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Rant on, brother: Why WM still rules mobile podcasts

Posted on Tuesday, Nov 25, 2008 by Phil Nickinson
Filed Under: Editorials; Tags: windows mobile, rant, podcast, iphone

Schmodcast

Once again, we really do have to hand it to Apple.

We’re finding our inspiration today in tech writer Jeff Kirvin, who unleashes the following:

As a Windows Mobile user, I’m consistently amazed that people take the iPhone seriously as a smartphone platform. Yes, my Treo has an old school 2003 interface and isn’t as shiny as newer smartphones (including “black slab” iPhone wannabes like the Blackberry Storm and even WM devices like the HTC Touch Diamond and Samsung Omnia), but I’m also not hamstrung with arbitrary limitations.

We couldn’t agree more. Case in point (and to which Kirvin was writing): With the iPhone/iPod Touch 2.2 software upgrade comes the ability to download podcasts.

Sort of.

If the podcast is larger than 10 megabytes — and you'll be hard-pressed to find one of any length that isn't — you have to download it with WiFi only, and not over a 3G connection. (By comparison, the last two WM Experts podcasts were 24.7 and  33.5 megabytes each.)

There are times that we loathe the apparent disconnect Microsoft and device manufacturers can appear to have with the carriers. This is not one of them. In this case, we’ll use our Windows Mobile phones as we see fit, thank you very much.

What’s next? Will Apple throttle bandwidth from the phone itself, instead of AT&T having to worry about it? (IPhone fans can thank us for putting that suggestion out there.)

It’s this kind of manipulation from Apple that keeps a good many of us from wanting to deal with the company (and frustrates many who do). It’s not that the hardware’s not sexy. It’s not that the software is lacking. It’s that lines are being blurred, or destroyed. Apple makes the hardware, and AT&T provides the service. There’s too much collusion going on. If AT&T wants to set a 5-gigabyte cap on my data, fine. But don’t tell me how to use those gigs. And don’t use Apple as a proxy to do so.

Kirvin does mention a few Windows Mobile alternatives, including BeyondPod, which we’ve tackled in the Weekly Software Wrangle, and Kinoma Play, which we’ve written about once or twice. We can stream podcasts. We can download podcasts. We can sync them with feeds.

Basically, we can do whatever we (and the software developers) want. And that’s the way it should be.

/rant

 
 

Comments

I think you have to consider the amount of folks Apple is going to have using bandwidth. If Apple was just going to be catering to the crowd the size of WM, then there would be less restrictions. But this isn't the case. The iPhone sold more phones than the freakin' razor, that's mainstream dude. You have to be smart on bandwidth consumption.
Submitted by TruthSeeker (not verified) on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 16:37.
Well, I have to side with personal rights on this one. I am an iPhone 3G user, and this business about how they decide when you can use data vs wifi to do this or that is just stupid, to me. I could /possibly/ see it as an argument about quality of user experience, if say you were downloading a 128MB video podcast over EDGE... that'd take eons. But why not just let the /user/ decide if they want to wait forever?

The only real reason that a limitation like this goes in is that Apple is responding to concerns from carriers. Yes, plural. After all, this isn't just a question of AT&T's wireless bandwidth... it's also overall Internet bandwidth. As the earlier poster pointed out, if you put hundreds or thousands of iPhones in a locality (some college campuses learned THIS the hard way) you can kill a network's throughput really quickly.

So... maybe this is a question of trying to be a good neighbor, but I still think it's ultimately the /customer's/ choice how they use the pipe. Personally, I would opt to download a podcast on my device only very rarely. I've got other better things to use my bandwidth for most of the time. YMMV.
Submitted by taroliw (not verified) on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 17:15.
ker plow! Heck of a write up Phil.
Submitted by Malatesta on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 17:56.
Truthseeker,
You're right. Data is far cheaper for Americans than it is for consumers in other countries. The price we pay is a more restrictive company policies.
Submitted by Lil_Sunshine (not verified) on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 19:12.
If you listen to a lot of podcasts, downloading them is one of those features on a phone that you don't want to give up once you have it. But, there's always something. I am just as outraged at Windows Mobile device manufacturers who leave 3.5 mm headset jacks off of their devices. It's the same sort of arbitrary restriction and inconvenient.
Submitted by Lil_Sunshine (not verified) on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 19:24.
3.5 mm jacks are the past. A2DP is the present.

it's up to the phone companies and ISPs to meet the consumer's need for band width. It's not up to device manufacturers and devs.
Submitted by Draiko (not verified) on Tue, 11/25/2008 - 22:48.
I think the article forgot to mention one thing: even though you can't download a file that's bigger than 10MB, you can actually stream the content using the itunes app and have it running in the background Its not as nice as Kinoma Play, but at least it gives an option to listen to a podcast that's bigger than 10MB.
Submitted by janric (not verified) on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 01:03.
@janric: Is that so? Cool! But you're still stuck doing that with WiFi, right? No 3G?

@Lil_Sunshine: Good points. But if Apple wants to play MVNO, then it should buy the airtime and make its own rules. And they already passed on that idea.

@Mal: Thanks!

@taroliw: Good point about not piling on just AT&T. But again, limiting connectivity needs to be handled on the carrier side. There's a reason we pay what we do for data - and carriers are still coming out WAY ahead on the deal, to the point where Congress has been asking questions. We're paying more and getting less.

But I digress.
Submitted by Phil Nickinson on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 01:25.
@Phil Nickinson: Nope, you can do it using 3G, 2G or Wifi. I've already tested it and I'm now listening to the lastest WMExperts podcasts. We're doing fine Mal, BTW. ^_^
Submitted by janric (not verified) on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 03:53.
I personally don't have any complaints on my Bold, I may not be able to download the podcasts through my browser, but I can still stream em over WiFi, 3G and EDGE if I do so choose and their are 3RD party apps which allow me to download if I do so wish too.

Rogers has me capped @ 6GB per month and that's more then enough, with the combination of WiFi and 3G.

Aside from that if Apple/AT&T did relax on the bandwidth usage implementations, we wouldn't be ranting about those limits, we'd be ranting about how the limits are gone and how with those limits gone, no one can even access the services they are paying for due to the bandwidth being saturated by all the users. You can't pinpoint just the iPhones in this case either, this should be looked at in terms of ALL data devices.

Then you have those individuals as well that just want to get more then what they are paying for by bypassing the system implemented APN's and using WAP APN for tethering their devices, clogging up the system more, those pipes are allocated to allow a certain amount of traffic to flow and with people attempting to/bypassing them, you are taking services from others.
I can understand, everyone is ripped off by the Telcos and looking for some satisfaction from them by doing things such as this, but in the end after all is said it done it does nothing but hurt you/us as consumers, cause heads up in the big offices see it happening and slap more fee's and more caps on things and the saga continues.
Submitted by Bla1ze (not verified) on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 05:11.
TruthSeeker, the is way more Windows mobiles device than iPhone and ofcourse a WM device without internet is pointless.
I don't understand why would anyone want to have a device with so much limitations. Is like buying a cd but you can only listen to it in one cd player.
I think open source is going to be the future and with Linux on board the future is looking bright. Ubuntu will be out soon and firefox mobile also.
One thing I love about every windows mobile device is. You can do anything you can imagine and you have almost unlimited options. from gps applications to using your wm device as a universal remote control and now to even control/shutdown your pc or laptop with a simple text msg from anywhere in the world.
I can't wait for sprint to start selling WiMax compatible phones and now that their agreement was approved the future has no limits...unless u stuck with apple stuff.
who the heck is using more than 5GBS of data over a cellphone??? I using a maximum of 58mbs a month and I use my phone for business and personal over the Rev A sprint network. I download office files, media etc...
Submitted by strykernyc (not verified) on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 10:05.
You can stream ANY podcast, audio or video, from iTunes in the background over 3G/EDGE. You just can't download it if it's over 10MB, only stream.
I thimk the reason for this is that you can queue up as many podscast downloads as you want. You can queue up 50 podcasts of 50MB and have the thing download GBs of data all night long.
With streaming, you're limited to one at a time and only for the duration you use it.
It's still kind of stupid don't get me wrong. But I think at least being able to stream is an acceptable compramise I can live with in this situation. After all, AT&T has made wifi completely free to all iPhone users at any AT&T or Wayport hotspot. That's what I do when I need to update a few, just drop by Starbucks or McD's for free wifi. If you HAVE to download it that bad before a plane trip, wifi shouldn't be impossible to find.
Apple could have at least allowed us one-at-a-time downloads if queueing them up was a problem.
The iPhone is all about compramises. It'll always be that way. It really becomes a problem when there's something you need to do that they won't allow.
This is why my WM phone travels with me. I rarely use it anymore but when push comes to shove, the SIM goes in the WM phone to get around Apple's lameness.
Submitted by taylorh (not verified) on Fri, 11/28/2008 - 05:17.

Hate to break it to you but there's an iPhone app/fix called VoIPOver3G This allows iPhone users to DL over 10MB on regular cell service. Actually this app does much more, you can use Fring (VOIP) on 3G, Edge, and GPRS!
Enjoy!

Submitted by TBadra (not verified) on Tue, 03/10/2009 - 15:02.

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