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    Profile: iTunes 4.9

    Michael Arrington

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    J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995) and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich... → Learn More

    Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
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    Service: iTunes 4.9 with Podcasts

    Launched: June 28, 2005

    What is it?

    As was widely anticipated, iTunes 4.9 launched today (22 mb download) for both windows and mac platforms. It includes significant new and enhanced features, including, most notably, support for podcasts.

    Michael Gartenberg writes a wonderful post on iTunes 4.9: “I can download one, subscribe to a feed, keep a set number on my device and have them automatically deleted after I’ve listened. In short Apple’s done for podcasting the same thing they did with RSS in Tiger. They made it usable by the mass markets and at the same time, they have the what is going to be the most widely used podcasting client on both Macintosh and Windows and that will make their directory the one to be listed in. But there’s more. Apple also tweaked the firmware in all the iPod so there’s no a separate podcasting category, which means podcasts won’t get shuffled with my music and will support bookmarks so I can listen to podcasts and resume where I left off. So it’s not just the premier podcast PC client, the iPod itself is now first among devices with integrated podcast support. Combine this news and the new pricing and the integration of iPod photo into the core white iPod line and you see why Apple remains the player to beat in this space.”

    The software is excellent and includes notable features:

    - all podcasts are currently free
    - downloaded podcasts show up in a single iTunes folder called “podcasts”
    - easy search/find
    - one click subscription to a new podcast
    - option to have all future podcasts download automatically
    - Tools for submitting publisher podcasts on iTunes
    - stays separate in iPod, so not shuffled with music
    - autodelete after listening (awesome!)

    Screen shots:

    Links:

    Fred Wilson
    JKontheRun
    GMSV
    Michael Gartenberg
    43 Folders
    Dave Winer
    Om Malik
    Technical specifications for publishing podcasts on itunes
    Barnako.com
    Barnako.com #2
    RSS Compendium Blog
    Steve Gillmor
    Chris Pirillo
    Charlene Li/Ted Schadler
    fusion94.org

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