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Comment by mayneack | Hacker News Reader

> In the first years of podcasts, a decade or so ago, technological limitations militated against their widespread adoption: they had to be laboriously transferred from a computer to an MP3 player or an iPod.

I started listening to podcasts back around 2008 I'd guess. I don't remember exactly what the process was for getting them onto my iPod, but I don't remember it being laborious.

I wasn't exactly a geek either. This was from a shared family computer and I was pretty clueless about computers back then.

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You could subscribe to them in iTunes at least as far back as 2004, they'd sync automatically when you attached your iPod. Hardly any extra effort as you'd probably plug in every couple days or so anyway.

How laborious likely depended on your OS. iTunes on a Mac = extremely easy (just sync it like all your other music).

But I remember getting some MP3s to show up on my MP3 player using a Desktop would sometimes be stressful (some files played nice, some didn't..) And when I got an iPod, iTunes and Windows would occasionally attack each other outright

That is about when I was started as well, and it while it seems annoying compared to today's standards I remember it being about par for the course.

The other audio I listened to at the time was either downloaded/burned or purchased. I even bought a few audiobooks, which came on multiple discs. How barbaric!

For me it was just subscribe on iTunes, my PC automatically downloaded new episodes and since I charged and synced my iPod using my computer daily I was usually up to date.

I had a Rio Carbon. Procedure was: Download podcasts to your computer, drag and drop the files to the player just like with any external drive.

I thought the Rio was a great little player it's a shame Apple wiped the field of competition so quickly.

I wouldn't call the process laborious but it was manual and that meant that you had to hook it up regularly to get new content. I definitely started listening to way more podcasts after I got a good data plan and an iphone.

But you need to charge your iPod anyway, and iPod batteries were small enough they could be reasonably charged via a computer rather than a power brick.

Decade is a little bit too late, I’d say first years are about 15 years ago.

Interesting BBC programme on 'Podcasting the 1st 10 years' here - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03zdkk5

Suggests that Ben Hammersley coined the term in 2004

I remember two of my friends producing a short-lived "internet radio show" around 2000. Nobody had an iPod yet, so it definitely wasn't called a podcast until after that.

I still do that. I plug in my MP3 player with USB, download the audio files I want to listen to, and then copy them to the MP3 player's file system. I don't see the problem.

There is no problem but it's more convenient to just tap one button and have the download happen directly on the listening device.

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