It’s been a year since Apple added a podcast-downloading service to iTunes, its popular music player. And in that time, the company has managed to help bring the technology into the mainstream, to dominate the podcast-distribution market, and to face a bit of a backlash from frustrated early adopters.
Apple’s involvement in podcasting may have convinced colleges that the technology was worth a shot. But Leo Laporte, the host of a popular podcast called “This Week in Tech,” told Wired News that iTunes’s service has driven smaller (and, arguably, more innovative) podcasting aggregators out of business. “It puts everything in Apple’s hands. That’s a historically bad thing for any technology,” Mr. Laporte said. “Podcasting was not created by iTunes. It is not reliant on iTunes.” —Brock Read
