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Does this sound familiar to you? You connect your iPod or iPhone to iTunes in Mac OS X to sync, but because iTunes’ built-in podcast update schedule is so oddly sparse, you find you have to hit “Refresh” on the podcast tab to actually check for new podcasts, then after it checks for, finds, and downloads the new podcasts, you have to sync again!? There’s got to be a better way!!:

1. Download Cronnix.
2. Create a new cron item that looks like this:
   
   
   
   That command, by the way, is this:
   
   osascript -e "tell application \"iTunes\" to updateAllPodcasts"
   
   
3. Save. What you just did was create a little one-line reoccurring cron script that fires off every hour on the 30 minute mark that will (launch iTunes if it’s not running and then) tell iTunes to check for and download new episodes of your favorite podcasts.

~Jeff

EXTRA CREDIT: There’s probably a better way to do this via launchd. In Mac OS X 10.5 and above, Launchd = teh new hotness!, whereas cron = teh old and busted — but honestly, I just couldn’t quite get the syntax right. My guess is that the osascript command that passes to iTunes would have to be escaped as normal, and then escaped again for the launchd XML file. So if you can figure it out, let me know.

ADDITIONAL EXTRA CREDIT: If anyone knows of a way to disable iTunes’ “You haven’t listened to this podcast in a while” download deactivation setting, again, speak up. I can see why it’s there, and it’s polite and all, but it drives me berserk.