Thoughts on the iPod

As a music player, the iPod is pretty much perfect. It has lots of the sensible options that I wished my Lyra had. For example, when you look up an artist, you are given the option “Play All” or to select an album. And it groups albums by an “Album Artist” tag, allowing you to have a sensible “Artist” tag. The only problem is that it doesn’t display the Album Artist tag.

But podcasts are another story. It’s odd, since podcasts are named (I think) after the iPod. But iTunes and the iPod just don’t support them properly.

First, iTunes should give you per-feed options. Currently, you set the options globally. But the number of episodes of a show you want to keep is dependent on the type of feed, the length of the episodes and the update frequency. I might only want the last two episodes of the weekly hour-long Diggnation, but the last 10 episodes of the daily, 1 minute Ongoing History of New Music. I don’t need to waste space with 10 episodes of the large shows just so I can keep 10 episodes of the small shows.

Second, it would be nice to be able to download feeds backwards. For example, if you want to listen to a “Learn French” feed, you want to start with the earliest archived episodes and work your way forward. iTunes should be able to do that.

Third, you should be able to mark an episode to be saved or deleted on the iPod. When you sync, it currently deletes all episodes you’ve finished and keeps all episodes you haven’t. But what if I get halfway through an episode and decide I don’t want to finish it? Or I finish an episode and decide I want to keep it to show someone else? You should be able to flag it on the iPod to override the default sync options.

Finally, though this has nothing to do with Apple, but I wish more talking head podcasts were audio only. What’s the point of video? I’m just going to listen in the car anyway.