Clean It Up Already
Ok, a little over a week has gone by and we’ve all had a chance to really see what iTunes 4.9 can do for podcasts. There’s plenty of pros and cons, but overall I’d have to really give it a thumbs up. But if you know me, then you know that nothing goes without complaints, because nothing is perfect. I could go into a long post about what I love and what I hate, but I’ll just stick to a bulleted list, k?
Pros
- 3,000 Podcasts!
- Seperation of podcasts from music in iTunes/iPod
- Sweet iTunes store interface for browsing
- Great syncing options
- Bookmarkable Mp3s
- Single application solution
- I can add my own feeds
- Podcast menu on the main screen of the iPod!
- Chapter marks w/ track art
Cons
- No OPML (or any at all) exporting of my subscription list. I’ll at least take some .Mac syncing to my other Macs
- What’s with this “listen to it for a second and mark it as heard” deal (regular music requires the song to be completely listened to to increase the play count). This is really messing up my syncing preferences. I want unheard podcasts only on my iPod, and if i listen to it for a second on my computer, it won’t get synced. I expect this to be changed.
- Narcissistic extension of RSS 2.0
- I’m not digging the presentation of my podcasts too much. Lets get rid of the disclosure triangles and get back to column view. Its way quicker to navigate.
- Whats with this podcast directory?!!? 3-4 feeds per show? Which one is the right one? iTunes New Music Tuesday has a new show today… but not on my feed, I had to re-subscribe to it, and then the show order was backwards and the newest show to download was LAST WEEK’S </rant>
- NO BITTORRENT!!!
Ok, maybe I didn’t keep my promise too well, but I think you get the point. I’ve submitted all my problems to Apple as well, as you should too if you have a problem. Overall I think their 1.0 podcasting support is really really nice, its more than Ive seen anyone else do on their initial try at a podcatching client and I expect more as time goes on. Got anything to add to the list or have a problem or solution to something I’ve mentioned, leave a trackback or comment.
Heh. I wish my iPod would count songs I’d hit “skip” on while I’m driving as having been listened to, so I didn’t have to remember to pull them out of the playlist later.
Comment by Peter da Silva — July 7, 2005 @ 12:22 pm
NO BITTORRENT!!!
Que?
Comment by peter — July 7, 2005 @ 4:13 pm
Check out Replay Radio - this is a combo Podcatcher and “TiVo for the radio” program. It does a lot of neat things with Podcasts, including BT support, episode search, audio within episode search via Podscope, automatic bookmarking of any MP3 file, and a lot more. The directory and guide is bigger, with 4700 Podcasts as of today.
http://www.replay-radio.com
Comment by Bill Dettering — July 15, 2005 @ 2:25 am