http://www.apple.com/au/itunes/ http://www.apple.com/au/podcasting/

In one small product point release, they seem to have gone from one piece of the podcasting puzzle, to the only game in town.

Sensible, grown men, have been bending over backwards to reconfigure RSS feeds that worked perfectly fine only a few weeks ago. Podcasters have stopped calling for people to vote for them on Podcast Alley. Almost instantly the only ladder that mattered was the iTunes ranking.

http://podcastalley.com/index.php

After encouraging listeners to download the podcasts using tools like iPodder Lemon and iPodderX – almost within a week the call went out to switch to the iTunes feed. Please. For the sake of the children !!!!

http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/index.php http://ipodderx.com/

All this fuss over something that has generally been received by existing podcasters, as a bit of a muffed launch. I doubt there is anyone who thinks Apple got it right when they released 4.9. It just reeks of a rushed job. Unusual for them really.

No doubt iTunes 5.0 when its released (probably to coincide with 5th Generation iPods – RSN) there will be fixes and within 12 months all will be well and dandy. All will be forgiven.

I tried iTunes 4.9 when it first came out. Unfortunately I was one of the many burnt badly by trying the shiny new toy when millions were also trying at the same time. My experience was a pretty crap one – slow responses, missing links etc. I know most of these things have been fixed, but I still like my iPodder Lemon software.

Maybe iTunes 5.0 will have me dancing a different tune?

iTunes 4.9 would be the first iTunes to incorperate Podcasting subscriptions.

It was – A Big Deal. Steve told us it was so.

So why 4.9? Why a simply point release? So close to 5.0 you might have thought an improvement this big might warrant a major update in the naming?

Did Apple know that 4.9 was really a “rough and ready” version that would cause the problems it has?

Is there a 5.0 version around the corner to coincide with fifth generation ipods?

Perhaps 5G iPods have some new shiny features that can only be accessed by iTunes 5.0?

Videos??FM Radio??Recorder?

hmmmmmm….

However. There are some features I would like to see added to a podcasting client if anyone is listening:

1. Go Faster: Make it so I can increase the speed of playback. You adjust to listen just as well. I can do it in Windows Media Player, Quicktime – why can’t I do it in iTunes?

2. Chapters: I love podsafe music, mashups, werid-ass interviews. But sometimes I don’t care eouugh and I just want to skip ahead to the next bit. Let me do a “chapter skip” like I can on a DVD. I couldn’t that hard to press a button on your podcast software to mark a new chapter as you are recording. I’ve heard that in advance itune feeds you can have bookmarks. Haven’t looked at that yet so it might be the same thing.

3. Bit Torrent: Do I have to explain?

4. Links: I know I can get links “on the show notes”. Well doesn’t that defeat the purpose of RSS?? I subscribed to something so I don’t have to visit the site – now I have to visit the site… Even a simple link in iTunes somewhere so I can easilly get to the site without looking it up.

See – I don’t ask for much…