Pod Catching in iTunes – Review

Are you freakin’ kidding me? 

First, Steve Jobs claims that iTunes will support podcasting, then mentions that only
podcasts syndicated by iTunes will be supported.  Apple has actually shipped
pod casting support in iTunes 4.9.  Luckily, Apple bowed to industry pressure
and allows subscriptions to RSS feeds on the Internet.

What They Got Right

• I can choose to check for new casts every so often (day, whatever) and when they are
  detected, they are automatically pulled.  Welcome to iPodder circa August 2004.

• I can auto sync my iPod with the latest podcasts every time it connects.  Again,
  duh.

• I can choose to keep only the last 3 or so enclosures from each feed.  This is
  nice.

What They Got Wrong

• No support for OPML
  
  How can you possibly take this thing seriously without OPML support?  I cannot
  migrate my Newsgator podcast feeds in mass.  What a joke.  Even searching
  for help finds no reference to OPML.

• Advanced Feature?
  Believe it or not, the way you add a feed to iTunes is: Advanced >>
  Subscribe to Podcast.  Then you get a multi-line text area dialog into which
  you must paste your URL.  Can I add a feed via the link in IE? No. Lame.

• No BitTorrent Support
  This means that I still cannot consume .NetRocks without at least 2 pieces
  of software.

This is all preliminary based on about 30 minutes of usage.