Federico, Myke and Stephen discuss the origin and evolution of the iPod.

In the first episode of Connected, we take a look at the history of the iPod and consider the impact of Apple’s music player on entertainment, consumer technology, fashion, our lifestyles, and more. It’s a special episode not only because it’s the first one – it includes several audio clips from Apple’s iPod keynotes, plus a variety of relevant show notes. I remember how the original iPod got me interested in Apple and technology, so we had fun doing research for this one.

Get the episode here.

Sponsored by Igloo, TextExpander from Smile, Squarespace (use code WORLD for 10% off), and Omnifocus 2 from The Omni Group.

I particularly enjoyed this episode of Core Intuition about the App Store, being an indie developer, and building customer expectations over time.

Manton and Daniel have been building software, iterating, and experimenting for years, and they understand that, like any other business, instant success is welcome but rare, while stable growth takes time, constant effort, and hard work.

Highly recommended episode.

Great follow-up by Dr. Drang on our episode about Sherlocking:

In the fall of 2005, Apple added direct podcast support to iTunes. To normal people, this was what put podcasting on the map. Instead of fiddling around with RSS URLs, third-party apps, and special playlists, users could now find and subscribe to podcasts very easily from within iTunes itself. There’s been a lot of criticism of how Apple has allowed iTunes to grow into an unwieldy behemoth of an app, but I don’t think anyone complained about the addition of podcasts. It was both useful and well implemented.

The Apple ecosystem has changed a lot since 2005, but the essence of Sherlocking is the same: sometimes Apple’s solutions cover the basics, leaving room for third-party developers to thrive; other times, they really sherlock a third-party product with a much better integrated solution. As Drang notes, though, Apple’s podcast Sherlocking in 2005 didn’t have the same result with the Podcasts app in 2012, which has left plenty of opportunities for developers of third-party podcast clients.

My favorite podcast client for iOS 7, Pocket Casts by Shifty Jelly, was updated over the weekend to version 4.5, which added Chromecast support and some welcome additions to the app’s built-in Charts view.

When browsing podcasts in the app’s directory, you can now see Trending shows and change countries for Top Charts. Pocket Casts still has a general worldwide view, but now you can also filter charts by country; for me, this means I can easily find other Italian shows besides the excellent ones provided by the EasyPodcast network (pictured above; EasyApple is the best Italian podcast about Apple, hands down).

Pocket Casts continues to be a solid client that I particularly enjoy because it’s also available on the iPad. It’s $3.99 on the App Store.