So, iTunes 4.9 came and went and despite the initial splash it created due to its built-in podcasting support everything seems to have calmed down again. For me however, the process was somewhat reversed. My first reaction was "Nice, but not really important for me personally - afterall I got Netnewswire!". But then - in conjunction with the iPod Firmware update - it began to sink in: those two updates really changed (and enhanced!) the way I use my iPod. While I used to use it soley as a fancy walkman replacement (although I never actually owned any sort of mobile music player prior to it) I now use it almost exclusively as a podcast player.

The main reason behind that is: increased convenience. There seems to be some sort of critical level of convenience that needs to be achieved before a technology really catches on (think refrigirator) and Apple has once again pulled it off. Here's how it works (for me):

I subscribe to podcasts that interest me and iTunes takes care of the rest. It deletes old episodes for me (so I won't fill up my precious 4Gb with stale stuff) and of course it downloads new ones for me and syncs them to the iPod. All I need to do is pop it into the cradle every once and a while (which I need to do anyway in order to charge it.) That's it - no extra effort beyond subscribing to feeds (literally one click) And now, whenever I'm on the go I always find myself with fresh shows.

And on the iPod firmware level things have gotten nice, as well. Now that it "knows" about podcasts it can intelligently display information such as episode number without it being cut off, as it used to. One particular nice feature is, that when I start to listen to a podcast on the desktop machine and then sync it and listen to it on the go it continues exactly at the point where I stopped listening on the desktop machine - sweet. This is also true for any podcast listened to on the iPod - when I get back to it playback continues where I last stopped. (Although, I do agree, that these features seem to have been rushed - but I think they are useful enough as they are.)

The reason why I hardly listen to non-podcast content is simply that I've got enough of podcasts to fill my travels - and let's be honest: which podcast would you really want to listen to at home? When I'm at my desk I'm in work-mode and I can't use any distractions. I'm in the zone (or try to be, anyway).  But on the train (or even on the way to the train) it's a different story. And it really can be quite trippy to walk through Berlin listening to Adam Curry walking through San Francisco and to experience the audioblend of two different cities, i.e. Adam talking to a homeless person in San Francisco while a busker is asking for food and money on the S-Bahn.