Follow Up on Macs Only!’s Podcast Proposal

The replies to last week's proposal to start up a MO!-Take Out podcast were mixed. The majority, but not a vast one, of the replies encouraged us to give it a shot. However, a surprising number said to forget it because most podcasts are "junk." We tend to agree but there are some that are quite good and they will only get better with time, especially when someone figures out how to make real money with them.

There are three types of good podcasts: those that are informative, those that are entertaining and those that are both. In the Mac world, we like the podcasts of Scott Sheppard’s Inside Mac Radio (IMR) and Shawn King’s occasional Your Mac Life (YML) podcast. They are both DJ-like, entertaining and informative. Dave Hamilton and John Braun’s initial TMO-To-Go podcast is one of the best of those that are simply informative—two experts talking Mac. As an aside, we especially enjoy Gene Steinberg’s informative The Tech Night Owl LIVE. Unfortunately, while Gene’s weekly webcasts are available as a stream from an online archive, he has yet to issue any as a podcast.

The best thing about podcasts is that you can listen to them with your iPod at any time you like. We loaded our iPod mini with 10 hours of the recent IMR, YML and TMO podcasts before our recent trip which involved some 30 hours in the air roundtrip. We listened to them interspersed between 12 hours of movies and the remaining hours of our music. We like being able to do our own audio programming. Of course, there are podcasts on subjects other than Mac. Just use iPodder X or any other podcast aggregator to keep up on them.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently announced that Apple will be providing access to podcasts with iTunes 4.9. No one outside Apple’s inner circle knows exactly what that means just yet but we will find out real soon. Apple also announced that it has entered into a deal with Sundance to provide podcasts via iTunes Music Store. Sundance is known for video syndication rather than audio so it’s hard to guess how that deal will shape podcasting. But one of the big questions is how money will be made from podcasting and maybe the Apple-Sundance deal will provide an answer.

In our own case, we didn’t get many suggestions on content or format. But we believe we have developed an interesting formula, not another DJ-style mixture of jokes and interviews or just two guys just talking Mac. The remaining issue for us, and a big one for most podcasters for that matter, is securing the bandwidth required for a reasonable download speed and cost. Podcast files easily run 10’s of MB in size. We are looking into several options but will probably wait until Apple releases iTunes 4.9 to see if Apple provides a feasible option. [Bill Fox]