One component I can't find is RSS feeds for the podcasting directory. Right now there is no way that I can see to find new podcasts as they come online. My own podcast was apparently entered by someone, but is not visible in the directory yet. And Apple's RSS Generator doesn't have podcasting listed yet, either. If anyone else knows that there are and where they are, please let me know.

I don't find it really that friendly. I can't really add custom URLs to the feed. Searching isn't exactly the most intuitive. Show notes? I haven't seen much with that yet. I don't know if BitTorrent is supported and if it is, does it support upload and download.

They need to put out some information for us geeks. This is a large step forward, but I am sure that most power-users will stick to iPodder or iPodderX or the like.

I will be trying it out for a while to see how I like it and how it works with my non-iPod MP3 player, once I do, I will post my reaction to it on my blog.

Well, here's what I think. First it's sure nice to see that thier list isn't the same old podcast alley top ten we have shoved down our throats, it gives those of us with less audiance the same chance to be heard as the old school podcasts that have their audiance.

I agree that the podcasts should have been brought in with the ID3 tags and graphics we set up, heck, they don't even have my name on it, they call me unknown. :-)

The ability to subscribe to feeds and have them downloaded with the options of how many, deleteing the old ones, or heard ones, and where to place the downloads and when to check and when to sync with your iPod is very slick, I am happy with the way iTunes goes and gets the feeds and moves them to the podcast folder and then to the podcast folder in my iPod.

This is a major step for podcasting, something I expected from Microsoft already, but instead we got Longhorn RSS. I agree it's not perfect, but boy does it place the term podcast in front of Millions of users that had no idea what podcasting was.

Also, I would have liked to see a method for iTunes to import your OPML files. For you Mac users, Hugo Schotman has a fast and dirty AppleScript to do just that, tested with NetNewswire and iPodderX. You can find it here. http://log.hugoschotman.com/hugo/2005/06/opml2itunes_app.html

Well the interface is clunky. But immediately I find myself doing one thing with it. You can double click any podcast and you get instant streaming just like you would get track samples within itunes. Then if I like it I can just click subscribe. I don't like how I cannot control the play list the casts go into. I have one podcast smartlist with play count =0 selected. This way I know exactly what is left to listen to.

Here's a link at Doug's Applescripts for iTunes for the specs to feed podcasts from the iTunes Music Store

I used iTunes 4.9 for a few days, but I have gone back to iPodderX as of tonight. I got tired of some of the same issues that were mentioned here and by Todd. The fact that iTunes syncs podcasts to the iPod in reverse chronological order and you have to listen to them from most recent to oldest was one of the biggest issues that has forced me to return to iPodderX. It is great that Apple has introduced podcasting to the masses, but iTunes is not for power-user consumption at this point.