As podcasters go crazy about how Apple have screwed them over, why not take a look at what Apple have done for the consumer (of an iPod Mini).

The new podcasting support is great. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. The new Podcasting section in the "Music" menu works very nicely: you get a neat menu of show titles and then, after clicking on one, a list of shows for that show. This episode view has two columns: episode title (which scrolls along if you have it highlighted) and the date the podcast was... podcasted.

When you select a show, it's just like playing any other song, except that instead of rating a show you can see its details.

It's easy to download shows, delete shows, look up details about shows, bookmark your place within shows... this is really great!

So well done Apple engineers.

Just a few things, though:

1. I really hate reading American dates - it does my head in and slows me down. Internationalise.
2. It doesn't make sense to me to order the episodes newest first. It might to others, though, so make it an option to alter how shows are sorted on the iPod. Or consider making an "episode" tag which is so much more intuitive and widely used already by 'casters.
   
3. Think about the space limits on the "description" screen and organise the information appropriately.

Now get back to work on iTunes 5!

Posted by Fin at 7/04/2005 03:54:00 pm

2 Comments ~ Post a Comment

 Anonymous: Apple in iTunes should not, as a chiefly American company, internationalize ("internationalise") its dating format.
It would be more sensible, I think, for them to make date format customizable ("customisable", perhaps) -- that would make its formatting by far more international.

 Fin: That's what I was thinking :D