So what of Macworld and its impact on yours truly?

The Intel Macs look good. Their release comes much sooner than originally expected and it’s going to take me a little while to build my apps as universal binaries so they’ll run natively on Intel. I never got the Developer Transition Kit because by the time I was ready to order the web was thick with rumours of these real Macs coming and I don’t have money to throw around on computers I have to give back. (Update: Apple is running the DTK Exchange program now – damn!)

So it’s going to take me as long as it takes to get an Intel Mac, build my apps and test them all out. Feeder also uses third-party frameworks for functionality such as FTP, so they could cause some problems, but I don’t really expect any. The point is that I’m committed to doing this ASAP.

Then there is iLife ’06, which has lots of new stuff to do with podcasting. Garageband has tons of neat features to make putting a show together easy and to help with audio production. It can also create enhanced podcasts (i.e. in AAC format with chapters) and post them to .Mac with iWeb. iMovie does much the same with video podcasts. All this will be great for beginners, but as I see it, there are plenty of limitations.

I’m just going on what’s on the web but it seems that while Garageband can record and encode AACs, for MP3s you’ll still need to encode your recording with iTunes (or something like LAME) and add the tags, artwork, etc. Most podcasts are in MP3 format, because AACs only really play in iTunes and on iPods. Fine if you’re sure your listeners have these, but MP3 is truly ubiquitous.

Secondly, iWeb’s blog is lacking in interactivity. This is a major part of podcasting (and indeed, blogging), where listeners feed back through comments, etc. Not everyone uses Garageband either, preferring more professional apps such as SoundTrack Pro, Peak, etc, although maybe these features will change that.

So, I think iLife ’06 provides an excellent way to get started in podcasting, but for those who want a proper blog, already have their own web site and / or existing podcast then they will still need tools to help them with their podcasts and that’s where apps like Feeder and Podcast Maker come in. Same goes for RapidWeaver and Sandvox with respect to iWeb – RealMac Software and Karelia can go places Apple won’t go, because Apple relies on integrating its own products with .Mac to make things as simple as possible.

Now, which Intel Mac should I buy?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 at 1:13 am by Steve Harris and is filed under Feeder, Mac Software, Podcasting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.