I have a smart playlist configured to play my favorite podcasts during my commute. It's a list of audio-only, unheard podcasts:
In iTunes, I've ordered the playlist by Release Date — i.e. I want to listen to the oldest podcast episodes first. The order is correct in iTunes but when I sync to my iPhone the order is jumbled.
Currently, I have five episodes in this playlist — ordered by release date they're A,B,C,D,E. On my iPhone, they're ordered B,D,C,E,A. There's no sort order that's obvious to me — not sorted by name of episode, name of podcast, length of episode, date added, etc.
Any solutions to ordering smart playlists on the iPhone?
Update: This is likely an iTunes 9 bug. There's lots of discussion about this over on Apple.com.
Best Answer
had the same problem and found a fix suggested by a user somewhere else (it worked for me) - Olivier
"I did find another workaround that works better for me. If you create a smart playlist that is based on another smart playlist, then the track order of the former will be correct on the iPhone.
So what I did was to create a first smart playlist that included all podcasts. Next I created a second playlist where the first rule is that it contains everything from the first playlist (Playlist is). The result is that the second playlist is still updated automatically in iTunes, but it does not seem to get updated on the iPhone . . . and that's probably where the bug is. Anyway that second playlist will keep its ordering from iTunes.
This isn't quite as much of a pain as flipping the Live Update box on and off, at least for me. "