Is it just me, or does leaving your iPod (I’ve got a 6GB mini) plugged into your mac cause quite the slowdown in iTunes? I feel like anytime I’ve got the iPod loaded in there, iTunes hangs every time I click on something. Even scrolling through my library doesn’t work well – but only when the iPod is plugged in!

I’ve got my mini set to not use disk access, so it mounts just to sync, then unmounts in the Finder, but stays in iTunes until unplugged. This actually brings up two other problems I have with the way iTunes (at least until 4.9) works with the iPod mini.

First, the lack of autosync. Yes, if you have a large-HD iPod or a small music library, then iTunes and iPod do autosyncing quite nicely, but if like many of us, you have an almost 30GB music library and you carry around a subset of that on an iPod mini, then it only syncs your selected playlists upon connecting. After that, if you make changes to those playlists, import or download new music, even rate a song, the only way the iPod will see those changes is if you manually click “Update,” which is hidden in the File menu. At least, the “Browse” (which gets grayed out for autosyncing iPods) should change to “Update” when you’re on the iPod, like it does for Podcasts. But really, why can’t any change to the selected playlists cause the iPod to resync?

Second, since we mini users need to configure what is going to end up on our iPods, we would also benefit from the iPod shuffle feature of leaving the iPod (really a ghost version) in the Source list for editing, even when the device itself is not plugged in. This way I could make the decision to pull a playlist or album off the iPod, and then only plug in and sync when I’m ready to leave. The way it works now, setting up my iPod is not a natural iTunes activity, but something that requires pulling out the iPod, getting and untangling the cable, and waiting while the mac figures out that the mini is plugged in, then locks up while it connects iTunes with the mini. Really not optimal.

Apple, the iPod is clearly the best out there, but we can do better.