iFail: Smart Playlists Aren’t Anymore
Evidently, Apple needs to re-evaluate their regression testing strategies.
The other day, Apple pushed software updates for iTunes (9.0.3.15) and iPhone OS (3.1.3). The iPhone OS updates broke a small subset of features related to smart playlists.
I’ve always been a major fan of iTunes since the introduction of smart playlists. As enthralled as I was to being using them though, I was almost as starkly let down when the developer in me was unable to specify arbitrarily nested conditions, such as
rating is 5 and artist is Hans Zimmer and album is either The Rock or King Arthur
which can be translated into a pseudocode-esque form as
rating == 5 AND artist == “Hans Zimmer” AND ( album == “The Rock” OR album == “King Arthur” )
It was a real letdown. At any rate, with iTunes 8, Apple unveiled the ability to create complex conditions for smart playlists, and it was wonderful. When I purchased my iPhone (3GS) last summer, there were a few quirks, of course, but nothing major.
However, with the iPhone OS 3.1.3 update, a few of my playlists were appearing empty on my iPhone. Puzzled, I began looking for common patterns. I noticed two similarities. First I noticed that all of the affected playlists were smart playlists, and then I narrowed it down to playlists having complex conditions involving the “genre” field
At this point, I hopped on over to the Apple forums. Low and behold, I’m not alone. There are, at this time, three fixes available of which I’m aware:
- Create a “dumb” playlist, and add to it all songs from the problematic smart playlist
- Create an auxiliary smart playlist, with one rule: “playlist is <name of other list>”
- Disable the “live update” feature for the troublesome playlists, sync, and then reactivate it.
Update: I’ve confirmed yet another workaround thanks to Chris Koerner. In the afflicted smart playlist(s), add a new rule: “Playlist is Music.” This workaround seems like the best yet; it doesn’t add playlist clutter and allows you to keep Live Updating enabled.
At any rate, I’m just happy that there are temporary fixes for this (however ungraceful they may be). Hopefully this gets you by. If you have a second, head on over to the appropriate Apple forums threads (here and here) and post. It can’t hurt the chances of a faster patch if more people pipe up.