0xDECAFBAD

It's all spinning wheels and self-doubt until the first pot of coffee.

Quick post-lunch OS X and iTunes dribblings

  • iTunes podcasting support... I want it all, and I want it now, because it has so much potential in and of itself, and so much potential for driving podcast tuner UI into the future.

    The subscriptions are listed alphabetically? Come on, let me sort them in last-updated order. And what, no OPML import / export?

    Not many podcast-related additions to the AppleScript scripting dictionary for iTunes. I see a subscribe method, but I was hoping I could at least hack in some support for subscription list import / export. Not having access to the subscription list puts a crimp in that.

    Update: Hooray for people who know what they're talking about. Turns out there are a few more additions to iTunes' AppleScript support I missed, but I'm still not finding my way down to accessing the list of podcast subscriptions.

    Update 2: Looks like someone's already worked on the import side of things: OPML2iTunes : AppleScript to import OPML podcast subscriptions into iTunes

  • And in the Bizzarro-Verse, Microsoft is more community-oriented than Apple when it comes to RSS extension creation. Pretty odd. I can see a few spots where the iTunes tags are defensible, but couldn't most or all of these have been established using Dublin Core or other prior work?

  • Bummer. It seems like the new podcasting support in iTunes doesn't use Syndication.framework, or at least the feeds subscribed in iTunes don't show up in the Sources table in the database I was snooping around in.

    And here I was hoping for Tiger to have already quietly included a shared syndication feed architecture similar to what's proposed for Longhorn.

    Otherwise, podcasting in iTunes seems interesting so far. Now, if it used BitTorrent out of the box...

  • Can I just say I hate the new binary plists in OS X Tiger? I got so used to futzing with them using vim and shell-side friends that it's jarring to get a face full of garbage now when I poke at them.

    And yeah, I know about /usr/bin/plutil--but, yuck.

shortname=quick_postlunch

Archived Comments

  • Pete Prodoehl
    Podcasting in iTunes *is* interesting, if just for the fact that Apple is now pushing out a podcasting client to *millions* of desktops, making podcatching easy as (Apple) pie.
  • Ryan Tomayko
    WARNING: This is a mandatory vi vs. emacs comment. I have absolutely no control of myself right now and apologize for leaving this comment as I fully understand that it will have zero impact on anyone's religious attachment. Emacs can edit binary plist files.. na-nana-nana-naaaaa! http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050526162847879&lsrc=osxh
  • l.m. orchard
    Ryan: Bah, I was once an emacs user, but I just fell out of the need to use an editor that can not only edit binary plist files but also likely play a good game of Go while I'm waiting for builds to finish. :) Phbbtbt!