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Apple’s podcasting stroke of genius

Sunday, June 17, 2012 · 12:01 pm · 30 Comments

“Apple’s developer release of iOS 6 created an instant mystery: Podcasts are missing from the iTunes app! Who dunnit?” Mike Elgan writes for Cult of Mac. “At least, that’s the false meme that emerged. In fact, references to ‘Podcasts’ are in there. Things have been re-arranged, and podcasts deemphasized. Something is going on.”

“The rumor and/or speculation is that Apple will spin podcasts out into a separate app (but keep it in the desktop version of iTunes). This prediction is supported both by funny business in the app, and also inside information from unnamed sources ‘close to the company,’” Elgan explains. “The prediction that Podcasts will get their own app sounds reasonable. But the interesting part is: Why?”

Elgan writes, “Why would Apple put music, movies and TV shows all together in one app, but create an entirely separate app for podcasts? Sounds dumb, right? Actually, if Apple is doing what I think they’re doing, it’s a stroke of genius.”

Read more in the full article here.

Related article:
Apple gives podcasts a gentle push out of iTunes – June 15, 2012

Categories: News

Tags: iOS 6, itunes, podcasts, podcating

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Comment Feed

30 Comments

Drewha

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 12:12 pm · Reply

Groundbreaking! Just wait till the android twinks hear this!
- Gnoker
  
  Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 5:02 pm · Reply
  
  God i hope your a troll….beyond pod for android. They should copy that.
Rorschach

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 12:21 pm · Reply

Meh. I could care less. I’ve never bothered with podcasts, and never will, I never listen to crappy commercial radio or talk radio either. In fact, I’m just about to have a new Kenwood head unit fitted to my car. The significant thing is it’s a DAB+ unit, which lets me listen to possibly the best music radio station in the world, BBC 6Music. If I’m not listening to that, and hearing more new music than I can actually afford to buy, my 160Gb iPod will be connected, and playing a random selection of the currently 13,000 tracks installed.
- Cubert
  
  Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 12:42 pm · Reply
  
  And what do you see when you listen to each of those 13,000 songs?
  - Ink Blot
    
    Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 5:17 pm · Reply
    
    He sees himself in the mirror, singing along with Justin Bieber. Pathetic little shit, isn’t he.
- Lordthree
  
  Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 2:06 pm · Reply
  
  Podcasts kick ass. You’re a dumbass
- MacRaven
  
  Monday, June 18, 2012 - 8:33 am · Reply
  
  Lot of good tips in The Mac Observer’s Mac Geek Gab, also good Mac podcasts from Your Mac LIfe and Macworld. I’ve solved some problems listening to these, or made better Mac and Mac related purchase decisions thanks to Mac Podcast info.
  
  Talking podcasts don’t have to be political, they can be informative. As for music. I’ve heard all the old songs a bazillion times and don’t like 95% of the new songs, so If I listen to something I might as well LEARN something, is how I see it.
- tbone
  
  Monday, June 18, 2012 - 10:24 am · Reply
  
  Podcasts rock. I listen and view many opt them. None of them have anything to do with music.
Cubert

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 12:40 pm · Reply

I hope this guy is right. A stand-alone podcast app (hopefully called Podcasts and not iPodcast like he says) would start the next generation of podcasting.
Synth

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 12:40 pm · Reply

Ugh, this is NOTHING new. Apple already separated iTunesU, Videos and iBooks into separate iDevice apps.
- DMac
  
  Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 1:33 pm · Reply
  
  Exactly. It does make sense for iTunes in Mac, and especially on the PC, to be one app. It’s easy to use and introduces people to Apple in one place. But the nature of iOS having an app for the task at hand has already broken every other individual building block apart into its own ap: Music, Videos (Movies and TV shows together), iBooks, App Store, & iTunes U. That leaves one element left to get iOS independence: Podcasts. Looks like it’s coming.
  - silverhawk1
    
    Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 8:06 pm · Reply
    
    Kind of like the breakdown of fart and vomit apps.
Ghop

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 12:53 pm · Reply

Not ipodcast but “iCast”
Tim Coughlin

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 12:54 pm · Reply

They will spin it off into a standalone app, I suspect that’s a given after iTunes U.

However, I suspect the real reason for it is they will start making it possible to charge for podcasts and make it an app a la iBooks which spins around to a storefront.
Quevar

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 1:03 pm · Reply

This is way better than iOS 5 where they have podcasts in iTunes and video podcasts in the videos app.
TheMacAdvocate

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 1:07 pm · Reply

Wow. Elgan is the worst. On the one hand, he’s seems mostly pro-Apple, so I want to like him. On the other, the stupid shit that emanates from his fingertips make me want to claw at my eyes.
- Geddy
  
  Monday, June 18, 2012 - 2:05 am · Reply
  
  Can’t help but agree.
  Who would build a site dedicated to the Mac and then put up another dedicated to ‘android’ – with the exact same logo except replacing the iconic Apple logo with that wretched robot icon?????????
  - TheMacAdvocate
    
    Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - 12:01 pm · Reply
    
    Cult of Mac’s Android abomination is more the fault of Leander Kahney, the publisher and person responsible for giving Mike Daisey a podium just before he was exposed as a fraud.
    
    Elgan is a converted Windows guy who takes his Redmond-honed logic and tries to apply it to Apple, with predictably absurd results.
peterblood71

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 1:19 pm · Reply

iTunes is too bloated so it’s good for the all the various types of media to have their own app to shine and consumers to pinpoint items offered. An umbrella app like iTunes gets too messy, especially with the millions of items it has to offer. iTunes needs to go a lot further to redesign it’s UI to find things. iBook store completely sucks trying to find books and needs more Jobsian type ease of use thought. IMHO. I go to Amazon for e-books usually instead which is sloppy but more exciting marketplace.
- Cubert
  
  Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 3:40 pm · Reply
  
  The rumor is that the next iTunes 11 is going to have a major UI overhaul.
Bac

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 1:22 pm · Reply

I think Apple is finally going to spin off all of it’s separate iTunes content into separate apps. I have said many times that renting a movie or buying an app from a store named iTunes just doesn’t make sense.
- vanfruniken
  
  Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 1:46 pm · Reply
  
  This reminds me of the 3 Siemens phones I had. I started out with the C25, which was a pleasure to use -because of its simplicity (it didn’t have many features either:)- With every generation the depth of the menu’s increased, and the UI became more messy and extremely hard to figure out where to navigate to set a certain option. Bloated and an ad hoc design. (This all changed when I bought my iPhone 3GS -a breeze to use. It took me an hour to know exactly where everything was, a lot of ideas from the Mac simply carried over (along the integration between like features).
  
  These days, iTunes is bloated, and it is DIFFERENT on the Mac and on OS. Even power users have to think carefully: where can I go to do this or that…
  Time for an MacOSX-iOS wide unifying redesign of the whole ex-iTunes experience. With unifying, I don’t mean that they need to go back to a single app, iTunes, but the experience needs to be the same over platforms.
danilko1

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 2:27 pm · Reply

From what I have seen, this is all poppy cock. Podcasts are exactly where they were in Music, as it now shows in iTunes. Nothing has been depreciated. I don’t see podcasts getting it’s own app. It is a consumer product in the same way as music and video. It is more like the content in iTunes than any of the other spinoffs. People are overreacting.
Apple is Always Right

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 9:55 pm · Reply

Why is iTunes bloated? Answer: To invades the Windows plataform and sell iPods, iPhones, Music, Movies… Now in a post PC world… there’s no room for Windows… and all will become iOS apps.
mikie

Sunday, June 17, 2012 - 10:10 pm · Reply

Could it be something better and bigger that YouTube?
- Apple is Always Right
  
  Monday, June 18, 2012 - 12:48 am · Reply
  
  You’re right… YouTube free would be VERY cool. Apple come on.
Matt

Monday, June 18, 2012 - 1:23 am · Reply

If not iPodcast, why not iCast?
- Nekogami13
  
  Monday, June 18, 2012 - 2:53 am · Reply
  
  because there is already an icast app in the app store.
dddd

Monday, June 18, 2012 - 11:09 am · Reply

the problem with podcasts in iTunes is that they are often temporal content that gets downloaded periodically. they lose their sense of immediacy and time in the current interface, plus one must be subscribed to access podcast content. So Apple needs to put out time machine for podcasts where you can zoom through topical podcast by time.
Bryan J Blumberg

Monday, June 18, 2012 - 3:11 pm · Reply

When is Apple going to create an iBooks app for Mac OS X, so that the books we buy on the iBookstore using our iPhones and iPads can also be read on MacBook Pro?