue has something to do with iTunes’ Smart Playlists and whether anything changes on that playlist between the time you load the songs onto the iPod and hook it up for a new sync. Apparently, if something AT ALL in the playlist changes, the iPod goes stupid and doesn’t mark any of the songs you’ve heard as played. Stupid. Just stupid.

Tonight, I got the idea of using the Smart Playlist to select the songs to load and then copying the selections to a basic playlist called, unsurprisingly, “Trane’s Dumb Shuffle”. We’ll see whether this makes a difference or not. I hope it does. It is one extra step in the sync process, but if it does work as intended, then it’s absolutely worth it.

I’ll keep you informed. I know you’re waiting with bated breath. If you’re a trout, you’ll be waiting with baited breath. ;-)

Update 2010-09-10: This new playlist thing seems to have fixed the problem. What a nice thing to finally experience. Unless something goes utterly wonky with the newly released iTunes 10, the Shuffle should be correctly updating its plays from now on.

Contact Trane Francks:

E-mail: trane@gol.com

Tel: +81-90-6467-0022