Comments on: Over-the-air podcast downloads in 2.2 update?

By: Clay McIlrath

Clay McIlrath — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 18:12:45 +0000

I agree the cap makes it kind of pointless.. there aren’t very many podcasts that i bother with that are less than a half hour or hour and both are easily reaching that cap..

Does ATT offer a plan that doesn’t have a cap.. it was my understanding that you get it all unlimited with a standard iPhone data plan.. might be some fine print that i didn’t read.

By: mark

mark — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:36:01 +0000

what about wifi, would there be limits over wifi?

By: Haig

Haig — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 06:57:15 +0000

10 mb! 10 measly mb! Come on how many podcasts are even in that category? It’s a worthless feature if you ask me unless they widen the cap. Until they do, I’ll continue to get my German music fix via Radio Goethe from my beautiful new MacBook pro (and no the screen does NOT suck!)

By: Bobby

Bobby — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:37:14 +0000

This is a non issue really. any self respeting geek has their iphone jailbroken and a nice copy of podcaster. That att free wifi at starbucks and other locales will sure come in handy…

By: Russ Turley

Russ Turley — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:47:54 +0000

I guess it will be nice to subscribe to podcasts on my iPhone, but I already download larger files than 10MB on the iPhone. I listened to the latest TWiT podcast on my iPhone this week by clicking on the download link from the web site.

The 10MB limit sounds a bit like the ROCKR phone 100 song limit. Not a space limitation, just a hard coded 100 song limit for no good reason.

Even though Apple pulls this crap from time to time, it’s still the best phone I’ve ever had. Excuse me while I bend over. “Thank you sir may I have another!”

By: J Foderaro

J Foderaro — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 21:33:59 +0000

Since you can now get free WiFi from AT&T at so many places it shouldn’t be hard to find a spot to download the big podcasts.

By: jamesus

jamesus — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:51:36 +0000

There *might* be a way to get around this…

http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=2128

I haven’t tried this yet using ITM on the iPhone, but in concept this should allow us to download podcasts over 10 MB.

By: James

James — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:10:56 +0000

I don’t buy the 10MB download cap. A good portion of tracks on the iTunes Music Store are over that limit, and they can still be downloaded over a cellular network.

In any case, what would stop Apple from transparently chunking podcast episodes into 10MB packages and then sticking them back together after download?

I’m assuming that (given the cap is in place) they already do something like this for YouTube videos, otherwise the cap would make the YouTube app useless.

James

By: Mike Lerch

Mike Lerch — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:02:11 +0000

I don’t have an iPhone and have a question: can you do over-the-air iTunes purchases yet? I’m thinking that downloading a single track or a couple would be under 10MB, but whole albums would definitely be a lot more.

Definitely: 10MB cap on podcast downloads is just silly.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:47:28 +0000

Who needs Podcaster. An alternative that works for me is to use iPhone’s Safari. (1) Open the RSS feed thru the browser (bookmark it) (2) select desired episode and your done! No downloading or deleting file later, just streaming.

By: Charlie Styr

Charlie Styr — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:22:34 +0000

The caps are annoying, particularly when you can simply click on MP4 videos, such as those on Revision3′s site, and watch whole podcasts uninteruppted which are well over 10mb.

Maybe if they do allow a higher cap, then this would be fantastic. Perfect for when you are away from home: in fact that would be really quite incredible. Now, why not songs?!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:19:00 +0000

I agree totally this is crap (if true). I can stream Pandora for 8 hours and I’m pretty sure I use more than 10mb per session with it when I do. So what could possibly be the difference between that and what I do with Pandora. Are podcasters gonna have to break their shows up into chunks so that people like me who don’t have a hot spot around me at work can download? I doubt it very much. This is dumb very dumb.

By: A. Salim

A. Salim — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:12:48 +0000

I’m looking forward to this. The 10MB limit sucks, but I think it makes sense since they have the same limit on downloads over 3G in the iTunes store.

Now, I want copy/paste.

By: OHDOCTAH

OHDOCTAH — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:12:30 +0000

I really don’t like Apple they won’t fix the basic needs of the Iphone/smart phone like copy paste and MMS. Everything else they do is still tarnished by not doing the basics every other phone can. iwanttosmackstevejobsintheface.com

By: Veetrag

Veetrag — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:06:33 +0000

Great news! I have been waiting for this feature for long.

Can you tell what was the logic behind not putting it before?

By: Jason W.

Jason W. — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:05:06 +0000

Well, there’s also a (confirmed?) rumor at Gizmodo that says that they’ll allow 3G tethering to the iPhone. So you may be able to get around the 10MB limit by using your computer that’s getting its internet connection from the iPhone.

http://gizmodo.com/5078562/confirmed-3g-tethering-coming-to-iphone

By: Kato

Kato — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:04:34 +0000

I think this is a nice feature to add, particularly if they implement the ability to autodownload (just like in iTunes) though I somehow suspect they won’t (since that would be too convenient).

I have run into instances where I’ve wanted to download a podcast for the evening commute home or what not, especially if I’m caught up on a daily podcast like BOL. But, as you mention, if there is a cap on download then I don’t see how it will be very useful (since, unless I’m at home, I’m always on Edge).

By: Todd

Todd — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:02:18 +0000

Kinda of evil of Apple to be like that, kill off Podcaster, then put theirs up. But I suspect it’s AT&T being evil, trying to get people to go over their cap and pay a bunch of fees.

All the more reason to switch to an Android powered phone.

By: slonkak

slonkak — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:01:51 +0000

AT&T definitely didn’t do their homework before allowing a device such as the iPhone on their 3G network. The 10MB cap is horrible. Any cap is horrible. The over-the-air podcast download feature will be 100% useless for me, as there are no podcasts I watch that are under 10MB. Add in the fact that the 2.1 firmware made ALL “push” features on my phone stop working and they might as well not even publish this feature.

By: Starman

Starman — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:59:00 +0000

To date, there has only been one time I wanted to listen to a podcast over the air with my iPhone. With a 20+ minute commute home, forgetting a podcast isn’t that drastic to me, but I can see long commutes being a problem.