Preserving smart playlist order on iPhone

"had the same problem and found a fix suggested by a user somewhere else (it worked for me) - Olivier

""I did find another workaround that works better for me. If you create a smart playlist that is based on another smart playlist, then the track order of the former will be correct on the iPhone.

So what I did was to create a first smart playlist that included all podcasts. Next I created a second playlist where the first rule is that it contains everything from the first playlist (Playlist is). The result is that the second playlist is still updated automatically in iTunes, but it does not seem to get updated on the iPhone . . . and that's probably where the bug is. Anyway that second playlist will keep its ordering from iTunes.

This isn't quite as much of a pain as flipping the Live Update box on and off, at least for me. """

MacWorld posted fix (http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-10360396-233.html) turn off "live updating" for the smart list. Worked for me (Snow Leopard 10.6.1, iTunes 9.0.1 & iPhone 3.1)

"I found another workaround for this issue: link 2 smart playlists and they can both have ""Live updating"" checked. This allows the playlists to update automatically when listening in iTunes or when you sync.

I have a ""Good Podcasts"" playlist that does all the hard work. It includes podcasts where the playcount is 0 and the where the podcast name is any of the podcasts I like to stay current with (about 30 podcasts). Then I have a ""GP2"" playlist where the only criteria is ""Playlist is Good Podcasts."" I manually rearranged both playlists (which, of course, have the same podcasts on them). When I sync to my iPhone, GP2 retains its order (and Good Podcasts does not).

The Live Update feature on the iPhone only works on the primary playlist, however. If I play one of these podcasts on the iPhone, its play count is incremented and it drops off the Good Podcasts playlist. However, it remains on the GP2 playlist. Obviously, the iPhone isn't smart enough to do live updating on GP2. This does not matter to me because I listen to the podcasts in order from the beginning of GP2."

"Set the attribute ""Media Kind"" to ""Podcast"" in your smart playlist criteria.

This works for me, iPhone 3.1.2 and iTunes 9"