How podcasts work with iPhone 2.2 and iTunes

Selecting "get more episodes" launches mobile iTunes and usually brings up the podcast in question. This doesn’t always work if the naming of the podcast in the iTunes subscription differs from that on cloud iTunes (the Store), or if the podcast is one of the three or four that isn’t listed in the cloud iTunes podcast directory.

I hadn’t realized (because I hadn’t tried the “Get more episodes…” button, but only subscribed to a new podcast straight from the iTunes Store) that the iPhone 2.2 had no concept of what the podcast’s feed URL was, and was only sending you to a title-based search on the Store.

And I disagree with the writer’s assertion that it only affects “the three or four” that aren’t listed in the iTunes Store. The point of podcasting and RSS is that it’s free, as in beer and speech; so far, iTunes was a decent RSS aggregator, allowing you to subscribe to any podcast feed — yet now Apple is relegating unlisted podcasts to second-rate citizenship, punishing their subsribers who want to listen to them on an iPhone or iPod touch.

Some people may have a good reason not to submit their podcast to the iTunes Store (not everyone is trying to get thousands of listeners, after all); besides, some podcasts can actually be rejected for offering “questionable content.” I can’t see any good reason for those to be excluded from over-the-air downloading, when iTunes could just as simply give the feed URLs to your device.

That’s monopoly abuse of the worst kind, that doesn’t benefit Apple in any way but is just born of the developers’ laziness.

Oh, and the Ars article also points out an interestingly related missing feature of the iPod application: it only displays podcasts for which you already have episodes on your iPhone. If, like me, you delete episodes immediately after listening to them, your device won’t allow you to download new shows from those “empty” podcasts; if you’re away from your computer, you’ll have to remember the podcast’s name and search for it in the Store.