Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

I specifically don't subscribe to many podcasts because I simply don't have time to listen to them consistently. I do listen to virtually every Evil Genius Chronicles. I listen to a large percentage of the topics on IT Conversations. The rest of my podcast listening is more like a channel surfing approach, where I'll tune in randomly when I find something that sounds interesting. I'm currently subscribed to exactly 6 podcasts in iTunes and as I was browsing through them I noticed something very interesting about a few of my subscriptions - they weren't updating. A little exclamation mark appears on the left hand side of my Podcasts directory next to each of these podcasts that stopped updating. Clicking on the podcast, I'm informed by iTunes that it noticed I hadn't listened to these podcasts in awhile so it stopped downloading.

I'm not sure whether I'm annoyed by this behavior or not. On one hand, it's a good thing I'm not filling up my hard drive with files I'm not listening to. On the other hand, I often let a few shows pile up and then listen to them while I'm out running errands or something and do get caught up eventually. Now I actually need to make sure the downloads are taking place before they expire out of the originating feeds.

Apple - I think this is a behavior you need to offer a configuration for in the preferences. It's a great idea, but it should be my decision to stop downloading files, not yours.