It has been two months since I first complained here that iTunes 7 wouldn‘t let you view or delete podcasts located on your first-, second- or third-generation iPod. Since then, Apple has done nothing to remedy the problem, and I‘ve been unable to find any third-party utilities that would do the trick.

In “Trouble in Paradise, Part 1,” I suggested that the only obvious solutions were to reformat your iPod–which I was unwilling to do–or remove iTunes 7 from your computer and reinstall iTunes 6. Weary of waiting for another solution, I decided this morning that the time had come to revert to iTunes 6. As I soon discovered, though, deleting iTunes 7 was easier said than done.

Because Apple doesn‘t provide a utility for removing iTunes 7 from your Mac, you need to manually:

1) Delete iTunes from /Applications.

2) Delete iTunes.pkg, iTunesX.pkg, and iTunesPhoneDriver.pkg from /Library/Receipts.

3) Delete com.apple.iTunes.plist from /Users/[name]/Library/Preferences.

4) Move your iTunes folder from /Users/[name]/Music to another location.

5) Restart your Mac and empty the Trash.

6) Download iTunes 6.0.5 installer from Apple and run the installation.

If you try to install iTunes 6 without taking the prior steps, when you reach the installer‘s Easy Install step, it will say, “You cannot continue. There is nothing to install.” If you choose Customize, all the installation options will be grayed out, and the only action displayed will be Skip.

After iTunes 6 is installed:

7) Run iTunes and connect your iPod to view its contents. (Don‘t worry that iTunes will indicate there‘s no music on your computer‘s hard disk.)
Delete the podcasts from your iPod‘s Music Library (finally!).

9) Quit iTunes and update iTunes to version 7.

10) Replace your iTunes folder back into /Users/[name]/Music.

If you replace your original iTunes folder before you update to iTunes 7, iTunes 6 will say, “The file ‘iTunes Library‘ cannot be read because it was created by a newer version of iTunes.” If you don‘t replace it after the update, iTunes will lose track of your music library‘s contents, and rebuilding it could take a very long time.

If someone (preferably Apple) comes up with a more elegant solution, I‘ll be grateful. In the meantime, I‘m unlikely to listen to podcasts on my iPod again, knowing how difficult it will be to remove them. That‘s a real same, because I really preferred listening to podcasts on my iPod to listening to them on my Mac.