I was reminded this morning of something iTunes does differently (IMO, better) than MC: Syncing smartlists. I'm sure this has come up before, but the issue is still there and still bugs me.
If I had a playlist that selected 500 random songs based on criteria like last played, last skipped, genre and rating, each time I synced that list iTunes would check to see which songs on the device already fit the criteria of the playlist and only remove the songs that have been played, skipped, or whatever. Then it would top it up to 500 songs.
MC, on the other hand, likes to grab a fresh 500 songs (that may or may not include some of the songs already on the device) and then removes songs that might still fit the criteria (though aren't in the new grab of 500 songs) and replaces them by a whole bunch of new songs.
This would be a non-issue if my iPod synced instantly, but it takes a little while to replace hundreds or thousands of songs on each sync.
That means that when I'm scrambling around in the morning with coffee and toast, my sync takes 20-30 minutes instead of 2-3 minutes. So I either cut it short or just plain don't sync. I should be able to learn to sync the damned thing when I get home from work, but somehow I just can't drive that into my behaviour.
Anyone else? Anyone find a better way to do this?