I guess Apple was in too much of a hurry to push out the podcast-equipped iTunes 4.9 that they overlooked adding smart playlist functionality for the newly mainstreamed audio. This morning, I tried to add a smart playlist to issolate the podcasts episodes that my computer has downloaded within the last 24 hours.

Surprisingly, when I went to create a new smart playlist, the option for podcasts was not there. Thinking that I could just deal with a playlist with the new podcasts AND songs in the last 24 hours, I decided to do that. Nothing. Sure, the playlist holds the songs downloaded in the last 24 hours, but not podcasts.

It turns out that the directory that contains the podcast episodes is not included in the music library in iTunes. Ergo, there is a wall between the music and the podcast files. I understand the reason for this, but it would be nice to create a smart playlist for the podcasts I have in my episode list.

The only way around this problem that I have found is adding the directory that contains the podcast episodes to the iTunes music library. It will then index all of the podcasts into the music section and become sortable with smart playlists, but this also leads to the problem of having to sort through not only thousands of songs in your iTunes library, but also every podcast episode you have.

I think Apple may have just been too hungry to break into the podcasting market that they overlooked small featured such as smart playlist functionality. While they have made podcasting mainstream almost overnight, they have butchered the construct of the podcasting community. That is another story for another day.