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Friday, January 14, 2005
Like podcasts? Pass on the iPod Shuffle
Apple Computer unveiled its latest iPod product at MacWorld, the iPod Shuffle, a flash MP3 player about the size of a pack of chewing gum. The Shuffle mounts as a hard drive on your computer, and its AutoFill software automatically chooses songs from your music library. You decide how much of the space is allocated to music and how much to data. AutoFill loads the part designated for music.
For those who listen to podcasts, this approach renders the Shuffle useless. According to an article on Internetnews.com, podcasting innovator Adam Curry noted in his Daily Source Code podcast, “Apple hasn’t picked up on podcasting because they are thinking about how things work from Apple to the rest of the world. They are not seeing what is happening.”
Indeed. The basic iPod model is already only barely adequate for podcasting, and many listeners are opting for alternatives such as the media player from iRiver. While no company has produced a podcast-centric device (podcasting is too new for such a device to have undergone the product development cycle), Apple seems to be going in the opposite direction. As Doc Searls notes in the Internetnews.com article, “Navigating inside a long podcast—and many are very long—is difficult even with a regular iPod, as it is with all players. So, rather than fix the one feature that’s lame about the iPod, they eliminated it completely.”
What do podcasters want in an MP3 device? A lot:
- The ability to bookmark a spot in a podcast so you can easily return to it later
- The ability to move through the various parts of a podcast and get just to the part you’re interested in
- WiFi connectivity, so you can get your podcasts wherever you are
- The ability to record directly to the device (the iRiver features this), desired mostly by podcasters
Podcasting is gaining steam and will go mainstream this year. Somebody will be well-served to offer a device that accommodates them.