Live Updating mangles smart playlist sync - again and forever?

For the last several itunes updates, setting a smart playlist to Live Update causes the order of playlist items to become mangled on synced deviceL
Unchecking the Live Updating restores the proper order to the items on the synced device.
Its a huge pain if you desire to set up podcast play order on your iphone so you don't have to play DJ in your car.
It was a problem a long time ago, and there was a kludgy workaround. Then they fixed it. And 2 versions of iTunes later it came back, and the workaround didn't work that time. It now appears to be a permanent bug, and apparently nobody cares at Apple.
Here's a wonderful example of how longstanding this bug is:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/11396625#11396625
This one is even more pathetic, going back to 2009:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/10168181#10168181
There are many, many, other threads complaining about this issue so I've lost faith that Apple will care or try to fix it.
There has always been the occasional bug or error with Apple hardware/software; nobody's perfect - but they used to make an effort to fix things in a timely manner. At least they used to think the perception of attention to detail was important for marketing purposes.
Now, they are apparently content to Pareto Principle their products becuase they have the mass sales and a giant customer base that will accept 'just good enough' products.
So sad to see the decline of such a once great company.

FYI, I've found that Live Updating can SORT OF work. It seems if you only have two rules, live upating works (IE, I have one that is a Rating must be 3-5*'s and last played cannot be within the last 8 weeks). Once the song is played it disapears off the playlist. BUT, as soon as I try to add a third rule, it doesn't work anymore! This is unfortunate because two rules really limits the ability of the playlist...
Cheers,

Similar Messages

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    Cheers,

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    Cheers,

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    Cheers,

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