So I wake up this morning at about 7 AM. I open up my faithful Feed Demon and just as I’d hoped: sprinkled everywhere were stories entitled “iTunes 4.9 w/ Podcast Support Now Live!” I’ve been waiting for this a LONG time. I think Apple is definently on the right track here. Now, there are a few hiccups in that throw off that feeling of perfection I’ve come to expect from Apple. But, these are not big enough concerns for anyone to worry about. Although, an iTunes 4.9.1 release in the sometime near future would not surprise me one bit. Every geek in the waking world has been voicing their opinion on the new features. A LOT of concern has been voiced about the interface and the so-called “commercilization” of podcasting. Honestly, I personally think Apple did a great job in this respect.

Here’s some screenshots and explanations:

The first noticable change we see is in the all empowering source-list:

There is a simple new option called “Podcasts.” Nothing wrong here, As expected when clicked, you are presented with a list of “songs” but in this case its actually podcast shows.

Finding podcasts couldn’t be easier: Simply click on “Music Store,” and at the top of the page there is an announcement that says “Podcasts are here!” Click that ad and you will find a whole new section of the music store. Where you can search podcasts and easily view what the most popular shows are.

Podcasts are also listed by category so you can dial down to exactly what you are looking for:

Once you’ve found a show you like Apple makes it really easy to subscribe to it:

Simply click subscribe and the podcast will be added to your list. Once this happens you’ll see something like this in when you click “Podcasts” in your sourcelist:

The good thing is Apple didn’t try to take over the concept at all. If you want to download past episodes of podcasts, just click the expansion arrow next to the show’s name and you’ll see a list of recently released editions. You’ll see a column for name, length, date and feed URL. All you have do is click the “Get” button next to the show’s name. Now this is all well and good, but lets get into some of the options you have when trying to consume all this content.

A REALLY cool feature that I don’t think many have noticed yet is that iTunes “remembers your place.” What I mean is that if you are listening to a say 2 hour long show and you want to stop and listen to some music for a bit or maybe listen to a different podcast. iTunes will remember where in the show you stopped listening and when you double click on it again later, it will resume playing from that spot. This is great (for people like me) who insist on trying to consume about 12 different forms of media and content all at once.

To display the options for podcasting, simply click the “Settings” button at the bottom of your podcast list:

A dialog will appear as a tab in the standard iTunes options pane:

Here you can set how often you’d like to check for new episode releases. You can also specify how many “backlogged” episodes you’d like to keep around in your personal list. The options are pretty much self-explanatory. You can also easily change your iPod options.

Just like iTunes can automatically sync your iPod and iTunes music library, the same can happen with podcasts. Here you can set up which podcasts you want sent directly to your iPod. A few issues have been raised with this though. Apperently if you’ve played part of a particular podcast already, iTunes doesn’t consider it as “new” anymore. Not really sure about this one since I don’t like automatically updating. However, this is one of the reasons I say that Apple may shoot down an iTunes 4.9.1 somtime in the near future.

Interestingly enough, if you look at the bottom your subscribed podcasts list you’ll see this:

The podcast directory link is self-evident, however there is this interesting little quirk saying “Report A Concern.” This could also be a sort of “Hey, I’m listening to this podcast here and they’re talking about some messed up stuff!” kind of thing, but who knows, its Apple - They’re weird.

One of the coolest features in my opinion is right here. I know this may not be that cool to alot of people, but I’m really stoked about this kind of thing. This is called the “Chapters” menu.

The option (as far as I can tell) only appears on “Apple sponsered” podcasts. But when clicked you get a popup like this:

Clicking an option takes you to that point in the current podcast. This is really cool since now you can easily find out if there is anything of your interest in the current show without having to listen to the whole hour of content. I’m sure (and I hope) at some point that Apple will publish a document for podcasters on how to enable this functionality in their own programs.

UPDATE: Apple has released a utility (OS X Only) for implementing “chapters” inside an MPEG4 AAC, the tool can be downloaded here: “Chapter Tools Beta”

That being said, Apple has released a specification (if you can call it that) entitled “How To Publish a Podcast on iTunes Music Store” it can be found in PDF format here: http://phobos.apple.com/static/podcast_specifications.pdf

Now of course there are TONS of people saying that Apple is making it too difficult to get your podcast noticed by the world. There are a couple of issues here. If you would like add your own podcast to the public directory simply find this:

Click it and enter some info and your program will be submitted for (what I can only guess is) apporoval to be added to the listings. Also, another issue has been brought up: If you would like to subscribe to a podcast that is NOT in the directory, you still can. Its not pretty but I’m sure glad that Apple included it.

If you goto the menu and click “Advanced > Subscribe To Podcast…” you’ll be presented with a small dialog to enter the podcast’s feed URL:

You can also subscribe to an arbitrary show by dragging-and-dropping the podcast feed’s URL from a browser onto the podcast item in the source list.

What’s really interesting here is that iTunes will also accept videocasts this way. If you drag-and-drop a videocast feed onto the “podcast” option in the sourcelist, it will be added just as if it were a podcast and all the functionality will still be there. Instead of playing audio, the video is is merely played via iTunes’ new video support. Neat.

Well that will about do it for this review. I’m very happy with this release of iTunes. I’m completely stoked that Apple is embracing the whole podcasting phenom. I encourage everyone to check out iTunes 4.9 and at the very least look into podcasting.