iTunes 4.9 does Podcasting!

I've become a big fan of podcasting, and now it should be easier than ever to subscribe to and keep up with podcasts. I've been using iPodder (the lemon) for Windows. It was really well integrated with iTunes, so it will be interesting to see how iTunes 4.9 itself works.

First impressions:

Here is the podcast page in iTMS:


You can see prominently advertised podcasts at the top, selected podcasts from certain categories (much like the iTMS music pages), and a "Top Podcasts" list along the right.

Here is the podcasts screen:

I like the way the podcasts screen is organized. When you subscribe to a podcast (or simply "get" one episode) the podcast name appears like a folder with an expander to let you view all of the available episodes. From that view you can select individual episodes to download.




I was not psyched initially that I could not find a way to add a new feed by entering its URL. I could only add feeds from the iTunes Music Store, and several of the feeds I subscribe to were not found (DeFi Radio, for example). However, there is a way. The option is found under the "Advanced" menu as "Subscribe to Podcast...".

That option should be more readily available from either the podcast screen or from within iTMS. But this important option is there, and even better, you can actually drag and drop a URL from a web browser right onto the podcast screen to add a subscription. That's a nice touch.

Settings:


"Check for new episodes" only gives the option of checking once per hour, day, or week. I like iPodder's ability to designate the exact time of day to check feeds, and to set it up to check several times each day at designated times. For example, I like it to check for new episodes right before I leave for work, before I get home from work, and once in the evening. With iTunes, I'm not sure yet if I can designate the time of day, and to check more than once per day, I'd have to either check every hour, or manually check. It's probably not a big deal to have it check once per hour.

"When new episodes are available". The options are "download all" "download most recent one" and "do nothing". It's not clear whether "download all" will download all NEW episodes or ALL available episodes.

"Keep". I like this option, but it could be better. It gives the option of keeping all episodes, all unplayed episodes, or the most recent 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 10 episodes. This is a nice feature to help manage the amount of HDD space taken up by podcasts, but it shouldbe configurable on a podcast-by-podcast basis. Maybe I like to keep three DeFi radio episodes handy, but all IT Conversations episodes until I manually delete. iPodder let you clean up manually, and even removed episodes from iTunes in addition to removing the audio file from the HDD. Also, iPodder ranked each show by how much HDD space it was taking up, which is a nice feature. iTunes should be able to do something similar.

I haven't checked out the iPod preferences yet, since I haven't had my iPod connected (when I click on iPod Preferences, it tells me no iPod is connected).

Overall a good first effort by iTunes. Glad to see Apple recognizes the potential for podcasts. More to come as I use it a little more, have it sync to the iPod, and generally compare iTunes 4.9 to iPodder.