iPodder 2.0 for OS X

iPodder is usable, but needs a bit of polish to make it more friendly. People who place function over form should be pleased, while those form over function types might need to play with it for a bit before feeling comfortable.

I’m in a situation I’ve never been in before network-wise. I daily fast network connection, but it’s not in my home. This means I am not always connected, but when I am, I can download big things fairly quickly. I’m a news-junky, reading several news sites on a daily basis, or at least I did when I was connected for more than a few hours a day.

Because I can’t just sit and browse my news all day, I started looking at other options to get my fix. I’ve made some use of RSS feeds (which were helpfull), but it wasn’t satisfying. In comes ‘Podcasting’.

Podcasting reduces to downloading of talk/music shows to play on the computer or other digital audio player. Podcasting makes managing these shows easier by the publishers providing RSS feeds with audio included. When new shows are available the podcasting software downloads it and puts it on your iPod (or other device). iPodder was the most recommended open source podcasting software, and so it’s the first one that I’m trying.

Functionality

iPodder takes about 4 seconds to launch (see the main window) and annother second or two to load all my feeds. When changing programs iPodder seemed to take longer to respond whether comming to the front when switching to it, or when selecting annother program.

Downloading programs was very quick due to the use of bittorrent (and a fast connection). As new shows were downloaded, they were added to iTunes in a playlist with the feeds title. Removing shows was a little confusing. I couldn’t tell if I needed to do the delete from iTunes, from iPodder, or in the Finder. Running delete in iPodder *does* remove the song from iTunes, but the playlist remains.

While this is probably not an iPodder problem, I didn’t like that my Podcasts didn’t all have some sort of consistency in either their names or their ID3 tags. Because of this lack of consistency, I ended up with talk shows in my music playlists, and no single ‘podcasts’ playlist.

Interface

iPodder took about 15 minutes to get the hang of without reading any documentation. The icons make their functions obviously enough that text isn’t needed, the four tabs are slightly confusing however. The program is one that seems to need as much screen space as possible even though the scroll bars work just fine. Smaller fonts might help aliviate this feeling.

The Downloads interface is fairly logical. The only complaint I have is why things that have already been downloaded still show up after several launches and a reboot. It seems to me that removal of downloaded material (from the list, not from the HD) is a manual process�slightly annoying, but not too bad.

The Subscriptions tab makes a lot of sense and looks good. The only confusing thing was why the sync button (green circle arrows) wasn’t always enabled. A nice improvement would be to make moving the columns (Name, State, MB, Location) arround.

The Podcast directory is a handy tab, but seems like it’s slightly out of place. It wasn’t immediatly obvious that I wasn’t already signed up for all the feeds on this page. It also takes up the least space of any of the tabs making the window feel very empty if you’ve maximized the window. It could probably be joined with the Subscriptions tab somehow to make this more clear.

The Cleanup tab is my least favorite. To delete shows, you need to select the feed it belongs to, then select the shows from that feed, and then delete it. I’d prefer if there were some sort of time-to-live variable so that shows stayed on the computer for x days then were automaticly removed, or each time a new show in a feed is detected, the older show is removed.

Other notes about iPodder

Python crashed twice while using iPodder, one time freezing the system. The preferences window is in the ‘File’ menu instead of in the iPodder menu even though there’s a menu option in the iPodder menu. When I enabled the ‘Log’ tab, then tried to disable it, it wouldn’t disappear with the checkbox checked or unchecked.

Final Comments

While most of my comments on iPooder have been on the negative side, it is a good program. It works, it’s mostly intuitive, and it’s Free. The fact that it’s open source makes me fairly confident that any problems with it will be resolved in time. With iTune’s 4.9 supposedly supporting Podcasts, we’ll see if iPodder and the likes are needed in a few months, but for now, it’s a good choice.