mayneack 5 years ago

> In the first years of podcasts, a decade or so ago, technological limitations militated against their widespread adoption: they had to be laboriously transferred from a computer to an MP3 player or an iPod.

I started listening to podcasts back around 2008 I'd guess. I don't remember exactly what the process was for getting them onto my iPod, but I don't remember it being laborious.

I wasn't exactly a geek either. This was from a shared family computer and I was pretty clueless about computers back then.

  • panzagl 5 years ago

    You could subscribe to them in iTunes at least as far back as 2004, they'd sync automatically when you attached your iPod. Hardly any extra effort as you'd probably plug in every couple days or so anyway.

  • tropdrop 5 years ago

    How laborious likely depended on your OS. iTunes on a Mac = extremely easy (just sync it like all your other music).

    But I remember getting some MP3s to show up on my MP3 player using a Desktop would sometimes be stressful (some files played nice, some didn't..) And when I got an iPod, iTunes and Windows would occasionally attack each other outright

  • skinnyarms 5 years ago

    That is about when I was started as well, and it while it seems annoying compared to today's standards I remember it being about par for the course.

    The other audio I listened to at the time was either downloaded/burned or purchased. I even bought a few audiobooks, which came on multiple discs. How barbaric!

  • alphabettsy 5 years ago

    For me it was just subscribe on iTunes, my PC automatically downloaded new episodes and since I charged and synced my iPod using my computer daily I was usually up to date.

  • Mattasher 5 years ago

    I had a Rio Carbon. Procedure was: Download podcasts to your computer, drag and drop the files to the player just like with any external drive.

    I thought the Rio was a great little player it's a shame Apple wiped the field of competition so quickly.

  • the_mitsuhiko 5 years ago

    I wouldn't call the process laborious but it was manual and that meant that you had to hook it up regularly to get new content. I definitely started listening to way more podcasts after I got a good data plan and an iphone.

    • Wowfunhappy 5 years ago

      But you need to charge your iPod anyway, and iPod batteries were small enough they could be reasonably charged via a computer rather than a power brick.

  • piranha 5 years ago

    Decade is a little bit too late, I’d say first years are about 15 years ago.

    • Angostura 5 years ago

      Interesting BBC programme on 'Podcasting the 1st 10 years' here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03zdkk5

      Suggests that Ben Hammersley coined the term in 2004

      • sevensor 5 years ago

        I remember two of my friends producing a short-lived "internet radio show" around 2000. Nobody had an iPod yet, so it definitely wasn't called a podcast until after that.

  • insertnickname 5 years ago

    I still do that. I plug in my MP3 player with USB, download the audio files I want to listen to, and then copy them to the MP3 player's file system. I don't see the problem.

    • jobigoud 5 years ago

      There is no problem but it's more convenient to just tap one button and have the download happen directly on the listening device.

xte 5 years ago

Well... We start to have non-written mass communication media for the first time of our human history, so we have to develop antibodies for those "new media". We learn (at least in medium, in the past before actual neo-analphabetic era) to distinguish written propaganda from news, science from fiction. We have to learn in medium also for nice, barkers, audio/video contents.

For me however podcasts are good things, a natural evolution of TV, a potentially free and "distributed/decentralized" youtube&c alternatives since they can be distributed by individual subjects with well-known and open standard RSS/Atom, users can listen in streaming but can also download for offline usage and personal archives. So well, I like them, and as any instruments I know they can be used for good, bag, etc.

SonicSoul 5 years ago

Off point but holy crap! Who designed that main graphic up top? It’s superb! Pure perfection. I want to subscribe to your newsletter

billfruit 5 years ago

"That changed in 2014, when Apple added a Podcast app to the iPhone, making subscribing almost effortless.".

I do think, it wasn't necessary to plug that in the article, pod casts being popular without Apple having to release an app for it.

And whole article does seem like the old media('Gatekeepers are good' is a common theme at New Yorker) whining against the new.

  • the_watcher 5 years ago

    > And whole article does seem like the old media('Gatekeepers are good' is a common theme at New Yorker) whining against the new.

    I got the same vibe. The "manipulative" implications the author is making could be applied towards print journalism just as accurately.

    • HenryTheHorse 5 years ago

      > The "manipulative" implications the author is making could be applied towards print journalism just as accurately.

      Yes - and it does apply. Editorial control and fact-checking are the two MOST vital aspects of good journalism. Any idiot - I mean, any Fox news anchor - can make up facts and report them.

  • danso 5 years ago

    A good app can greatly change behavior. I was an avid listener of This American Life, partly to their decent iOS app, bu quickly fell out of the habit when it became unmaintained. I still listened to podcasts by going to webpages manually. But I only recently tried using the Podcast app and it has had a huge change on how much more I listen to podcasts.

  • technofiend 5 years ago

    Although I happen to agree with you that podcasts were successful before being added to itunes, Apple's adoption of something seems to validate it for the mainstream. Google had tap-to-pay years before it showed up on Apple devices. Now that it's been made ubiquitous by inclusion on recent Apple phones many point-of-sale terminals read 'Apple Pay' and I've had more than one cashier question whether it works with non-Apple devices. LOL.

  • HenryTheHorse 5 years ago

    > podcasts being popular without Apple having to release an app for it.

    Apple was arguably the MOST important distributor of podcasts, given that they had millions of devices (including iPods - you could download/sync podcasts onto the classic iPod) in the market.

    I am also not picking up the "old media is better" vibe here. Non-fiction/investigative podcasts need quality control, editorial control etc. It's hardly a gatekeeper thing.