Bagel Belly Blog

iTunes Podcasts

The new version of iTunes is out with support for podcasting. This is great news. A few things feel a little "rushed" about it though:

• The processor load goes through the roof when iTunes is downloading a podcast.
• It's not really clear whether you're searching for podcasts or music store tracks depending on where you are in the GUI.
• The highlighted source on the left-hand side jumps between "Podcasts" and "Music Store" erratically (the directory is under Music Store, but the subscriptions list is under Podcasts).
• The 'subscribe' button looks a little too much like the 'buy' button.
• The "Publish Podcasts" link is disingenuous - it's really for advertising your podcast, not actually publishing. What happens if Apple decide to create a real podcast publishing service in the future? (Or buy podshow...)
• The integration between podcasts and the iTunes browser is flakey: there's no podcast genre, and the podcast categories appear under 'Artist', which is very weird and very wrong.

The good news is that the subscriptions pane is really friendly, though it looks like the mainstreaming of podcasting has knocked quite a few servers down, as I haven't successfully been able to retrieve any of my usual favourites yet.
It's interesting to see this, as it feels like Apple really rushed to get this out of the door to capitalise on the explosion of hype that is surrounding podcasting right now. In my experience over the last couple of years, most previous updates to Apple software have been clearly thought-through and thoroughly polished from a user experience point of view prior to release. I wonder why Apple felt the need to rush this one?