If your iPod crashes every time you try to play your favourite podcast, don’t curse the podcast-maker: it’s iTunes 7.xx that’s to blame, yet again. Although not widely reported — and not at all by Apple, as far as I can tell — some savvy iPodders have figured out a workaround. Set the ‘offending’ podcast files to start playing at 00:01 instead of 00:00. Apparently, it’s iTunes 7.0’s new ‘Gapless Playback’ feature that’s causing our iPods to crash. A weirder (albeit simpler) alternative is to set your iPod’s EQ to the ‘off’ position, techphile podcaster Frank Linhares has discovered. As Linhares says, “Apple seems to have really dropped the ball with iTunes 7 and the latest firmware for iPods.” Roll out an update, pronto, Apple; your users are revolting.

Update 5 November: In spite of Apple’s claims that iTunes 7.0.2 addresses a variety of stability and performance issues found in iTunes 7 and 7.0.1, it still hasn’t stopped podcasts from crashing, so the above workarounds continue to be iPodders’ best option for the time being.