iPodderX was my first podcatcher, and I chose it because it worked, and had a brushed-metal UI. My recent problems (compounded by continuing delays for v3.0) had forced me to see what's out there. Now that 3.0 is out, it's time to give iPodderX v3 a fair shake.
iPodderX v3 by Thunderstone Media, LLC. is a commercial podcast receiver, with a brushed-metal iApp style UI. It costs $24.95 (up from 2.x's $20), and I was lucky enough to get early access. This review was made possible by that early access and reflects my experience with the release version.
Installation and Upgrade
After a quick download (3MB, up from 1.9MB for b5) I dragged & dropped for the install (expanding to 9.2MB on disk). Startup took almost a minute to load. I tested this numerous times to see if this was an initial startup issue, but each time took about a minute. Unfortunately, on the first run it didn't pick up on my history.plist (basically it downloaded some items that I had already downloaded in previous versions/betas). Despite all this, it did pick up on both both my registration and my feed list - meaning that I won't be forced to buy an upgrade or reimport my feed list. Yeah!
First Glance
The first thing you'll notice is the new interface - which looks rather bland until you start reading items. Once you subscribe to a feed and select a text item you'll see a jewel-like blue gradient header in the content area where the entry title and feed title is re-displayed in white (it's also in the list area above it). Despite the improved user interface, it isn't perfect (in my mind): 1) The icons are rather confusing at first. Dots (filled and empty) and flags? However, you begin to get used to them as a dot represents an unread item, I'm not sure about the flags though they might be useful for SmartSpace as I discuss below. 2) When a podcast item is selected in the entry area, any files are shown in the attachment area which is in the top right corner - instead of in the content area (specifically the blue gradient header). If you then click on the attachment it will automatically begin playing it (either video or audio)... or not as your preferences dictate.
iApp UI
All of the icons are a boring black and white icons (where's the color?). Though color would be nice, this does fit the iApp look and feel.
In addition to not having colorful icons, I also have another gripe with the iApp interface: sub-folders. It's one level only. No exceptions - just like iTunes and iPhoto. You can't fault iPodderX for either of these... it is just following the Apple iApp look and feel guidelines. It would be good to be able to create folders for different feed types (audio, video, text), or even folders by content type (tech, entertainment, news). Either way this is a minor issue, as I still prefer the overall iApp brushed-metal feel to the simple window Aqua look.
You'll also notice that the refresh (download) button has been moved to the top and is now square. There is a standard spinner, a text description and an progress bar to show you what's happening once a refresh is initiated. You can also initiate a global or feed specific update by right clicking any feed. This is a much needed improvement as previous versions told you very little about what was going on - and nothing in the interface about why things failed.
Help
The help file appears to be missing or empty, but there is a Flash 7 based "tour" that gives you a quick overview of adding subscriptions, and a bullet list of the main features. Oh, and it plays in the main content area - I'm guessing to prove that it supports *all media*.
Video!
It's obvious they intend on growing from a podcast aggregator to a podcast, blog and vlog aggregator - and the new UI makes this clear. Though 2.2.x supported video - I had no idea. I was using ANT, so using iPodderX as a vlog aggregator was new to me. By using iPodderX in this way, I learned that my favorite podcasts and vlogs actually had text and pictures in their feeds. Boy was I surprised to see all this extra data. Ray Slakinski (the developer) has pointed out in a other forums that iPodderX already supported video, and RSS already supports liner notes (so what's the point of using a separate mechanism to describe what's in a podcast?).
As my first test I subscribed to the best vlog - RocketBoom (go Amanda!). [Speaking of Amanda - wouldn't it be cool if she was a guest reporter on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart?!] The video was downloaded into iPodderX where it stayed. It wasn't until much later that I found the setting to publish to iTunes 4.8 (since it now supports video). However, during testing iPodderX refused to auto-publish video to iTunes - forcing me to manually right click each attachment and select "Export to iApp". This is where iPodderX locked up on me (though it did push the video into iTunes). I imagine that this will be fixed in subsequent versions.
Update: Hey, what do you know - one of my videos popped into iTunes today. Considering I tried it numerous times yesterday (by selectively updating a feed and updating all feeds), I'm not sure why it suddenly worked.
Full Screen Video
Full screen buttons are located in both the content area and the status area at the bottom of the window. Early betas didn't have this feature but with initial testing I found a larger Amanda to look even better. ;) However, for the most part, I'd prefer a double-size option from within the content area because most video content looks better at double-size then full screen. In fact lack of a resize option is what always bugged me about FireANT.
Unread Count Indicators
Much like blog aggregators, there is now an unread count indicator next to each feed (a red bubble), as well as an overall unread count indicator superimposed over the dock icon.
NewsCaster (Text-to-Speech)
Text blogs can now be imported into iTunes using a slick text to speech conversion option in the feed settings - though this isn't surprising given that text-to-speech is built into Tiger (and Panther?). I'm not saying that this will replace Andy McCaskeys' SlashdotReview - but it will work for some people, especially if there is no other option.
.MAC Backup / Restore
Another new feature is the ability to back up your feed list (and maybe history?) to .MAC (assuming you have a .MAC account). This wasn't working in b5, the release candidate or in the release version that I could tell.
SmartSpace
This will no doubt be the most talked about feature, and certainly I may grow to depend on it. Because many of us have watched podcasts eat up our hard drive space with the content explosion in the past few months, this is a way to remove all those files that you've either listened to or are very old, and likely won't be listened too. The entire process is configurable by setting the amount of disk space that you want to use. (This may be where Flags come into play by forcing content to stay even after it's been viewed.) However, this will *not* remove files that have been pushed into iTunes or iPhoto - which in my case is practically all of my feeds. This is a real issue that hopefully will be addressed in future versions. For now, I'll leave this feature turned off.
Playlist Builder
I haven't used this yet, but in the Wizards of Technology podcast it was described as a way to control what content gets pushed into iTunes. This could be useful with large aggregated podcast feeds such as the "Mother of All Podcast feeds" feed - allowing you to skip all the crap, and to push into iTunes your personal "Grab Bag" playlist of only those podcasts you really find interesting.
Conclusion [4/5 stars, good]
Though the UI has the same advantages (or disadvantages if you prefer) of an iApp, there are plenty of fresh ideas that make this iPodderX unique as an all-media aggregator. For example, I can imagine a flickr feed that servs up fresh content to a screensaver. Video and photo aggregation are the killer features in my eye, but many more will be pleased with SmartSpace and the PlayList builder. However, it does have flaws. During testing, iPodderX locked up on me when I exported a video to iTunes manually in the middle of a full refresh. I also found that the auto-export of videos to iTunes is broken. Additionally, the extremely long load time leaves me baffled (the last release candidate didn't have this problem). I'm guessing we will see a bug patch and stability release soon, but so far I've been satisfied and have returned to using iPodderX as my full-time podcatcher. I'm still not sure I'm ready for an all media aggregator (considering my dependance on NewsGator), but this release so far appears to have the juice to push the other aggregators out of the running (certainly ANT has already been replaced on my machine).
Server Side Sync - the Next Killer Feature
NewsGator's sync API integration is what I'd really like to see. I've sent both NewsGator and Thunderstone my suggestion that they work together (or have NewsGator buy Thunderstone like they recently did with Nick Bradbury's FeedDemon for Windows): allowing NewsGator to get a Mac client, and Thunderstone to get a server-side sync option for multi-machine aggregation. As I read many text feeds at work, it's counter-productive for me to re-read them at home. However if iPodderX integrated with NewsGator, than re-reading entries wouldn't be necessary as they would already be marked read in iPodderX. To me integration would be a win-win for NewsGator and Thunderstone! A few moments ago Greg Reinacker, NewsGator's CTO sent me a note saying he would love to see further use of his company's sync API (which makes sense), though he said nothing about buying them. I imagine Ray Slakinski (an iPodderX developer) has been so busy building to this release that he hasn't had time to respond (let alone consider another feature). Hopefully he'll give me a heads up when he gets a chance - or better yet, he'll talk directly with Greg.
iTunes Competition
With the latest news that iTunes 4.9 will support podcatching... it will be interesting to see how many podcatchers die. I think Thunderstone has positioned iPodderX perfectly by expanding the scope to all media. If they hadn't, iTunes 4.9 would have been a showstopper. As it stands, if iTunes implements podcatching effectively - iPodderX will most likely survive... but perhaps as a FireANT replacement and not an audio podcatcher. However, if server-side sync (NewsGator) support is not forthcoming... I can't see this as replacing a standard text-blog aggregator.
posted @ Thursday, May 26, 2005 10:34 PM