Here at the "D" conference, Steve Jobs announced the impending addition of a podcast aggregation feature to the Itunes music store -- to go live in "the next 60 days." The idea is, you won't need to use a separate application to make sure the podcast content you want will sync with your Ipod -- you can do it all through your Itunes interface.
"Podcasting is like Wayne's World for radio," Jobs said, and the new ITunes functionality is "sort of like Tivo for your radio for your Ipod."
Jobs promised that the ITunes podcasting platform would be open to all comers; there'd be a simple automated system to get your content included, he said. But it wasn't clear from his demo -- which featured material from professional outlets like public radio stations -- just how grassroots-y the Apple model is going to be.
There was a moment of amusement when Jobs clicked on an Adam Curry podcast that began with Curry complaining, "I've had to restart the show 3 times, my Mac has been acting up like a motherfucker." Jobs just smiled. You have to figure that he knew just what he was playing; it was funny nonetheless.
Some other notable bits from Jobs' Q&A with Mossberg and Swisher:
He defended Apple's suit against Web sites that had published confidential info about forthcoming Apple products, saying that the law was clear here, and the First Amendment ends where breaking the law (in revealing confidential trade secrets) begins.
Pressed to talk about whether Apple would pursue a video Ipod product, he talked about the hardware limits in delivering good video via small devices: "Headphones are a miraculous thing. There's no such thing as headphones for video."
The much rumored Ipod phone? "It's a hard problem." Swisher countered, "You're a smart guy." Mossberg asked why it wasn't reasonable to assume that all portable-device functions -- music, email, voice -- would converge on the cellphone. Jobs' cagy reply: "I thoroughly understand the question, and I'll have to leave the answer to our actions inthe future."
Finally, it seems there's a betting pool inside Apple about how soon Yahoo will raise the prices on their (rock-bottom-priced) new music-rental service ($5 a month when you buy a year). Jobs' bet? Five months.
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