I find myself frustrated with the following scenario, which is driving me nuts:
I use iTunes to subscribe to podcast X on computer A and sync the episodes to my iPod. During my day, I discover podcast Y and subscribe to it on a copy of iTunes on computer B and sync that episode to my iPod. But now I can only get podcast X's updates on computer A and Y's on B. If I want to update from anywhere, I have to remember to add each of n subscriptions to each of m computers that I may use – a big hassle when n or m gets larger than about 3. As a note, these computers aren't on the same network.
Is there something (preferably free) that handles this use case?
Other considerations: If I can also sync iPhone/iPod Touch apps (these computers all have the same iTunes account and are all "authorized computers"), that would be awesome.
I considered using DropBox and symlinks as described here to keep the "iTunes Library.itl" synched among all the computers I use, but that isn't really tenable. The problem is that the ITL file is a monolith – all iTunes library information is stored in there, not just the podcast subscriptions (or app download records), which are what I'm interested in. So if I were to do this, then on each computer I'd have the same library, with every link being broken for any files that were on one and not the other (just the library metadata in the form of the ITL file is being synched here, not the data itself), and removing any broken links would propagate the removal to all the other computers–definitely not something I want!
Also, if the solution is "don't use iTunes, [just jailbreak and] use product X to download podcasts and sync them to your iPod" then I am totally cool with that. I have no great love for iTunes.
Best Answer
This may be a little late, but I'd like to bring forward a similar post on another answers-type site. The responses there offer two options : SuperSync (US$20, Win/Mac) and SlingShot (US$30, Mac only). Both programs offer a demo version.
Both programs can sync iTunes libraries across multiple computers, keeping all files in check. Unfortunately, the FAQs don't state whether they update podcasst subscriptions themselves, but they will presumably copy over the podcast files themselves.
Mind you, this still means you have to install the third-party program on each computer you intend to sync up, but I guess this is a small price to pay in order to get parity between Libraries.
I hope this helps.