[X4U] iTunes 11.1 Incredibly BAD "feature"

[Clifford Readout]

Please forgive me for this cross-post.  I sent it <iomug at yahoogroups.com>,
too.  Word of this needs to get out.  If enough people complain, Apple might
fix it.

If you subscribe to many Podcasts I recommend you do NOT install the iTunes
11.1 update.  You will be sorry!
The iTunes engineers (and I have received communication from them) have
acknowledged this situation, and called it a 'feature"!  You decide:

When the update is completed, iTunes will now show EVERY ***available***
episode of EVERY Podcast to which you are subscribed.  It does not matter if
you had downloaded them, listened/watched them and deleted them. This totals
more than 1300 items in the Podcasts to which I am subscribed.  (Yes, more
than one thousand three hundred!)

BUT, even worse, you cannot delete any of them without (supposedly)
downloading them again and listening/watching them all again.  Then,
supposedly, you will be allowed to delete the files.  My experience
indicates that it will not work every time.  I have downloaded many,
listened to them, and not been able to get them deleted.  It has worked for
fewer than one item in five.

Imagine getting to scroll through a list of five hundred lines of Podcast
items that you do not want to get to the one you wanted to keep.

Oh, hear this, too:  If you unsubscribe from a Podcast, all those items do
disappear...until you resubscribe.  Then, there they are, back again,
impossible to delete without unsubscribing.

Another "feature" that makes life miserable for iTunes users.

Who can recommend an alternative. Is it possible to go back to the earlier
version of iTunes?  My iTunes library is now more than 950 GB (Yes, GB, not
MB), and most of the files are important.  I would need to import them into
the replacement.