Well, I'm not going to defend iTunes; however, Apple released a dedicated podcast client only the other day, so they'll presumably remove that function from iTunes.

If you're using Android, I'd recommend Google Listen in conjunction with Google Reader for podcasts, if you're not using it already.

Thanks, S-P. Oh look, I have a hyphen too.

Poor G-Man.

I am not sure I have much to add other than to say, that after a 20 year absence and scoffing at the beatification of Jobs, we are almost completely appled-up. I had an I-pod anyway and now me and the wife have both got reconditioned I-phone 3s, she an I-pad and me a Macbook Air.

We are both just bog-standard users and love all of them. The phones aren't perfect as phones but they are better than a lot I have used, cheaper than the shitty PAYG handsets that I had and, obviously, do shitloads more. I got the Macbook cheaper with my student discount and it got me through the last 6 months of my degree which is a pretty good workout of any laptop. I didn't fancy the I-pad because of all the academic stuff I had to do but the wife loves it.

The Google Nexus looks interesting.

Thanks for the heads up - hadn't heard that. I'll check it out when I get home. But, judging from the brief review at Engadget, it's not entirely clear whether you can manage (and automatically update) subscriptions from within the app, so that they sync properly, which is my main complaint with the iPod right now. There's no subscription management at all right now(pre-app), and when you manually download new episodes from your device it screws things up royally. From the comments to that review, it seems like the app's functionality is rather patchy.

ursus arctos wrote:

Even if it's only quite good, £159/$200 is a steal. Can't believe they're making any profits off that. The two Nexus phones I've played with (HTC and Samsung) were both pretty good.

If Apple can corner the high-end tablet and phone market and Google the low-end, you have to wonder where that leaves Microsoft, whose only potential killer feature is integration with Office.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you here but I am thinking you do have subscription management via iTunes at the moment?

I have some set to check for downloads at differing intervals, sync to devices via wi-fi when plugged in and delete when played. I only ever have to visit the Podcasts bit within iTunes if I want to change what I sync or add new ones.

The new app doesn't really do anything different from the Podcast option within Music app on iOS. It's bit prettier I guess, that's about it. Slightly confusing is that your podcasts can still be accessed from the old place too, meaning I accidentally started one playing in 2 locations when fiddling around.

Hmm, not sure here. Amazon lose money on each Fire they sell but know they will make it back via content purchasing. Google put out a much better specced piece of kit at similar prices, they will lose a heap on them, but how are they going to recoup their losses by comparison?

I think it's a better than even chance that Apple will launch a smaller iPad this year to compete in this sector too.

They are massively increasing the volume of content available through Google Play (née Android Market). More detail in the link I posted.

Speaking of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (I know you weren't, but I was): mashable.com/2012/06/27/preliminary-inju...ung-galaxy-tab-10-1/

Google Play is still a punt though and not much of a revenue driver for them at the moment. It won't have the breadth of content nor the customer brand recognition and loyalty that Amazon and Apple have with their respective content ecosystems.

Google have the cash to burn until it does work though, don't they?

Kind of, although the corporate culture has changed there a bit in recent times. There has been a rationalisation of a lot of their grand projects, binned because they could not be seen to be ever financially viable.

I'm curious how people will respond to them as a hardware manufacturer too, I think there can be a bit of a disconnect in the minds of a lot of people when a software company does hardware.

People have been the same about Surface of course, though Microsoft did have some grounding with Zune and X-Box and Amazon had popular Kindle hardware which made selling the idea of the Fire a lot easier.

I like the look of Apple stuff, but don't buy it because of the price. I've got a Samsung/Android phone, which seems to do pretty much what an Iphone would do, but for half the price. I've not considered the Ipad because of the price, but if the Nexus is similar, for half the price, I'd be tempted.

I have no loyalty to any brand (Apple, Amazon whatever) but I do have a degree of loyalty to my wallet and I suspect I'm not alone in that.

The new app lets you (in theory - we'll see how it holds up) handle subscriptions away from iTunes. Previously, subscriptions didn't exist as such on your iPod. They were basically a specialised type of album. The only way to update them when, say, on holiday, was to go to an individual podcast and press "get more episodes", hoping that a new one would be available. Even worse, having done so and returned home, iTunes wouldn't recognise those episodes as being part of the subscription, would download duplicates, and make it difficult to get rid of the superfluous one. I'm hoping the app solves that problem. It's certainly supposed to, from what I've read, but a lot of the reviews have been pointing out bugs/flaws.

Oh, and since the new Nexus tablet has been mentioned on this thread, does anyone have any thoughts on what Google is playing at with the Nexus Q media streamer thing? It seems more like the sort of thing that would be an app on a Smart TV than a $300 standalone device. It can't even do DLNA streaming from your PC/NAS.

I took delivery of a new iPad2 last week, I've hardly had a chance to use it, but am hoping that'll change this weekend. As a general observation - they're quite spectacular feats of technology, that's true of tablets and phones in general, but it really struck me with this.

I downloaded a few apps, but, again, haven't used them much. The note-taking app I've started to use (think it's writeroom) doesn't have many functions for formating, basic things I was expecting like using standard features, ctrl-b for bold and such like. I'm wondering if this is because it's free (I think it was free, or otherwise less than £2) and if other apps have a bit more functionality?

Given that tablets don't have keyboards (Surface notwithstanding), expecting them to have keyboard shortcuts is a bit odd.

But, yes, generally speaking iOS/Android apps are going to be more simplistic than a desktop equivalent unless they're very specialised and straightforward. There's no AutoCAD or InDesign for iPad. Because you'd be insane to try to use a tablet for that sort of thing.

Ivan Pykthallsev wrote:

The free (or very cheap) writing applications are essentially text editors. If you want to apply formatting, you have to use something like Markdown and convert the files.

If you want WYSIWYG editing, you have to use something more expensive like Pages or Quick Office. Google Docs, unfortunately, still doesn't work on an iPad. You could write in HTML I suppose.

I imagine Google's motives for the Nexus tablet are:

1. It should kill off the crappy cheap Android tablets that are tarnishing the brand
2. It creates a reference device for manufacturers to measure their efforts against
3. Even if they're selling it at cost, they can still make money from Google Play and advertising. I think Google are also moving into eBooks.