The end of iTunes on the iPhone? Maybe.

What could bring about the end of iTunes on the iPhone, at least for podcast listening?  Perhaps the recently released application Pocket Casts.  One of iTunes downfalls on the iPhone is that it provides no way to wirelessly and automatically keep podcasts up to date.   iTunes software on the Mac and PC works well at updating and syncing.  However, if you forget or don’t have time to plug in the sync cable, you are left to piecemeal download podcasts in iTunes on the iPhone, over WiFi, unless the podcast is smaller than 20MB (almost none listen to are).  There is no way to automatically and over the air (no sync cable) update all of your podcasts on your iPhone.

Enter Pocket Casts.  Not the first application to try this on the iPhone, but the best I have seen so far in terms of functionality and user experience.  Pocket Casts has a comfortable feel that seems to fit on the iPhone, is intuitive and allows you to import your podcasts already in iTunes.  Best of all Pocket Cast allows you to update all of your podcast (over Wifi or 3G or 4G for that matter) with a couple of button presses, eliminating the need to plug into your PC or Mac.  

I was also pleasantly surprised at how many of the podcasts to which I listen are already in the Pocket Casts library.  While I can a podcast by entering a URL in Pocket Casts, it is nice to be able to simple browse or search and then select.

Pocket Casts, a Shifty Jelly software product, is $.99 in the iTunes App store.  Check out some screenshots below.

 

What are some other good podcasting applications you have used either on iOS or other platorms?

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."